Incentives, from Nigel Davies
The accepted view of incentives is that carrot and stick dominate the human psyche.
But the book Drive (Daniel Pink) provides a cogent argument for their working only with boring repetitive tasks. More worrying is that they can even reduce the motivation to be creative by turning a passion into a means of subsistence.
If this is correct (and I think it is) the implications are very far reaching because it cuts across the way we have organized so many of our systems (economic, business, political).
Much food for thought.