personal finance Although this book is not about economics it must be stated here that the conflict between management's and workers' views on wages the difference between flexibility and stability (complicated by the social objective of full employment) will be unlikely to be resolved by the trade union cry of a 'guaranteed annual wage' a cry which sounds well enough when conditions are good but which is hollow in times of depression. Management's task here is inescapable; it is to evolve wages and employment plans for workers which take note of all the predictable elements of a business's development. While writing of the relation of work to pay-the second factor under consideration in the matter of getting the best from people a word must be said again about profits. Profit is necessary for business survival. Do workers understand this? Is there not still a strong hostility to the idea of profit in most labour forces-a hostility which has been inflamed by the loose talk of politicians? The making of profit is still regarded by many as a form of 'worker exploitation' and all sorts of ingenious devices have been thought out by managements to drive home to workers what profit is really about profitsharing schemes, shareownership arrangements and the like. They are only partially successful: the resistance is still there and is possibly only beginning to yield now that, in Britain, at least, national prosperity has made profitable free enterprise suddenly respectable : headline news in fact. The old conception of profit as being somehow outside and beyond the worker's comprehension an objective which was subject to dark and impersonal forces is slowly disappearing but a sideways glance at most nationalized industries is depressing enough. Here is total State ownership but nobody would claim that workers in, for example, the coal mines of Britain are particularly 'motivated' by the desire to make them profitable though in fairness to both managements and workers in these industries nobody yet seems to have established objective criteria for their working. Should they make a profit they are accused of exploiting a monopoly; should they make losses they are said to be wasting public money! The third factor which has to be examined briefly before some answers are attempted is the question of fear fear of not being in work and thus of the corroding indignity of unemployment. In Britain the combination of increased prosperity and full and stable employment has meant that society has accepted an obligation which has virtually laid the ghosts of the thirties. Management can no longer wield the weapon of fear any more than workers need to be haunted by it. That this work motivation has been practically eliminated is one of the great social achievements of this century although it can be said that the long memory of workers must keep governments and managements for ever on the alert. Financehome