When you look at your people, do you see costs to be reduced? Do you see recalcitrant employees prone to opportunism, shirking, and free riding who can't be trusted and who need to be closely controlled through monitoring, rewards, and sanctions? Do you see people performing activities that can and should be contracted out to save on labor costs? Or, when you look at your people, do you see intelligent, motivated, trustworthy individuals—the most critical and valuable strategic assets your organization can have? When you look at your people, do you see them as the fundamental resources on which your success rests and the primary means of differentiating yourself from the competition? Perhaps even more importantly, would someone observing how your organization manages its people recognize your point of view in what you do as opposed to what you talk about doing?
—Jeffrey Pfeffer, The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First
(Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998, p.292)
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