The chapters thus far have dealt with the process of goal-setting and goal pursuit to maximize our self-control efforts to achieve our goals. Yet as noted, self-control is an iterative process that we engage in over time. Given the inherent difficulties of any goal pursuit, the need to create a support system seems implicit to attain self-control success in the long term. This chapter focuses on the social and contextual factors that facilitate a progression toward goal attainment in an attempt to encourage us to establish a support system that can bolster our attempts at goal attainment.

The previous chapter examined the range of reward plans associated with the recognition and reward of individual behaviour and/or results. This chapter focuses on plans where reward outcomes are contingent on measures of collective results; that is, on collective incentive plans. Because such plans are generally geared to measures of group results over a relatively brief time frame – typically monthly, quarterly or annually – they are also known as collective or group short-term incentive plans, or ‘STIs’.

We begin our exploration of collective STIs by outlining the general rationale for such plans and by overviewing the four main plan types: profit-sharing, gainsharing, goal-sharing and team incentives. Subsequent sections explore each of these four plan types in more detail, noting the advantages and disadvantages of each. Consistent with the approach taken in earlier chapters, a final section considers the strategic priorities to which each plan type would be most and least appropriate.