I cam across two interesting posts on Architectures of Control. The blog is about how things are design (or not designed) to control behaviour. The first post, Shaping Behaviour: Part 1 goes through the carrot and the stick theory and the second, Shaping Behaviour: Part 2 goes through the speedomoter theory, i.e.,

...showing them the results of their actions, how they’re doing, or how well they could be doing if they changed their behaviour...
He ends with this,

Is it true, then to say that any situation where one entity (person/animal/plant) is trying to change the behaviour of another entity is resolved either by control (forcing the change in behaviour) or persuasion (inspiring the change in behaviour), or a combination of the two (e.g. by tricking the entity into changing behaviour)?

Or is that too simplistic?
So what can this mean for how we structure our work environments? At the end of the day we're trying to achieve a certain set of goals set by shareholders/management/owners/etc. which implies getting other people to do what we want. Obviously the best way is if those people want to do what we want. Is his summary "too simplistic"?

I suppose a lot of this goes back to our discussion on "What motivates your staff?"