Managing Professionals' Motivations: The Core Group System at Benton & Bowles

Ensuring coordination and cooperation is often a major managerial problem in firms in which there are large numbers of professionals and managers. This problem arises because managers and professionals may be too highly motivated, that is, they tend to substitute individual or departmental goals for the goals of the company. The Core Group enables professionals to have an explicit impact upon the decision-making process. This paper summarizes the use of the Core Group system at Benton and Bowles, a New York advertising agency.