David Cain loves his job. Well, most of it anyway. As an executive director for global engineering at Pfizer, Cain finds real satisfaction in assessing environmental real estate risks, managing facilities, and overseeing a multimillion-dollar budget for the pharmaceutical giant. What he doesn’t love so much: creating PowerPoint slides and riffling through spreadsheets. Lucky for Cain, Pfizer now lets him punt those tedious and time-consuming tasks to India with the click of a button. Pfizer Works, launched early last year, permits some 4,000 employees to pass off parts of their jobs to outsiders. You might call it personal outsourcing. With workers in India handling everything from basic market research projects to presentations, professionals such as Cain can focus on higher-value work. “It has really been a godsend,” says Cain. “I can send them something in the evening, and the next morning it’s waiting for me when I get to the office.” This novel twist on outsourcing comes at a time when other resources are dwindling. As companies cull people by the thousands—Pfizer itself announced some 8,000 job cuts in January—those who stay behind are being asked to do more. In a down economy, though, it’s especially critical that executives direct their energies to motivating teams, creating new products, and thinking strategically about their next move. “The stakes go up even higher,” says David Kreutter, Pfizer’s vice president for U.S. commercial operations.

Questions 

1. Is David Cain intrinsically motivated on his job? Why or why not?

2. How might being able to outsource certain tasks contribute to employee motivation?

3. How might being able to outsource tasks increase job holders’ levels of expectancy? Does it have the potential to decrease expectancy? Why or why not?

4. When managers outsource certain tasks, what potential motivational implications are there for their subordinates?