As a Fed, I believe the converse of your hypothesis is true as well. A “carrot” to go with the “stick” so to speak. Under NSPS, we establish our “SMART” goals for the FY. At the end of last FY in my Directorate, over 90% of assigned employees were rated a “3″ out of “5″, regardless who spent more hours in the office or on the road, regardless of whose program overspent or underspent, regardless whether someone had easily obtained SMART goals and who had optimistic SMART goals, etc… Thus, those that put in the extra effort or operated at a higher ‘difficulty level’ were equated with the ‘lowest common denomenator’, a significant demotivator.

Seems to me that many of these systems merely attempt to remove the ‘manager’ from his responsibilities.

But as we used to say in the EOD world (with the ultimate performance accountability - as you inevitably had make that lonely walk to the suspect IED in a bombsuit made by the lowest bidder,) it always comes down to the man and the bomb!