Should NCAA Athletes Get Paid as Employees? Research Paper Example

Question 1: Should NCAA athletes get paid as employees? Explain your answer.

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NCAA players should receive payment as employees. This is due to a number of reasons that depict them as deserving payment like any other worker in the U.S. society. For instance, each individual player devotes approximately 43 hours each week, which exceeds the average working hours for employees in U.S. In addition, despite the fact that NCAA players are students, they engage in sports activities televised for billions of dollars at the expense of their schooling hours (Deal, 2017). Given that they commit their time for sporting activities that generate such huge amounts of capital, then they deserve payment.

Question 2: If NCAA athletes are paid as employees, either because of legal action or colleges/universities deciding on their own to change the system, how should the pay strategy be designed to work? What are the potential pitfalls that need to be avoided?

The best payment strategy for NCAA players would be salary capping, which is both practical and receptive to free market policies. This would involve placement of maximum and minimum caps for players depending on their skills and level of contribution. For example, a maximum cap of between $700,000 and $3 million would be practical given the amount of money made by the sports teams, including a minimum cap of $30,000 for each player. In this strategy, the maximum cap would depend on specific games and the amount that each accrues. A possible pitfall would be the possible absence of explanations for the differential pay among players in the same team, which would be a likely cause of resistance and disunity.

What would your pay strategy design cost (i.e., thousands, millions, etc.) and how would it be funded) what impact would the required level of funding have on colleges and universities? How would athletes outside of sports such as basketball and football be affected?

A suitable pays strategy design is one that would guarantee cost effectiveness. In this case, a devolved-like kind of system would be the most applicable, whereby; each school pays its athletes depending on revenue it collects from the sports activities and their airing on media. As mentioned above, the payment would range between $30,000 and $3 million. Athletes outside sports would not be considered in the scheme unless they play for the schools exclusively.

What are the four policy issues in the pay model? What purposes do the objectives in the pay model serve?

Looking at the proposed pay model or remuneration scheme for the NCCA reveals that the student-athletes will receive fair pay. In this case, compensation will be more than the scholarships that were initially awarded as compensation for the participation. Also, analyzing the conditions in which the students play and participate in normal curriculum activities reveals a number of policy issues in the pay model. One, payment for participation will create a policy issue given that students participate in different extents. This implies that the model will have to lay precise criteria for matching payment to the degree of participation. Second, the appraisal mechanism is a policy issue as student players receiving the lower cap payment will need to be appraised progressively (Deal, 2017). Third, payment of athletes outside sports will create a policy issue for the model as it does not capture their case. Fourth and final, possible lack of uniformity will create a policy issue for the model given that schools may not necessarily accrue constant revenue from the sports activities. The objectives behind the pay model seek to ensure that students receive fair distribution of the revenue generated by sporting activities.

How do differing perspectives affect our views of compensation?

There are different perspectives from which the issue of compensation for student athletes could be analyzed. These perspectives eventually affect the general view of compensation as they beg the question when student athletes should receive compensation. From the performance perspective, for instance, student athletes should receive payment simply because they perform. This affects our view of compensation in that; it tends to suggest that all persons participating in sports should receive compensation, which is not plausible.

From the perspective that student athletes bring in a lot of money to their schools as revenue, one would not fail to understand that all revenue accrued from the sporting activities would not be attained without student participation. This affects our view of compensation in that, it suggests that part of the money requires allocation to persons to whom the money is due, and that it would be unfair to deny persons compensation for participating in an activity that generates a lot of income. In this case, our view of compensation is likely to relate to productivity, where productive persons regardless of how they do it receive pay.

Three tests for any source of competitive advantage are aligned, differentiate, and add value. Discuss whether these tests are difficult to pass. Can compensation really be a source of competitive advantage?

Alignment, differentiation and value addition as tests for competitive advantage and its source are not entirely difficult to pass. Though passable, each among the three has its own degree of difficulty to pass. Alignment, for instance, depends on the type of management strategy adopted by a firm or organization whereby, it would be difficult for alignment to pass as a test in organizations where authority is centralized. In such an organizational context, the managers cultural perspective is likely to different from those of their subjects and thus miss alignment. Differentiation if achievable, could be a great source of competitive advantage but is very difficult to achieve in organizations that operate in a highly competitive environment, especially for business organizations that deal in products that are hard to diversify like oil and apparel, in such cases, differentiation as a test would be difficult to pass (Edelman, 2017). Value addition would be the easiest to pass if at all an organization would be able to provide goods or services that are of a higher value.

Compensation can be a source of competitive advantage for firms that specialize on the provision of services as their key product. Better compensation would ensure that employees are committed to the provision of high-quality services. This would generate competitive advantage since such employees are more motivated and hence more productive.

Nonfinancial returns (great place to work, opportunities to learn, job security, and flexible work schedules) are more important (i.e., best practice) than pay. Provide arguments that dispute this claim.

Non-financial returns are significant but less important than pay because they have less effect on an employees private life as a person. Non-financial returns may equally have less effect on the person outside the work environment, which goes against the very purpose of securing a job. Usually, the purpose of working or getting a job is to get compensated in a way that increases one's value and raises their standards of living. Unfortunately, non-financial returns do not meet this purpose and are therefore less important than pay. However, non-financial returns could prove better than pay, like in fairly paying work environments where employees get significant learning experiences (Edelman, 2017). In such cases, the returns would be better if an only if they increase employees value in the long run. This is because the employee would be guaranteed of receiving a better pay in future as a result of the greater value they will have accrued.

How does one go about conducting a job analysis; one that ensures the job description actually matches the duties performed by the employee in the job?

While conducting a job analysis to determine the link between job description and performance requirements, one would need to collect as much information related to the job as possible. This would involve collecting information regarding what the particular job entails, which would go beyond the mere job description provided by the employer. To collect reliable information, a prospective employee would need to conduct a physical reconnaissance in the place of work and interrogate persons working in his or her position of interest (Egger et al., 2016). This would ensure that only first-hand information related to the occupation is collected. Next, one would also need to collect information from secondary sources to gain a chorology of events related to the job and performance standards. Such information would be available on-line or in publications if the job in question is formal.

Offshoring refers to the movement of jobs to locations beyond a countrys borders. What is the susceptibility of job analysis to offshoring?

Offshoring has a significant effect on job analysis and its outcomes; this is in the sense that, acquiring first-hand information about a certain job in a foreign country would be difficult because of the lack of familiarity. This is so because the environment has a significant influence on job requirements and standards of performance. The job description is therefore susceptible to offshoring because it is likely to limit information about a certain job and the influence of the surrounding environment on its requirement and standards of performance (Egger et al., 2016). The same applies to any job analysis that relies on secondary information since such information is likely to be out of date. Given that most market environments are dynamic and prone to uncertainties, job analysis would be susceptible to changes that surround a job in question. This is because offshoring affects the quality of information available for a particular job analysis, which translates to susceptibility.

References

Deal, C. T. (2017). Factors influencing the level of financial support provided by former athletes from a NCAA Division IA Football Championship Series (FCS) university to their alma mater. N.P.

Edelman, M. (2017). From Student-Athletes to Employee-Athletes: Why a'Pay for Play'Model of College Sports Would Not Necessarily Make Educational Scholarships Taxable. N.P.

Egger, H., Kreickemeier, U., Moser, C., & Wrona, J. (2016). Offshoring and Job Polarisation between FirmsTechnical Supplement. N.P.