People are really ridiculously similar to dogs and other animals; the response to negative reinforcement or negative punishment is at worst uniformly negative, or at best inconsistent and unpredictable. Positive reinforcement results in a positive behavioral change without negative side-effects. Truly the best way to change behavior, yet people still believe that negativity is necessary, especially in the corporate and beaurocratic world. Mind-bogglingly uninformed, to put it lightly.

*edit: sorry for the comparison to dogs (I have some background in animal training); but I hope at least the connection of corporate policy to empirical behavioral science and psychology isn't the cause of the downvoting... anyway if you're interested, a great book is "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor. And on the business side, W. Edwards Deming's seminal work "Out of the Crisis." Essentially both show a proven way of dealing with any living thing that's based on positive behavior and proven statistical methods and science rather than outdated and misguided beliefs about punishment and motivation that are now known to be less effective in the long term. Simple psychology, statistics, and science.