The following link lends credence to this line of thought:
http://www.management.wharton.upenn.edu/grant/Grant_JAP2008b_TaskSignificance.pdf
A note:
There was a study done regarding the cause and effect of employee relationships and how it affected job performance that gave as a result that employees performed better simply because of the attention given them, rather than the validity of any of the techniques introduced.
If anyone can provide a resource for that study, I’ll vote you up because I am having trouble finding it.
If I remember correctly it is used in: O’Hair, Friedrich, Dixon 2008 Strategic Communication: In Business and the Professions, Pearson
I add this only because it provides a greater context:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/4758.html
I will vote up anyone who can say in what circumstance this was said.