Everybody talks about pay for performance—linking a percentage of an employee’s compensation to some specific, measurable goals—but not everybody likes it when it applies to them.

Just this week, a well-known business executive decided to leave his company’s employ rather than accept a new deal with strong pay-for performance components that were designed to better motivate him to meet larger company goals. He said: “I’d been there 12 years and did not feel motivation was needed. I didn’t think it was the right thing for me or the right thing for my [employees],” because it would have put too much pressure on everyone.

Yes, life is tough in the working world, even for New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre, the business executive who chose to turn down a one-year contract rather than accept a deal that guaranteed him less money ($5 million versus the $6.4 million he had been getting), but an opportunity to make as much as $3 million more (or $8 million overall), if he led the team to the World Series next year. He called the $3 million in bonus incentives “an insult.”

Pay-for-performance plans only work when someone is both motivated to perform by the amount of the performance bonus and believes that the performance plan is constructed in a way that is both fair and achievable. But as a Harvard Business School report stated back in 2003, commitment and company culture are also variables that enter into the mix. Pay for performance doesn’t work as well in a company culture that places more emphasis on building “commitment rather than on monetary incentives.”

Joe Torre seemed to make this same point Friday when he said: “If somebody wanted me to manage here, I’d be managing here. That’s my feeling. Yes, it was a very generous offer, no question about it. It still wasn’t the type of commitment that we’re trying to do something together as opposed to what can you do for me. … It’s not the money that’s going to be the determining factor. It’s the commitment and trust. You can’t have one without the other.”

Pay for performance versus commitment and trust—does one exclude the other? Joe Torre thought yes, while the Yankees’ management thought no. There may not be a right answer here, but one thing is certain: Torre’s decision will fuel more discussion on how compensation systems can be better designed to get both workers and managers to work and sacrifice together to achieve a common goal.