fear as a motivator?

There is no doubt that fear could be a motivator. 

Risk management - as a discipline - is a founded on "fear" and the attempts to measure and manage things that contribute to fear - and profit from it.  Probability and statistical sciences are also founded on fear - the fear of the unknown, the fear - and expectation - of the plausible.

However, when managers use fear as a motivator, things go awry.

A friend of mine succinctly summarized it for me in one of our conversations:  You can't scare someone to follow you - you can only inspire them.