MOTIVATION

Defining Motivation

– What Is Motivation?
• Many people incorrectly view
motivation as a personal trait—that is,
some have it and others do not.
Motivation is the result of the
interaction of the individual and the
situation.
• Definition: Motivation is “the
processes that account for an
individual’s intensity, direction, and
 Early Theories of Motivation

–Introduction
• In the 1950s three specific
theories were formulated
and are the best known:
hierarchy of needs theory,
Theories X and Y, and the
two-factor theory.
 Early Theories of Motivation

–Hierarchy of Needs Theory

–Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs is the most well-known
theory of motivation. He
hypothesized that within every
human being there exists a
hierarchy of five needs
 Hierarchy of Needs
– Physiological: Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex,
and other bodily needs.
– Safety: Includes security and protection from
physical and emotional harm.
– Social: Includes affection, belongingness,
acceptance, and friendship.
– Esteem: Includes internal esteem factors such
as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement; and
external esteem factors such as status,
recognition, and attention.
– Self-actualization: The drive to become what one
is capable of becoming; includes growth,
achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfillment.
• As a need becomes
substantially satisfied, the next
need becomes dominant. No
need is ever fully gratified; a
substantially satisfied need no
longer motivates.
 Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow separated the five needs into
higher and lower orders.
• Physiological and safety needs are
described as lower-order.
• Social, esteem, and self-actualization are
higher-order needs.
• Higher-order needs are satisfied internally.
• Lower-order needs are predominantly
satisfied externally.
 Theory X and Theory Y
• Douglas McGregor concluded that a manager’s view of
the nature of human beings is based on a certain
grouping of assumptions and he or she tends to mold his
or her behavior toward employees according to these
assumptions.
• Theory X assumptions are basically negative.
– Employees inherently dislike work and, whenever
possible, will attempt to avoid it.
– Since employees dislike work, they must be coerced,
controlled, or threatened with punishment.
• Theory Y assumptions are basically positive.
– Employees can view work as being as natural as rest
or play.
– People will exercise self-direction and self-control if
 TWO FACTOR THEORY
• The Two-Factor Theory is sometimes
also called motivation-hygiene theory.
• Proposed by psychologist Frederick
Herzberg when he investigated the
question, “What do people want from
their jobs?” He asked people to
describe, in detail, situations in which
they felt exceptionally good or bad
about their jobs. These responses
were then tabulated and categorized.
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs

• The theory focuses on three needs:

achievement, power, and affiliation.
• Need for achievement: The drive to excel,
to achieve in relation to a set of standards,
to strive to succeed
• Some people have a compelling drive to
succeed. They are striving for personal
achievement rather than the rewards of
success per se. This drive is the
achievement need (nAch).
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs

• Need for power: The need to make others

behave in a way that they would not have
behaved otherwise.
• The need for power (nPow) is the desire to
have impact, to be influential, and to
control others.
• Need for affiliation: The desire for friendly
and close interpersonal relationships
• The third need isolated by McClelland is
affiliation (nAfl).
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs

• Relying on an extensive
amount of research, some
reasonably well-supported
predictions can be made
based on the relationship
between achievement need
and job performance.
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs
• First, individuals with a high
need to achieve prefer job
situations with personal
responsibility, feedback, and
an intermediate degree of risk.
When these characteristics are
prevalent, high achievers will
be strongly motivated.
• Second, a high need to achieve does not
necessarily lead to being a good manager,
especially in large organizations. People
with a high achievement need are
interested in how well they do personally
and not in influencing others to do well.
• Third, the needs for affiliation
and power tend to be closely
related to managerial success.
The best managers are high in
their need for power and low in
their need for affiliation.
• Finally, employees have been successfully
trained to stimulate their achievement need.
Trainers have been effective in teaching
individuals to think in terms of
accomplishments, winning, and success,
and then helping them to learn how to act in
a high achievement way by preferring
situations where they have personal
responsibility, feedback, and moderate risks.
 CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF
MOTIVATION
• Self-Determination Theory
• Based on the cognitive evaluation
hypothesis that introduction of extrinsic
rewards, such as pay, for work effort that
had been previously intrinsically rewarding
due to the pleasure associated with the
content of the work itself, tends to
decrease the overall level of motivation.
 Self- determination theory
• When people are paid for work, it feels
less like something they want to do and
more like something they have to do.
 Self- determination theory
• Self-concordance
• The degree to which people’s reasons for
pursuing goals are consistent with their
interests and core values.
 Goal- Setting Theory
• In the late 1960s, Edwin Locke proposed
that intentions to work toward a goal are a
major source of work motivation.
• Goals tell an employee what needs to be
done and how much effort is needed. The
evidence strongly supports the value of
goals.
• Specific hard goals produce a higher level
of output than do the generalized goals.
 Goal- Setting Theory
• There are contingencies in goal-setting theory. In
addition to feedback, three other factors influence
the goals-performance relationship.
• Goal commitment. Goal-setting theory presupposes
that an individual is committed to the goal.
• Task characteristics. Individual goal setting does not
work equally well on all tasks. Goals seem to have a
more substantial effect on performance when tasks
are simple, well-learned, and independent.
• National culture. Goal-setting theory is culture bound
and it is well adapted to North American cultures.
 Implementing Goal- Setting
• How do you make goal-setting operation in
practice?
• Management by Objectives (MBO)
• Participatively set goals that are tangible,
verifiable, and measurable.
• Organization’s overall objectives are
translated into specific objectives for each
succeeding level
 Four Ingredients common to MBO
programs

• Goal specificity
• Participation in decision making
• Explicit time period
• Performance feedback
 Self- Efficacy Theory
• Known also as social cognitive theory and social
learning theory
• The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you
have in your ability to succeed in a task.
• Albert Bandura, developer of self-efficacy theory
• Enactive mastery—gaining relevant experience with the
task or job
• Vicarious modeling—becoming more confident because
you see someone else doing the task
• Verbal persuasion—becoming more confident because
someone convinces you that you have the skills
• Arousal—leads to an energized state driving a person to
complete the task
 Reinforcement Theory
• In contrast to Goal-Setting theory, which is
a cognitive approach, Reinforcement
theory is a behavioristic approach. It
argues that reinforcement conditions
behavior.
• Reinforcement theorists see behavior as
being environmentally caused.
• Reinforcement theory ignores the inner
state of the individual and concentrates
solely on what happens to a person when
he or she takes some action.
 Equity Theory
• What role does equity play in motivation? An employee
with several years’ experience can be frustrated to find out
that a recent college grad hired at a salary level higher
than he or she is currently earning, causing motivation
levels to drop. Why?
• Employees make comparisons of their job inputs and
outcomes relative to those of others.
• Additionally, the referent that an employee selects adds to
the complexity of equity theory. There are four referent
comparisons that an employee can use:
• Which referent an employee chooses will
be influenced by the information the
employee holds about referents, as well as
by the attractiveness of the referent.
• There are four moderating variables:
gender, length of tenure, level in the
organization, and amount of education or
professionalism.
 Consequences of perceived
inequity
• When employees perceive an inequity,
they can be predicted to make one of six
choices: (ppt7-19)
• Change their inputs.
• Change their outcomes.
• Distort perceptions of self.
• Distort perceptions of others.
• Choose a different referent.
• Leave the field.
• Inequities created by overpayment do not
seem to have a very significant impact on
behavior in most work situations.
• Not all people are equity sensitive.
• Employees also seem to look for equity in
the distribution of other organizational
rewards.
• Finally, recent research has been directed at
expanding what is meant by equity or fairness.
• Historically, equity theory focused on
distributive justice or the perceived fairness
of the amount and allocation of rewards
among individuals.
• Equity should also consider procedural
justice, the perceived fairness of the process
used to determine the distribution of rewards.
• Equity theory demonstrates
that, for most employees,
motivation is influenced
significantly by relative
rewards as well as by absolute
rewards.
• Recent research expands what is meant by
equity or fairness
• Distributive justice—perceived fairness of
the amount and allocation of rewards.
• Organization justice—overall perception of
what is fair in the workplace.
• Procedural justice—perceived fairness of
the process used to determine the
distribution of rewards.
• Interactional justice—perception of the
degree to which the individual is treated
with dignity, concern, and respect.
 Expectancy Theory
• Expectancy theory argues that the
strength of a tendency to act in a certain
way depends on the strength of an
expectation that the act will be followed by
a given outcome and on the attractiveness
of that outcome to the individual.
 Expectancy Theory
• It says that an employee will be motivated to
exert a high level of effort when he/she
believes that:
• Effort will lead to a good performance
appraisal.
• A good appraisal will lead to organizational
rewards.
• The rewards will satisfy his/her personal
goals.
• Three key relationships
 Expectancy Theory
• Expectancy theory helps explain why a lot
of workers merely do the minimum
necessary to get by. For example:
• If I give a maximum effort, will it be
recognized in my performance appraisal?
• If I get a good performance appraisal, will
it lead to organizational rewards?
• If I am rewarded, are the rewards ones that
I find personally attractive?