What Is Motivation?
Motivation
- Motivation: The process by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed, and sustained toward attaining a goal.
- Need: An internal state that makes certain outcomes appear attractive.
The motivation process
Unsatisfied need
Tension
Effort
Satisfied Need
Tension Reduction
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory?
Maslow was a psychologist who proposed that within every person is a hierarchy of five needs. As each need becomes satisfied, the next need becomes dominant.
- Physiological needs: food, drink, shelter, sexual satisfaction, and other physical requirements.
- Safety needs: security and protection from physical and emotional harm, as well as assurance that physical needs will continue to be met.
- Social needs: affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
- Esteem needs: internal esteem factors, such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement, and external esteem factors, such as status, recognition, and attention.
- Self-actualization needs: growth, achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfillment; the drive to become what one is capable of becoming.
Exhibit 15.2 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Social
Safety
Physiological
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
- Theory X: the assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, avoid responsibility, and must be coerced to perform.
- Theory Y: the assumption that employees are creative, enjoy work, seek responsibility, and can exercise self-direction.
Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory
- Two-factor theory (motivation-hygiene theory): Herzberg has theorized that intrinsic factors are related to job satisfaction and motivation, whereas extrinsic factors are related to job dissatisfaction.
- Hygiene factors: Factors that eliminate job dissatisfaction but don’t motivate.
- Motivators: Factors that increase job satisfaction and motivation.
McClelland’s Three-Needs Theory
*Three-needs theory: According to McClelland’s motivation theory, three acquired (not innate) needs — achievement, power, and affiliation—are major motivation drivers at work.
– Need for Achievement (nAch): the drive to succeed and excel in relation to a set of standards.
– Need for Power (nPow): the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise.
– Need for Affiliation (nAff): the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
Goal-Setting Theory?
Goal-setting theory: The proposition that specific goals increase performance and that difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals.
Self-efficacy: An individual’s belief that they are capable of performing a task.
Reinforcement Theory?
- Reinforcement Theory: The theory that behaviour is a function of its consequences.
- Reinforcers: Consequences immediately following a behaviour that increase the probability that the behaviour
will be repeated.
Equity Theory?
- Equity theory: proposes that employees perceive what they get from a job situation (outcomes) in relation to what they put in (inputs) and then compare their inputs-outcomes ratio with the inputs-outcomes ratios of relevant others.
- Referents: the persons, systems, or selves against which individuals compare themselves to assess equity.
- Distributive justice: perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards among individuals.
- Procedural justice: perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards.
Expectancy Theory
Expectancy theory: individual tends to act in a certain way based on the expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual.
It includes three variables, or relationships:
– Expectancy, or effort–performance linkage.
– Instrumentality, or performance–reward linkage.
– Valence, or attractiveness of reward.
Exhibit 15.8 Simplified Expectancy Model
Individual Effort (A) —> Individual Performance (B) —> Organizational Rewards (C) —> Individual Goals
A = Effort-Performance linkage
B = Performance-Reward Linkage
C = Attractiveness of reward
Integrating Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Expectancy Relationships:
Expectancy (effort-performance linkage):
– The perceived probability that an individual’s effort will result in a certain level of performance.
Instrumentality:
– The perception that a particular level of performance will result in attaining a desired outcome (reward).
Valence:
– The attractiveness/importance of the performance reward (outcome) to the individual.
Designing Effective Rewards Programs
The most commonly used reward in organizations is pay.
When organizations develop reward programs, they need to consider very carefully what individual employees value.
