CHAPTER 16: MOTIVATION

WHAT IS MOTIVATION?Motivation

Refers to the process by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed, and sustained toward attaining goal

Motivation has three elements:1. Energy

It is the measure of intensity, drive, and vigor The quality of effort must be considered as well as its intensity

2. Direction High levels of effort lead to favorable job performance if the effort is channeled in a

direction that benefits the organization3. Persistence

Employees need to persist in putting forth effort to achieve organization goals

EARLY THEORIES OF MOTIVATIONAlthough more valid explanations of motivation have been developed, these early

theories are important because they represent the foundation from which contemporary motivation theories were developed and because many practicing managers still use them.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs TheoryThis is the best-known theory motivation. Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who proposed that within every person is a hierarchy of five needs:

1. Physiological needs – a person’s basic needs2. Safety needs – a person’s need for security and protection from physical and emotional

harm, as well as assurance that physical needs will continue to be met3. Social needs – a person’s needs for affection, belongingness, acceptance, and

friendship4. Esteem needs – a person’s needs for internal esteem factors such as self-respect5. Self-actualization needs – a person’s need for growth, achieving one’s potential, and

self-fulfillment; need to become what he or she is capable of becomingPhysiological and safety needs – lower-order needs; predominantly satisfied externallySocial, esteem and self-actualization – higher-order needs; predominantly satisfied internally

Maslow argued that each level in the needs hierarchy must be substantially satisfied before the next need becomes dominant. An individual moves up the needs hierarchy from one level to another. This theory also says that once a need is substantially satisfied, an individual is no longer motivated to satisfy that need.

Self-Actualization

Esteem

Social

Safety

Physiological

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory YTwo Assumptions about Human Nature by Douglas McGregor:

1. Theory X – is a negative view of people that assumes workers have little ambition, dislike work, want to avoid responsibility, and need to be closely controlled to work effectively

2. Theory Y – is a positive view that assumes employees enjoy work, seek out and accept responsibility, and exercise self-direction

Unfortunately, no evidence confirms that either set of assumptions is valid or that being a Theory Y manager is the only way to motivate employees.

Herzberg’s Two-Factor TheoryFrederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory (also called motivation-hygiene theory)

proposes: Intrinsic factors, which are also called motivators, are related to job’s satisfaction.

When people felt good about their work, they tended to cite intrinsic factors arising from the job itself such as, achievement, recognition, and responsibility, while

Extrinsic factors that are associated with job’s dissatisfaction are also called hygiene factors. When they were dissatisfied, they tended to cite extrinsic factors arising from the job context such as company policy and administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, and working conditions.

Herzberg believed that the data suggested that the opposite of satisfaction was not dissatisfaction, as traditionally had been believed. Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job would not necessarily make that job more satisfying (or motivating). Again, Herzberg believed that the factors that led to job satisfaction were separate and distinct from those that led to job dissatisfaction. Therefore, managers who sought to eliminate factors that created job dissatisfaction could keep people from being dissatisfied but not necessarily motivate them.

Three-Needs TheoryDavid McClelland and his associates proposed the three-needs theory, which says

there are three acquired (not innate) needs that are major motives work. These three needs are:1. Need for Achievement (nAch) – the drive to succeed and excel in relation to a set of

standards. (among the three this need has been researched the most)2. Need for Power (nPow) – the need to make others behave in a way that they would not

have behaved otherwise.3. Need for Affiliation (nAff) – the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.

People with a high need for achievement are striving for personal achievement rather than for trappings and rewards of success. They have the desire to do something better or more efficiently than it’s been before. High achievers focus on their own accomplishments, while good managers emphasize helping others accomplish their goals. McCelland showed that employees can be trained to stimulate their achievement need by being in situations where they have personal responsibility, feedback, and moderate risks.

The other two needs in this theory haven’t been researched as extensively as the need for achievement. However, we do know that the best managers tend to be high in the need of power and low in the need for affiliation.

These three needs can be measured by using a projective test, known as the Thematic Apperception Test or TAT, in which respondent react to a set of pictures.

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION1. Goal – Setting Theory

The proposition that specific goals increase performance and difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals.

This theory tells us: Working toward a goal is major source of job motivation. Specific and challenging

are superior motivating forces.

Goal-setting theory deals with people in general, whereas the conclusions on achievement motivation are based on people who have a high nAch.

The conclusions of goal-setting theory apply to those who accept and are committed to the goals. Difficult goals will lead to higher performance only if they are accepted.

Employees do not always try harder if they have the opportunity to participate in the setting of goals. In some cases, participatively set goals elicit superior performance; in other cases, individuals performed best when their manager assigned goals. However, participation is probably preferable to assigning goals when employees might resist accepting difficult challenges.

Contingences That Influence Goal-Performance Relationshipa. Feedback – helps identify discrepancies between what the people have done

and what they want to do. Self-generated feedback (where employees monitors his/her own progress) has been shown to be more powerful motivator than feedback coming from someone else.

b. Goal commitmentc. Adequate Self-efficacy – self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief that he/she

is capable of performing a taskd. National culture – the value of goal setting depends on the national culture.

2. Reinforcement TheoryThis theory says that behavior is a function of its own consequences. It ignores factors such as goals, expectations, and needs. Instead, it focuses solely on what happens to a person when he/she does something.

Reinforcers – consequences that immediately follow a behavior and increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated.

Designing Motivating JobsAn organization is composed of thousands of tasks and these tasks are integrated into jobs.

Because managers want to motivate individuals on the job, it is important to look at ways to design motivating jobs.

Job Design – refers to the way tasks are combined to form complete jobs. Job Enlargement – it involves horizontally expanding a job through increasing job

scope.- Job Scope – the number of different tasks required in a job and the frequency

with which these tasks are repeated.

Job Enrichment – the vertical expansion of a job by adding planning and evaluating responsibilities; increases job depth.

- Job Depth – the degree of control employees have over their work. Job Characteristics Model – a framework for analyzing and designing jobs that

identifies five primary core job dimensions, their interrelationships, and their impact on outcomesThese five core job dimensions are:

1. Skill variety- the degree to which a job requires a variety of activities so that an employee can use a number of different skills and talents

2. Task identity- the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work

3. Task significance- the degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people

4. Autonomy- the degree to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out

5. Feedback- the degree to which doing work activities required by a job results in an individual obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance

Guidance to Managers for Job Design

1. Combine tasks- put fragmented tasks back together to form a new, larger work module (job enlargement) to increase skill variety and task identity

2. Create natural work units- design tasks that form and identifiable and meaningful whole to increase employee “ownership” of the work. Encourage employees to view their work as meaningful and important rather than as irrelevant and boring

3. Establish client (external or internal) relationships- whenever possible, establish direct relationships between workers and their clients to increase skill variety, autonomy, and feedback

4. Expand jobs vertically- vertical expansion gives employees responsibilities and controls that were formerly reserved for managers, which can increase employee autonomy

5. Open feedback channels- direct feedback lets employees know how well they’re performing their jobs and whether their performance is improving or not

Redesigning Job Design Approaches1. Relational perspective of work design- first perspective; focuses on how

people’s tasks and jobs are increasingly based on social relationships2. Proactive perspective of work design- second perspective; says that employees

are taking initiative to change how their work is performedii. High involvement work practices- where stream of research that’s

relevant to proactive work design is on; work practices that designed to elicit greater input or involvement

Equity Theory

Equity is related to the concept of fairness and equitable treatment compared with gEquity theory, developed by J. Stacey Adams, proposes that an employee compares

his or her job’s input-outcomes ratio with that of relevant others and then corrects any inequity.When inequities occur, employees tend to do something about it. The result might be:

a. lower or higher productivity;b. improved or reduced quality of outputc. increased absenteeismd. voluntary resignation

Referents, are the persons, systems, or selves against which individuals compare themselves to assess equity.

a. persons category - other individuals with similar jobs, friends, neighbors, professional associates

b. system category - organizational pay policies, procedures, allocationc. self-category - inputs-outcomes ratios that are unique to the individual

Distributive justice is the perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards among individuals.

Procedural justice is the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards.

Expectancy TheoryExpectancy theory, developed by Victor Vroom, is a theory that an 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:

1. Expectancy or effort-performance linkage. It is the probability perceived by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to a certain level of performance.

2. Instrumentality or performance-reward linkage. It is the degree to which the individual believes that performing at a particular level is instrumental in attaining the desired outcome.

3. Valence or attractiveness of reward. It is the importance that the individual places on the potential outcome or reward that can be achieved on the job. It considers both the goals and needs of the individual.

Integrating Contemporary Theories of Motivation

CURRENT ISSUES IN MOTIVATIONUnderstanding and predicting employee motivation is one of the most popular areas in

management research. Nonetheless, even the contemporary theories of employee motivation are influenced by some significant workplace issues–motivating in tough economic circumstances, managing cross-cultural challenges, motivating unique groups of workers, and designing appropriate rewards programs. Managers must cope with 4 current motivation issues, to wit:

Motivating in Tough Economic Circumstances Managers must look for creative ways to keep employees’ efforts energized, directed,

and sustained toward achieving goals.

Managing Cross-Cultural Motivational ChallengesMost current innovation theories were developed in the U.S. by Americans and about

Americans – strong emphasis on individualism and achievement perhaps being the most blatant pro-American characteristic.

Maslow’s Need Hierarchy – argues that people start at the physiological level and then move progressively up the hierarchy in order.

Achievement Need – the view that a high achievement need acts as an internal motivator presupposes 2 cultural characteristics: 1. A willingness to accept a moderate degree of risk (which excludes countries with

strong uncertainty avoidance characteristics)2. A concern with performance (which applies almost singularly to countries with strong

achievement characteristics) Equity Theory – has a relatively strong following in the U.S., which is not surprising

given that U.S.-style reward systems are based on the assumption that workers are highly sensitive to equity in reward allocations.

Another research study of more than 50,000 employees around the world examined 2 cultural characteristics from the GLOBE framework – Individualism and Masculinity.

Individual Initiative, Individual Freedom, and Individual Achievement are highly valued in individualistic cultures such as U.S. and Canada.

In more collective cultures such as Iran, Peru, and China, however, employees may be less interested in receiving individual praise but place a greater emphasis on harmony, belonging, and consensus.

They also found that in masculine (achievement/assertive) cultures such as Japan and Slovakia, the focus is on material success.

In more feminine (nurturing) cultures such as Sweden and the Netherlands, smaller wage gaps among employees are common, and they are likely to have extensive quality-of-life benefits.

Despite these cross-cultural differences in motivation, some cross-cultural consistencies are evident.

Motivating Unique Groups of Workers Managers can effectively motivate the unique groups of employees by understanding the

motivational requirements of such groups including disparate employees, professionals, contingent workers, and low-skilled minimum-wage employees.

Motivating a Diverse Workforce - Flexible work arrangements

Motivating Professionals - Job challenges do; they like to tackle problems and find solutions (their chief

reward is the work itself). They value support. They want others to think that what they are working on is important (they tend to be focused on their work as their central life interest).

Motivating Contingent Workers- Opportunity to become a permanent employee and opportunity for training.

Motivation also increases if an employee sees that the job he/she is doing can help develop marketable skills.

Motivating Low-Skilled, Minimum-Wage Employees- Managers might look at employee recognition programs; many managers also

recognize the power of praise although these “pats on the back” must be sincere and given for the right reasons.

Designing Appropriate Rewards Programs Open-Book Management – share financial statements and information so that

employees will be motivated to make a better decisions about their work and better able to understand the implications of what they do, how they do it, and the ultimate impact on the bottom line.

The goal of this type of management is to get employees to think like an owner by seeing the impact their decisions have on financial results.

By sharing this information, employees begin to see the link between their efforts, level of performance, and operational results.

Employee Recognition Programs- Consist of personal attention and expressing interest, approval, and appreciation for

a job well done. They can take numerous forms.- Recognition doesn’t have to come only from managers.

- Workers spontaneously rewarded fellow workers.- The most powerful workplace motivator is Recognition.- Rewarding a behavior with recognition immediately following that behavior is likely to

encourage its repetition.- Recognition can take many forms :

o personally congratulate in private.o send a handwritten note or e-mail messageo publicly recognize accomplishments

To enhance group cohesiveness and motivation, you can celebrate team success.Managers can show employees that no matter what his or her role may be, their

contributions matter. Some of these things may seem simple, but they can go a long way in showing employees they’re valued.

Pay-For-Performance- a variable compensation plans that pay employees on the basis of some

performance measure.- probably most compatible with expectancy theory.- when performance declines, so does rewards.

Examples :o piece-pay rate planso wage incentive planso profit- sharingo lump-sum bonuses

- The difference of this from more traditional compensation plans is that instead of paying a person for time on the job, pay is adjusted to reflect some performance measure.

- These performance measures might include :o individual productivityo team or work group productivityo departmental productivityo overall organization’s profit performance.

- Nonperformance factors :o seniorityo job titleo across-the-board pay raises

These can make the employees reduce their efforts.

Making some or all an employee’s pay conditional on some performance measures focuses his or her attention and effort toward that measure then reinforces the continuation of the effort with a reward.

Companies that used pay-for-performance programs performed better financially than those that did not. Pay-for-performance programs with outcome- based incentives had a positive impact on sales, customer satisfaction, and profits.

If organizations use work teams, managers should consider group-based performance incentives that will reinforce team effort and commitment.

Managers need to ensure they’re specific about the relationship between an individual’s pay and his or her expected level of appropriate performance.

Employees must clearly understand exactly how their and the organization’s performance translates into dollars on their paychecks

TRUE OR FALSE:

1. Motivation refers to the process by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed, and sustained toward attaining a goal. (TRUE)

2. Abraham Maslow is one who originated the Hierarchy Needs of Theory where it is composed of only four needs. (FALSE)

3. Physiological needs refers to a person’s need for affection, belongingness, acceptance and friendship. (FALSE)

4. Esteem needs is the most important among all the needs under Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (FALSE)

5. Two-way factor theory proposes that intrinsic factors are related to job satisfaction, while extrinsic factors are associated with job dissatisfaction. (TRUE)

6. Douglas McGregor is best known for proposing four assumptions about human nature: Theory W, Theory X, Theory Y and Theory Z. (FALSE)

7. Theory X is the negative view of people that assumes workers have great ambition, like work, does not want to avoid responsibility, and need to be close controlled to work effectively. (FALSE)

8. David McClelland and his associates proposed the three-need theory, which says there are three acquired (not innate) need that are major motives in work. (TRUE)

9. Goal-setting theory says that specific goals increase performance and that difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance that do easy goals. (TRUE)

10. Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is not capable of performing a task. (FALSE)

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. What is said to probably be the best known theory of motivation?

a. Hierarchy of Needs

b. Theories X and Y

c. Two-Factor Theory

d. Three Needs Theory

2. When a dental hygienist not only cleans teeth but handles patients’ files while sanitizing ang storing instruments as well, it show an example of:

a. Job Enlargement

b. Job Scope

c. Job Depth

d. Job Enrichment

3. Which is not a core dimension of Job Characteristics Model?

a. Autonomy

b. job Depth

c. Task Identity

d. Skill Variety

4. The approach of involving employees by sharing financial statements

a. Pay-For-Performance

b. Employee Recognition Programs

c. Open-Book Management

d. None of the above

5. Related to the concept of fairness and equitable treatment compared with others who behave in similar ways.

a. Referents

b. Equity Theory

c. Equity

d. Distributive Justice

6. The theory that shows the two assumptions about human nature

a. Expectancy Theory

b. Two-Factor Theory

c. Reinforcement Theory

d. Theory X and Y

7. The drive to succeed and excel in relation to a set of standards

a. Esteem Needs

b. Need for Achievement (nAch)

c. Self-Actualization Needs

d. Need for Power (nPow)

8. The vertical expansion of a job by adding planning and evaluating responsibilities; increases job depth.

a. Job Enlargement

b. Job Design

c. Job Enrichment

d. Job Scope

9. It is the measure of intensity, drive, and vigor

a. Energy

b. Persistence

c. Motivation

d. Direction

10. In which individuals compare themselves by organizational pay policies, procedures, and allocation to assess equity

a. Persons Category

b. Distributive Justice

c. Self-Category

d. Systems Category

Answers :

1. A2. A3. B4. C5. C6. D7. B8. C9. A10. D