WORK MOTIVATION THEORIES

 

“The Best Place to Work is an engaging journey through the latest science of improving the quality of life in organizations. It examines how to unleash creativity, boost motivation, and offer rewards and recognition that bring people together rather than driving them apart.” (Ron Friedman - 2015)

By utilizing the Motivation theories management is able to determine that that is the optimum way to gain a business goal or work in order to achieve the desired outcome or output. Applying motivation theories would be a great help to managers to support their subordinates in a more efficient manner. It is crucial to identify the basic motives before understanding organizational behaviors. Also, we have to understand the following terms in order to have comprehensive knowledge of the process.

Primary Motives – Psychologists have classified human motives based on theories derived from Psychological theories they are can be listed as follows,

• Physiological
• Biological
• Unlearned
• Primary
  

The most usual Primary motives are hunger, thirst, avoidance of Pain, sleep, maternal concern and sex. Even though the mentioned motives seem like survival facts their importance is incredible. These requirements have been equated and transmitted to the present also.

Secondary Motives - Like Primary motives and secondary motives without any doubt have a crucial place when studying organizational behaviors. The motives of hunger and thirst are not dominant among People living in the economically developed world. Also, this situation is obviously changing subject by subject.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motives. One method to characterize these two sources is to label them as being either intrinsic or extrinsic motives. The difference between these two aspects is Extrinsic motives are tangible and distinguishable to everyone for instance these motives can be Promotions, Payments, and other financial benefits. Also, extrinsic motives could be extrinsic motives driven to avoid Punishments sometimes or being transferred. Organizational context extrinsic motives play a vital role as it is a cause to attract People inside the organization and retain them.  The intrinsic motives are the opposite art of this; it is generated inside of the person and those motives are associated with the task or job itself. Intrinsic rewards include feelings of responsibility, accomplishment, and achievement, sometimes they can be learned from previous experience.

For instance, if an employee was designated as Sales Executive and he got the best salesperson prize at that time prize would be his extrinsic motive and at the same time winning a such competition by defeating the other would be his internalized motive. Also, the researchers point out some negative extrinsic motives included. Those are deadlines, threats, pressures and imposed goals and threats.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

Kanfer (1991) has stressed the importance of needs as internal tensions that influence the mediating cognitive processes that result in behavioral variability. Thus the resurgence of emphasis on needs since 1977 is not surprising. What may be surprising is the resurgence of interest in Maslow’s (1943) hierarchical need theory. Wicker et al. (1993) showed that between-goal correlations and partial correlations across four samples of college students supported Maslow’s theory when intentions to act were rated rather than measures of importance. Ronen (2001), using multidimensional scaling of employee data collected in 15 countries rather than factor analysis, found support for the taxonomic element of Maslow’s theory. Kluger & Tikochinsky (2001) advocated ongoing efforts to find ways to operationalize the theory validly.

Also, Maslow believed that human motivational needs have been arranged according to a hierarchical manner. If it is described further his view is that if the given level of needs is fulfilled or satisfied then no need to motivate in future. The following are the facts that identified the five levels of the need hierarchy briefly. 

1. Physiological needs  - this level is considered a lateral part of the hierarchy. According to theory once someone fulfills existence level that person is no more motivated.
   
   
2. Safety Needs – this level is similar to security needs. In this part, Maslow emphasizes the importance of both physical and emotional safety.
   
   
3. Love Needs – From this level, Maslow is concentrating on psychological requirements. If it is elaborated further this level of needs loosely corresponds to affiliation and affection needs. 
   
   
4. Esteem Needs  - Maslow tried to describe the needs for achievement, status and especially power. Further, he explained that the esteem level contains both self-esteem and esteem from others. 
   
   
5. Needs for self-actualization –Maslow’s major contribution, he illustrates this level as the culmination of all the lower, intermediate, and higher needs of humans. The ability to self-actualize is getting once the person gets to know about self-potential.

Literally, Maslow hasn’t any idea to apply his theory directly to the organizational context. But after the greatest efforts of Douglas Mcgregorit was able to convert and it became the content model of the work motivation shown in figure.

 

Thus, Maslow’s needs hierarchy becomes guidance for writers and other management textbooks and practitioners without any arguments.  Also, Maslow put every effort to revitalize and create a hierarchy of needs more applicable to motivation in a working context.

Hertzberg’s two-factor Theory 

Hertzberg categorized the needs into two broad categories; good and bad feelings as he concluded that job satisfiers are connected to job content at the same time dissatisfy factors are related to job context. Further based on the concept he labeled dissatisfies are hygiene factors and satisfiers are motivating factors:

Herzberg’s two-factor principles
Influenced by Hygiene Factors (Dis-satisfiers)	Improving motivator factors increases job satisfaction	Influenced by motivator factors (Satisfiers)
Working condition Coworker relations Policies & rules Supervisor quality	Improving the hygiene factors decreases job dissatisfaction	Achievements Recognition Responsibility Work itself Personal growth

After the introduction of Herzberg’s theory to the management field, managers were able to find the solution to why only hygiene factors can’t motivate their employees. Herzberg is the first person that stated that the hygiene factors are extremely incredible in order to maintain the human resources of the organization. Further, this is the theory that challenging jobs that have opportunities for responsibility, advancement, recognition, advancement and growth will motivate the individual. As a whole with the impact of Herzberg’s theory, he was able to add much to the better understanding of job content factors and satisfaction. As well as it should mention his model describes the part relating to work motivation on the other hand it’s not adequate to describe the complex motivation process of organizational context.

Equity Theory of Work Motivation.

The equity theory of motivation is the concept that what an individual receives for their work has a direct influence on their motivation. When applied to the workplace, it means an individual will commonly aim to produce stability amongst what they give to the organization compared to what they get in profit. The credit for formulating this theory belongs to J. Stacy Adams.

This is how to relate to work motivation when occurrences such as if one person’s perceived ratio is not similar to others, the particular person will strive to restore the ratio to equity. This behavior to restore equity is used as an explanation for work motivation. The strength of this motivation is in direct proportion to the perceived inequity that prevails. According to Adams illustrated motivation can be distinguished in several ways as restoring equity. A particular person would differ the inputs or outputs, cognitively distort the inputs or results, change the other, act on the other and leave the field. Moreover, the methodical data-based research results further illustrated the equity theory.  Thus one test was based on baseball players; as the theory predicts, that is players who played optionally also were paid inevitably also their performance was lesser. Also, the same group is when they are included in the new contract their performance was accepted. That means the opposite occurred than predicted by the theory. The foundation for such cognitive behavior is they wanted to enter into the new contract even though they paid inequitably.

The Porter –Lawler Expectancy Theory of Work Motivation

This theory is recognized as it is important for describing individual performance in an organizational context. Specifically, this can be used to illustrate the complex connectivity existing among performance, motivation, and satisfaction. Also, another important fact is this theory validates post consequences of the performance. The Porter –Lawler model recommends this is the noteworthy turn of occasions from the predictable wisdom that Performance leads to satisfaction. 

Though this theory hasn’t impacted real practices and process functioning in Human Resources management. It provides valid guidelines that can be utilized for the betterment of Human resources management. Further, the theory has identified several barriers which can influence the relationship between motivation and performance.

• The ambiguity surrounding the job requirements. 
• Doubt about the personal competencies. 
• The physical or practical possibility of the job.
• The interdependence of the job with other people or activities. 
• Hence the theory says that overcoming the above issues; understanding the psychological variables such as self-efficacy’s role while in the performance. 
• Further, the theory is suggesting following guidelines. 
• It should define what rewards are going to appreciate the values of employees.
• Predetermine the desired performance of an organization.
• Make an interconnection between value rewards and performance. 
• Make preferred rewards for exhibited performance. 
  

Also, this theory further emphasizes the importance of calculating the expectancies of future demand opportunities that can be created due to present turnover. Additionally often evaluating the connection between performance and reward invites fewer efforts in a group.

References:

1. Beckmann, J. and Heckhausen, H., 2018. Motivation as a function of expectancy and incentive. In Motivation and action (pp. 163-220). Springer, Cham.
2. Gray, R., 2000. Workplace motivation: A review of the literature. Retrieved from.
3. McDougall, W., 2015. An introduction to social psychology. Psychology Press.
   
4. PhD, F. R. (2014). The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace (1st ed.). TarcherPerigee.
5. Riggio, R. E. (2012). Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 6th Edition (6th ed.). Pearson.
6. Stoyanov, S., 2017. An Analysis of Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation. Macat Library.
7. Weiner, B., 2013. Human motivation. Psychology Press.