MOTIVATION:EARLY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION, Designing Motivating Jobs

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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

Lesson 6

MOTIVATION

Motivation: The willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the

effort's ability to satisfy some individual need.

Three key elements can be seen in this definition; effort, goals and needs.

Effort element is a measure of intensity or drive. The quality of effort is equally important to the intensity of

the effort.

Need: An internal state that makes certain outcomes appears attractive. An unsatisfied need creates tension

that stimulates drives within an individual. These drives lead to a search behavior to find particular goals that, if

attained, will satisfy the need and reduce the tension.

Performance and Motivation: Motivation alone does need lead to performance. The level of performance

attained is determined by three independent factors; ability, motivation, and resources. For performance levels

to be high, all three factors must be high. If any one is low or missing, the performance level will be adversely

affected. For example, a very intelligent student who has the books, but because he/she does not care about

grades, will not study (low motivation) and will not get an A grade.

EARLY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

1. Hierarchy of needs theory

Maslow's theory that there is a hierarchy of five human needs: Physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self

actualization.

Physiological needs: A person's needs for food, drink, shelter, sexual satisfaction, and other physical needs.

Safety needs: A person's needs for security and protection from physical and emotional harm.

Social needs: A person's needs for affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.

Esteem needs: A person's needs for internal factors such as self respect, autonomy, and achievement, and

external factors such as status, recognition, and attention.

Self actualization needs: A person's needs to become what he or she is capable of becoming.

2. Theory X

The assumptions that employees dislike work, are lazy, avoid responsibility, and must be coerced to perform.

Theory Y

The assumptions that workers are creative, enjoy work, seek responsibility, and can exercise self direction.

McRegor's theory of X and Y is however not confirmed.

3. Herzberg's Motivation hygiene theory

The motivation theory that intrinsic factors are related to job satisfaction and motivation, whereas extrinsic

factors are associated with job dissatisfaction.

Hygiene factors: Factors that eliminate job dissatisfaction but don't motivate.

Motivators: Factors that increase job satisfaction and motivation. These factors are intrinsic.

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

1. McClelland's Three needs theory

The motivation theory that says three needs achievement, power, and affiliation are major motives in work.

Needs for achievement (nAch): The drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, and to strive

to succeed.

Needs 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 relationship.

Of these three needs, need for achievement has been researched most extensively.

2. Goal setting theory

Human Resource Development (HRM-627)

The propositions 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 he or she is capable of performing a task.

3. Reinforcement theory

The theory that behavior is a function of its consequences.

Reinforcers: Any consequence immediately following a response that increases the probability that the

behavior will be repeated.

Designing Motivating Jobs

Job design: The way tasks are combined to form complete jobs.

Job scope: The number of different tasks require in a job and the frequency with which those tasks are

repeated.

Job enlargement: The horizontal expansion of a job by increasing job scope.

Job enrichment: The vertical expansion of a job by adding planning and evaluating responsibilities.

Job depth: The degree of control the employees have on their work.

Job characteristics model (JCM)

A framework for analyzing and designing jobs that identifies five primary job characteristics, their

interrelationships, and their impact on outcomes.

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.

Task identity: The degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.

Task significance: The degree to which a job has a substantial on the lives or work of other people.

Autonomy: The degree to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the

individual in scheduling work and determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out.

Feedback: The degree to which carrying out work activities required by a job results in the individual's

obtaining direct and clear information about his or her performance effectiveness.

4. Equity theory

The theory that an employee compares his or her job's inputs outcomes ratio with that of relevant others and

then corrects any inequity.

Referents: The persons, systems, or selves against which individuals compare themselves to assess equity.

5. Expectancy theory

The 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.

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