Chapter 5: The Nature of Motivation

Motivation – the set of forces that lead people to behave in particular ways.
- the set of forces that causes people to engage in one behavior rather than some alternative
behavior.
The Importance of Motivation
Motivation can make an organization perform at high levels.
Job performance depends on ability and environment as well as motivation. This relationship can be
stated as follows:
P=M+A+E
where,
P = performance, M = motivation, A = ability, and E = environment.
To reach high levels of performance, an employee must want to do the job well (motivation); must be
able to do the job effectively (ability); and must have the materials, resources, equipment, and
information required to do the job (environment). A deficiency in any one of these areas hurts
performance. A manager should thus strive to ensure that all three conditions are met.

The Motivational Framework

We can start to understand motivation by looking at need deficiencies and goal-directed behaviors.
 Need – anything an individual requires and wants.
 A need deficiency usually triggers a search for ways to satisfy it.
 A choice of goal-directed behavior – the result of need deficiency.
 Most efforts are likely to be directed at one option.
After performing the behavior, the individual experiences rewards or punishments that affect the original
need deficiency.
Motivation begins with a need deficiency.

Early Perspective on Motivation

Historical views on motivation, although not always accurate, are of interest for several reasons. For one
thing, they provide a foundation for contemporary thinking about motivation. For another, because they
generally were based on common sense and intuition, an appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses
can help managers gain useful insights into employee motivation in the workplace.

 The traditional approach

- Scientific Management – approach to motivation that assumes that
employees are motivated by money.
- Frederick Taylor – first of the writers to address work motivation.
 The human relations approach – suggests that fostering a sense of employees’
inclusion in decision making will result in positive attitudes and motivation to work
hard.
- Assumes that employees want to feel useful and
important, that employees have strong social needs =,
and these needs are important than money in motivating
employees.
 The human resource approach – assumes that people want to contribute and are able
to make genuine contributions.
- carries the concepts of needs and motivation one step
further.
 Individual Differences – individual differences play a key role in motivation.
- Different things motivate different people.
- People have different abilities, needs, personalities,
values, and self-concepts.
 Task-specific self-efficacy – a person’s belief in his or her capabilities to do what is
required to accomplish a certain task.
- Influences on individual’s effort and persistence in the face of challenges
related to performing a specific task.
 - Three dimensions:
o Magnitude – beliefs about how difficult a specific task is.
o Strength – beliefs about how confident the person is that the specific
task can be accomplished.
o Generality – beliefs about the degree to which similar tasks can be
accomplished.
Need-based Perspectives on Motivation
Need-based theories – states that humans are motivated primarily by deficiencies in one or more
important needs or need categories.
- Assume that need deficiencies cause behavior.
- Best-known need theories: Hierarchy of Needs and ERG Theory
The Hierarchy of Needs
- Developed by Abraham Maslow in the 1940s, is the best-known need theory.
- Abraham argued that human beings are “wanting” animals: They have innate desires to satisfy a
given set of needs.
- Believes that these needs are arranged in hierarchy of importance, the most basic needs at the
foundation of the hierarchy.
- Assumes that human needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance.
- Three sets of needs at the bottom – deficiency, must be satisfied to be comfortable.
- Top two sets of needs – growth need – focus on personal growth and development.
 Most basic needs – Psychological needs: food, sex, air.
 Second level – security needs: safety and security, adequate housing and clothing,
and freedom from worry and anxiety.
 Third level – belongingness needs: social like love and affection, the need to be
accepted by peers.
 Fourth level – esteem needs, encompasses two slightly different kinds of needs: the
need for positive self-image and self-respect and the need to be respected by others.
  Top of the hierarchy or fifth level – self-actualization needs: realization of full
potential and becoming all that he or she can be.

The ERG Theory

- Developed by Yale psychologist Clayton Alderfer.
- Historically important needs of motivation.
- Describes existence, relatedness, and growth needs.
 Existence needs – necessary for basic human survival, corresponds psychological and
security needs of Maslow’s hierarchy.
 Relatedness needs – need to relate to others, belongingness and esteem needs.
 Growth needs – self-esteem and self-actualization.
- Suggests that more than one kind of need may motivate a person at the same time.
- Includes satisfaction-progression concept: a person progresses to the next level until that
level is satisfied.
- In contrast, frustration-aggression concept: a frustrated person actually will regress to the
preceding level.
The Two-Factor Theory
- Dual-structure theory of motivation
- In many ways similar to the need theory
- Once played a major role in managerial thinking about motivation but it was not widely used
and accepted.
- Identifies motivation factors, which affect satisfaction, and hygiene factors, which determine
dissatisfaction.

Development of the Theory

- Frederick Herzberg and his associates developed the two-factor theory in the late 1950s and
early 1960s.
  Motivation factors – intrinsic to the work itself and include factor such as
achievement and recognition.
- Achievement, recognition, and the opportunity to plan and control their own
work were often cited by people as primary causes of satisfaction and
motivation.
 Hygiene factors – extrinsic to the work itself. It includes pay and joy security.

Traditional view of satisfaction: satisfaction and dissatisfaction were opposite ends of a single
dimension.
Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory: Motivation factors affect one dimension, ranging from satisfaction to
no satisfaction. On the other hand, hygiene factors are assumed to affect another dimension ranging from
dissatisfaction to no satisfaction.

Evaluation of the Theory

 Due to its popularity, two-factor theory has been scientifically scrutinized.
 Two-factor framework varies across cultures.
The Acquired Needs Framework
- Advanced by David McClelland and centers on the needs for achievement, affiliation, and
power which are called manifest needs.
 - Needs are acquired, or learned, from cultural, societal, and family influences.

 Need for Achievement – the desire to accomplish a task or goal more effectively than was done in
the past.
 The Need for Affiliation – the need for human companionship.
 The Need for Power – the desire to control one’s environment: financial, material, informational,
and human resources.

Process-based Perspective on Motivation

-Concerned with how motivation occurs.
-Focus on how people behave in their efforts to satisfy their needs.
-Useful process perspective on motivation
 Equity Theory – focuses on people’s desire to be treated with what they perceive as
equity and to avoid perceived inequity.
- People in organizations want to be treated fairly.
- Derived from social comparison.
- Social Comparisons – evaluating our own situationin terms of others’
situations.
 Equity – belief that we are being treated fairly in relation to others.
 Inequity – belief that we are being treated unfairly in relation to others.
 Forming Equity Perception
- Focuses on the desire to be treated with equity and to avoid perceived inequity.
- The Equity Comparison:

People form equity perceptions by comparing their situation with that of someone else’s.
If they perceive equity, they are motivated to maintain the current situation. If they
perceive inequity, they are motivated to use one or more of the strategies shown here to
reduce the inequity.
The Expectancy Theory of Motivation
 The Basic Expectancy Model
- Credited by Victor Vroom
- Motivation depends on how much we want something and how likely we think we are to
get it.
 Expectancy Theory of Motivation
- Expectancy Theory – people are motivated by how much they want something and the
like hood they perceive of getting it.
- More encompassing model of motivation than equity theory
- Also called as VIE theory (Valence-Instrumentality-expectancy)
- Key components:
o Effort-to-performance expectancy – the perceived probability that effort will lead
to performance.
o Performance-to-outcome expectancy – the perceived probability that
performance will lead to certain outcomes.
o Outcome – anything that results from performing a behavior.
o Valence – the degree of attractiveness or unattractiveness (value) that a particular
outcome has for a person.
The expectancy theory is the most complex model of employee motivation in organizations. As shown
here, the key components of expectancy theory are effort-to-performance expectancy, performance-to-
outcome instrumentality, and outcomes, each of which has an associated valence. These components
interact with effort, the environment, and the ability to determine an individual’s performance.
Outcomes and Valences
- Outcome – anything that results from performing a particular behavior.
- Valence – the degree of attractiveness or unattractiveness a particular outcome has for a person.
Victor Vroom – generally credited with first applying the theory to motivation in the workplace.
- The behavior model’s general components are effort (the result of motivated),
performance, and outcomes.
The Porter-Lawler Model
- focuses on the relationship between satisfaction and performance.
- Conventional Theory – satisfaction leads to performance.
This model assumes that:
- If rewards are adequate, high levels of performance may lead to satisfaction.
- Satisfaction – determined by the perceived equity of intrinsic (intangible) and extrinsic
(tangible) rewards for performance.
Evaluation and implications
- Expectancy theory has been tested by many different researchers in a variety of settings
and using a variety of methods.
- Expectancy theory is so complicated that researchers have found it quite difficult to test.
- Confirmed expectancy theory’s claims that people will not engage in motivated behavior
unless they:
 value the expected rewards.
 believe their efforts will lead to performance.
 believe their performance will result in the desired rewards.
Learning-Based Perspectives on Motivation
 Learning – a relatively permanent change in behavior or behavioral potential resulting from
direct or indirect experience.
 How learning occurs:
 Traditional view: Classical Conditioning – a simple form of learning that links a conditioned
response with an unconditioned stimulus.

Contemporary View: Learning as a Cognitive Process – assumes people are conscious, active
participants in how they learn.

 Reinforcement theory and learning

- Reinforcement theory – based on the idea that behavior is a function of its consequences.
- Operant Conditioning (Skinner)
 Behavior is a function of its consequences.
 Reinforcement is the consequence of behavior.
 Social Learning
- When people observe the behaviors of others, recognize the consequences, and alter their
own behavior as a result.
Conditions of social learning:
 Behavior being observed and imitated must be relatively simple.
 Observed and imitated behavior must be concrete, not intellectual.
 Learner must have the physical ability to imitate and observe behavior.
- Behavior Modification – the application of a reinforcement theory to influence the
behaviors of people in organizational settings.
- Kinds of Reinforcement
 Positive Reinforcement – a reward or other desirable consequence that a person
receives after exhibiting behavior.
 Negative Reinforcement (avoidance) – the opportunity to avoid or escape from
an unpleasant circumstance after exhibiting behavior.
 Punishment – an unpleasant or aversive consequence that result from behavior.
 Extinction – Decreases in the frequency of behavior by eliminating a reward or
desirable consequences that follows that behavior.

The Timing of Reinforcement

A continuous reinforcement schedule – one in which the desired behavior is reinforced each time it
occurs.
A partial reinforcement schedule – the desired behavior is reinforced only part of the time.
Four types partial reinforcement schedule:

1. Fixed-ratio: Desired behavior is reinforced after a specified number of correct

responses—for example, receiving pay bonuses for every ten error-free pieces
 made per hour.

2. Fixed-interval: Desired behavior is reinforced after a certain amount of time

has passed—for example, receiving weekly paychecks.

3. Variable-ratio: Desired behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable number of

behaviors—for example, a supervisor praises a call center representative after
the third call, then the seventh call after that, and then the fourth call after that.

4. Variable-interval: Desired behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable amount of time has

elapsed—for example, not knowing when a regional supervisor will visit your location for an
inspection.

To motivate the right behavior, an expert in behavior modification would identify the desired behaviors
and then carefully reinforce them. This process involves five steps:65

 Define the problem—what is it that could be improved?

 Identify and define the specific behavior(s) you wish to change.
 Record and track the occurrence of the target behavior.
 Analyze the current negative consequences of the undesired behavior and
 arrange for more positive consequences to follow the desired behavior.
 Evaluate whether the behavior has improved, and by how much.