Work Motivation: Principles and Applications

Damodar Suar

After completing this chapter, you will be able

to
Understand the relevance of work motivation.
Define motivation and its process.
Identify the different principles or theories of
motivation and their drawbacks.
Apply and extend the principles to
management of motivation.
Motivate yourself and others

Why Motivation?

In two primary sectors-- industrial and agricultural-- of Indian economy,

motivation of the people and productivity are concomitant variables.
Productivity or performance outcome of people: (a) individuals attributes
such as skill, knowledge, experience, etc. (b) his/her willingness to expand
necessary effort to perform, and (c) support structure (such as technical,
financial, maintenance support in industrial sector; or technical know-how,
credit, irrigation support in agricultural sector). As a corollary to this, in a
developing country like India (a) obsolete technology, poor infrastructure like
road, electricity, and communication, etc., and (b) the cheap but a poorly
motivated or an unwilling workforce to work hard. Hence, challenging puzzles
are changing low-level of motivation, and sustaining high motivation.
Some industrialists and entrepreneurs feel that business is technology- or
knowledge-driven. For example, about 70% of the cost of a semiconductor
microchip is shared by knowledge and only 12% by labour (Johnson, 1987).
Production control is largely out of the employees hands. With increasing
number of unemployed people, those employed are bound to work for security
and earning. Such arguments ignore employees creativity, turnover,
absenteeism, morale, strikes, discontent and the like that have their impact on
production. However, effects of motivation on performance are greatly felt as
one moves towards a service-oriented economy which is in order at present.

What is Work Motivation?

Motivation is derived from the Latin word movere which means to

move. Motivation relates to the force, stimulus, or influence that guides
people to do the things they do. It is the call for action or behavior.
The incidence: Miloni in Italy.
First, motivation is a psychological force that contributes to a persons
degree of commitment. It includes drives and desires for goal attainment
that regulate the direction, intensity, and persistence of human action.
Second, desires and drives cause behavior, but they may be the result of
behavior. For example, a persons desire for accomplishment may be
made keener by the satisfaction gained from achieving a preferred goal
or it may be dulled by failure.
Third, motivation is not independent of environment. People in a
business that has developed a reputation for excellence, quality, and
service tend to be motivated to contribute to this reputation.
Fourth, what motivates one individual may not be the same for another.
As money may be the most important motivator for some people, it may
be praise, recognition, and interesting nature of work for others.
Fifth, motivation of each person changes from time to time even if s/he
may continue to behave in the same way.
Six, motivation of people is beyond the carrot and the stick.
Lastly, motivation is in need of periodic replenishment.

Common Features

Motivated people transform their lethargy to energy, desire to

determination, aspiration to achievement, and non-utilization
of their skill, knowledge, and attitude to the utilization of the
same. They take responsibility, put efforts willingly, give their
best, adhere to quality, show performance, and feel committed
to the organization they serve. Contrarily, absenteeism,
increased accidents, wastage of raw materials, indiscipline,
violent behavior, tardiness, sloppy work habits, apathy, and
errors in assembling materials, filing, and reporting are
symptoms of demotivated people. Once these symptoms
surface, executives must take steps through training,
counseling, rewards, and other means to change the
dysfunctional behavior. When employees exhibit motivated
behavior, the executives can create conditions to sustain such
behavior till organizational objectives are achieved.

Motivational Process

Needs,Needs/Drives
drives, and Expectation

Tension

Barrier

Overt/covert behavior

Goal

Expectations

FC

DC

Tension reduction and satisfaction

Some Commonly Used Ego-defense Mechanisms

Aggression
: Destructive behaviour, verbal or physical, against an
individual or object.
Displacement : Discharging pent-up feelings, usually of hostility, on
objects less dangerous than those which initially aroused the emotions.
Rationalization: Justifying ones behaviour by giving false reasons in
place of true reasons.
Fantasy
: Gratifying frustrated desires by imaginary achievements.
Repression
: Preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering
consciousness.
Projection
: Placing blame for difficulties upon others.
Identification
: Increasing self-worth identifying with a prestigious
person or institution.
Compensation: Covering up weakness by emphasizing desirable trait or
making-up frustration in one area by overgratification in another.

Theory: Content (what), Process (how)

Selfactualization
Esteem needs
Belongingness and love needs

Safety needs

Physiological needs

Figure 5.3 Pyramid representing Maslows hierarchy

Criticism

First, Hofstede (1980,1983b) points out that Maslows theory

describes the value system of middle-class Americans. People
in cultures that have different value systems may be
concerned about satisfaction of belongingness and esteem
needs before security needs become a major focus.
Second, people may not always move up in hierarchy. By
downsizing, natural catastrophes, and technological disasters,
peoples need for esteem, belongingness, and security may
quickly fall and remain unsatisfied.
Third, Arthasastra warns against such satisfaction and
suggests restricted need satisfaction. When no restraint is
exercised by the individual, sense needs may turn into
nonsense needs, survival needs turn into lust and greed, and
psychological and sociological needs into pride and arrogance.
The needs become personal weaknesses, which end up in
wrong decisions and choices. Often, the downfall of people and
business empires has occurred due to such weaknesses
(Sharma, 1996, p. 105).

Herzberzs Two-factor Theory

Herzberg (1966) collected information from 200 engineers and

accountants from Pittsburgh area in USA.
Applying critical incidents technique, the respondents were asked to
describe the situations when they felt exceptionally good or bad about
their jobs, either in present jobs or the jobs they have had.
Analysis of responses indicated that when people talked about good feelings
or satisfaction, they mentioned the factors intrinsic in the job-achievement, recognition, challenging work, responsibility, and growth or
advancement. These were the factors inherent in the job that people
experienced while doing the job. When people talked about bad feelings or
dissatisfaction, they mentioned the factors external or extrinsic to the job.
Included in these factors were (a) environmentally-mediated extrinsic job
factors-- company policy and administration, working conditions, salary,
personal life, status, and security, and (b) interpersonally-mediated
extrinsic job factors-- relationship with supervisors, peers, and
subordinates.

Criticism

First, when critical incident technique was not used to gather data, the
dual-factor theory was not confirmed.
Second, these two factors were not independent constructs. Job
satisfaction as well as dissatisfaction of some employees resided either in a
few or all extrinsic job factors, of other employees either in a few or all
intrinsic job factors, and of still others in a combination of both.
Third, extrinsic factors were important to lower-level employees whereas
intrinsic factors were important to higher-level employees.
Notwithstanding the limitations, this theory provided a micro-view to
understand motivation of employees in organized sectors and suggested
work-restructuring interventions.

ERG Theory

A condensed need theory of Alderfer (1972) contained three

groups of core needs-- existence, relatedness, and growth, and
was called ERG theory. The theory demonstrated that (a)
more than one need can be operative at the same time, and (b)
if the gratification of higher-level need is stifled, the desire to
satisfy lower-level needs increases. While in Maslows
hierarchy, one can go up, in Alderfers theory one can move
up and down the hierarchy depending on time and situations.
The three theories described so far can be compared
(Figure)

Comparison of Needs

Growth need

Self-actualization needs
Esteem needs

Relatedness need

Intrinsic
needs

Love needs

Security needs

Existence

Physiological needs

Extrinsic
needs

McClellands Theory

McClelland and his associates (McClelland, 1961; McClelland & Burnham,

1995; McClelland & Winter, 1969) specified three needs of people:
(a) need for achievement,
(b) need for affiliation, and
(c) need for power.
These needs are acquired and taught, therefore, can be changed. These
needs vary from person to person. One might have a strong need for
achievement, and another for affiliation.

First, in recent times, when organizations are made flat and

decentralized, need for achievement rather than the need for
power has once again surfaced to contribute to managerial
success. This was found in many subsidiaries of PepsiCo. A
constant concern for improvement and running the business in a
cost-efficient way characterized successful managers.
Second, institutional managers, having high social competency
and self-control have been found to emerge as world-class
managers separated from the mediocre ones (McClelland &
Burnham, 1995).

Process
Adams Theory
Equity Theory

Whenever two individuals exchange anything, there is a possibility that one or

both of them will feel that the exchange is inequitable or unfair (Adams, 1965).
Such is the case when a person exchanges his/her services for pay.
The inputs from a persons side of exchange are his/her effort, education,
experience, training, competence, and seniority. On the other side are an
individuals receipts or outcomes such as pay, promotion, recognition, seniority
benefits, and others.
Persons compare their job inputs and outcomes with those of others and then
respond so as to eliminate any inequities. Inequity exists for a person whenever
the person perceives that the ratio of his outcome (Op) to inputs (Ip), and the
ratio of others outcome (Oa) to others input (Ia) are unequal.
This can happen when employees compare themselves with friends, coworkers,
and colleagues in the same organization, or from different organizations. A
condition of inequity exists for the person, when:

Equity
Persons outcomes < Others outcomes (inequity due to being underrewarded)
Persons inputs
Others inputs

Persons outcomes > Others outcomes (inequity due to being overrewarded)

Persons inputs
Others inputs
A condition of equity exists, when:
Persons outcomes = Others outcomes
Persons inputs
Others inputs

The magnitude of inequality would decide the extent of dissatisfaction,

anger, and tension in the person. To reduce inequity and achieve a stable
state, people use different tactics. Some persons may change their inputs
(either increase or decrease productivity or the quality of work), change
their outcomes, or distort their inputs and outcomes cognitively, whereas
others may quit the job, obtain a transfer, remain absent, force referent
coworkers to change their behaviour, or change the comparison target. An
employee who perceives being underpaid may reduce the inequity by
exerting less effort, another failing to receive a promotion may reduce
inequity by justifying that the previous job involved too much
responsibility, and still another comparing with high performing referent
colleagues may reduce the inequity by influencing them to change their
behaviour.

Expectancy Theory

In expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964), the force to act (F) in a certain way is a
product of expectancy (E) and valence (V). Expectancy refers to the extent to
which an individual believes that a certain action will result in a particular
outcome. Expectancy can take a probability value from 0 (absolutely no
belief that an outcome will follow a particular action: hard work would not
result in promotion) to 1(complete certainty that an outcome will follow a
particular action: hard work would definitely result in promotion). Valence is
the attractiveness of an outcome, and may take on theoretical values from +1
to 1. A person may be strongly attracted to a particular outcome, such as
promotion, and may assign promotion a high positive value. Or, the person
may avoid strongly the outcome such as being fired and may assign a
negative valence to promotion.
To put it simply, motivation to work is determined by (a) what people expect
as rewards for their efforts, and (b) the importance or value of rewards to
them.

Goal-setting Theory
One path to performance is motivated by goal (Locke, 2000; Locke & Latham,
1990). A specific, important, and difficult but attainable goal, when accepted,
leads to higher performance than a general, unimportant, and easy goal. Giving a
salesperson a specific quota, a worker an exact number of units to produce, or
instructing a trucker to make a fixed number of trips between Delhi and Bombay
would result in outperforming their counterparts with the generalized goal of do
your best. One puts more efforts to accomplish an important and harder goal
than to those which entail something unimportant. Also, objective and timely
feedback on how well one is progressing towards the goal increases performance
than does non feedback. People perform better in accepted goal arrived at
through participation than assigned goal. When people participate in setting the
goal, they set a difficult goal and feel committed to act upon it than upon an
assigned goal.

Social Identity Theory

Motivation stems from the self-categories (Haslam, Powell, & Turner,

2000; van Knippenberg, 2000). When people categorize themselves in
terms of personal identities (I), that are different from other members of
an in group, they feel motivated to satisfy personal needs that promote
their personal identities as individuals. If personal identity is salient, it will
be associated with needs to self-actualize and to enhance personal selfesteem through personal advancement and growth. When people
categorize themselves in terms of social identities (we), that are shared
with other members of an in group but not with members of an out group,
they feel motivated to satisfy social needs that promote their social identity
as group members. Social identification reflects a depersonalized selfcategorization. If social identity is salient, it will be associated with the need
to enhance group-based self-esteem through a sense of relatedness, and
achievement of group goals. If the identification with the organization or its
subunit (team, work group) whose goal is high performance, is salient,
group members will release effort for high performance.

Management Of Work Motivation:

Application of Principles

Organizational
Structure

Other
(Interpersonal)
Individual
Employee
Satisfactionof
loweror
higher-orderneeds

Work

Organizational

Goals
Objectives

Self-motivation

Most of the researches on motivation are conducted in western countries in

factory-type organizations, where the legacy of machine metaphor
dominates. Man is a cog in the wheel, is more like a robot, whose switch must
be put on and off administering rewards and punishments.
Also, dominate themes in content and process theories, developed in western
culture, are that employees work harder and smarter only when they are
given specific economic rewards such as hiking pay, bonus, performancebased compensation, and so on.
The self-conscious human being is beyond this input-output calculus. We
have seen instances where everything seems the same to everybody. But one
person decides and invests his/her energies and efforts, while others just hang
back. In the same laboratory, with the same level of education, experience,
competency, and with the same infrastructure; why do few scientists surpass
their colleagues? Why do some employees outperform their peers under the
same operating conditions? A persons will to do the work will nip many of
the problems in the bud. He will find out ways and means to accomplish the
goal without pointing out ungenuine constraints, lack of resources, non
cooperation of colleagues, etc. The annual calendar of Tata Steel for its
employees in 1995 rightly mentioned at the top, will to work, will to win.

Goal-setting for Self-motivation

Read the success stories of leaders, executives, reformers, and others available in books, journals,
internet sites, and business magazines. Set a moderately difficult, challenging, but achieveable goal
considering your competency in accordance with Lockes goal-setting. The set goal needs to match
with your passion as in Maslows self-actualization and to be aligned with organizational goal. If
the goal is too difficult, it becomes impossible to succeed, and creates a negative attitude towards
the goal. If the goal is too easy, it kills motivation to work hard. A self-set difficult goal affects
attention, effort, and persistence.
Break down the long-term goal into short-term goals to make each goal more specific rather than
general. Remember the goal everyday. Decide the priority of goals. Set the deadline for
accomplishment of each sub-goal. Try with the easiest short-term goal. Initiate actions and
improve your skill, knowledge, and attitude to accomplish short-term goals successively.
Get the feedback based on your actions and new expertise to assess how well you are progressing
towards short-term goal. With every success, reward yourself or celebrate. Continue similarly
with other short-term goals till you accomplish the long-term goal (Box 5.4). This process is similar
to plan, do, check, and act.
Awareness and Inspiration :In the great war of Kurukshetra, Arjun was gripped with despair and
despondency and was reluctant to slay the noble-minded elders and his kinsmen. Sri Krishna with
persuasive and fair logic made Arjun aware of his duties and inspired him. Sri Krishna
mentioned: either killed in battle, you will attain heaven or being victorious, you will enjoy the
earth. In either case, you will only be a gainer. Performing ones duty in warfield is the only way to
salvation. Such dialogues leading to awareness and inspiration from Sri Krishna elevated Arjun to
a higher plane leading to action (Vireswarananda, 1948). So can managers or superiors do to
transform the employees from inaction to action.
NGO : Critical awareness

Interpersonal Level

Mapping the characteristics of Indian employees--dependency, preference for hierarchy,

personalized relationship, familial ethos, and leisure ethics-- Sinha (1980) had developed a
leadership style similar to the above description. It is called Nurturant-task (NT) style.
Luthar, Lee Iaccoca leading by example
Communication: Normally, letters, memos, notices, fax, e-mail, and phones are used to
disseminate information. First, in many multi-location and large organizations, or high-tech
business, computer networking creates the possibility for dissemination of transparent and
accurate information. Second, collectivists like social gatherings and collective decisions.
Accordingly, through a number of meetings with different departments, the authorities can
provide information on organizations objectives, operations, and requirements so that employees
can ask questions, interpret business information, and become aware to fulfill organizational
objectives. This can induce social identity with organizational objectives. However, only in a
climate of trust, support, openness, collaboration, and empathy, can employees communicate
their ideas and views without fear and participate actively in the meetings.
Interaction: Indians show fatalistic attitude, and low self-esteem in interpersonal work-context.
In the language of transactional analysis, their activities remain more akin to child (felt concept:
help seeker) and parent (taught concept: advice giver) ego states than to adult ego state
(thought concept: data collector, analyzer, and problem solver). If the employee, remaining in
child ego state, is seeking help and not taking the initiative to solve problems, the manager as a
mentor can intervene to solve the problem. The manager can encourage the employee to analyze
and solve similar problems in future independently. The aim is to change the employee from
dominating child or parent ego state to adult ego state so that s/he can analyze causes, find out
resources, solve problems, and implement solutions.

Organizational Level

Reward System
The economic and non-economic rewards serve to attract, retain and motivate employees. In
accordance with reinforcement theory, a behaviour that is rewarded has a high chance of being
repeated in future for further reward.
Motivation can be enhanced if rewards are administered considering their equity, contingency,
tangibility and immediacy. In interdependent jobs, group-based reward can be used to motivate
the group doing the job. The reward system becomes salient, if employees are involved in
designing of reward system and it is openly communicated to them.
Work Design:Vertical collectivists emphasize group assignment and teamwork controlled by top
management (Erez, 1997). Following scientific management approach, for routine, low tech,
and high interdependence jobs, the jobs can be broken into simplest components, and a group of
six to eight people can be assigned the tasks under a supervisor, such as in packing, despatch,
order entry, filing, etc. It is the expanding of jobs horizontally or job enlargement.
Taking clues from Herzbergs theory, job enrichment (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) focuses on
objective attributes of task, namely skill variety (the degree to which a job requires a variety of
skills), task identity (the degree to which a job involves the completion of a whole or an
identifiable piece of work), task significance (the degree to which the task has substantial impact
on other peoples lives), autonomy (the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence,
and discretion), and job feedback (the degree to which the job directly provides information of
effective performance). The person would react to these objective characteristics in terms of
changes in three critical psychological states-- experienced meaningfulness of work (affected by
skill variety, task identity, and task significance), experienced responsibility of work outcomes
(affected by autonomy) and knowledge of results (affected by feedback). These three
psychological states are presumed to lead to personal and work outcomes such as high internal
work motivation, high quality of work performance, high work satisfaction and to low
absenteeism and turnover. These ultimate affects are moderated by employees strength of
growth needs.
Socio-technical systems design

Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal has two purposes. First, it helps employees to know where
they stand, their successes and failures, and how they can improve and develop.
Second, it helps the administrators in wage and salary determination, career
planning, transfers, promotions, man-job matching, etc. Various methods used in
appraisal such as graphic rating scale, critical incident method, forced choice
method, field review, and work standard method, are not free from errors and
biases. Performance appraisal retains importance only in the context of key
performance areas on which the person will be evaluated, such as evaluation of a
salespersons performance on target realization, and a professor on teaching,
research, training, and administrative aspects.
The subordinates can be involved in reviewing their performance against specific
targets and standards agreed upon jointly by superior and subordinates. With this,
subordinates can gain insights into how they can improve their performance.
Counseling is a part of performance review to help subordinates in developing
strengths and overcoming weaknesses.
Executives are responsible for overall functioning and their roles affect multiple
stakeholders. They need to be evaluated adopting 360 0 appraisal-- by themselves,
subordinates, colleagues, and superiors. This will provide a mirror to see them in
the context of stakeholders, and generate scope and desire for personal change.

Participative Decision Making and Problem Solving

Management by Objectives (MBO), Quality Circles (QC), and Total Quality

Management (TQM) are participative goal-setting, decision-making and problemsolving techniques that rest on goal-setting theory.
Organizational Survey:Efforts should be made periodically through questionnaires to
assess the employees attitudes and perceptions about different aspects of the
organization--organizational culture, leadership, welfare facilities, expectations of
employees, etc. Then this information can be processed, shared with employees using
graphs and figures to analyse problems, identify trouble spots, create solutions, and
develop action plans. In such sharing, representatives of management can mention the
constraints whenever required for revision, mutual acceptance and implementation of
action plans. This method is problem-focused and solution-centered. Thus the
management can act from a position of understanding and knowledge rather than one
of uncertainty and ignorance. Implementation of action plans reduces the resistance to
change and spurs up the motivational level of employees.

.Creating Opportunities & Removing Obstacles

.Training
.Organizational Survey

Conclusion:
Culturesshapesthementalprogrammes:Matching
nationalandorganizationalculturetoleadershipstyles,job
design,performanceappraisal,rewardsystem,etc.
Abaskethandfulofchoices.Thetechniqueneedsdepend
onthesituation.
Self-motivationbasedonintrospectionandchangeinmind
setisthemosteffectivetool.

THANKYOU