IOPS 311

Study Division A: Study Unit 2

Motivation, attitudes & job satisfaction

Dr. J Bosman
Study Unit structure
Defining motivation

The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction and

persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.

• OB = organisational goals

• Intensity – how hard a person tries

• Direction – channelled in a direction that benefits the organisation
• Persistence –maintains effort long enough to achieve the goal
EARLY THEORIES
of motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
Herzberg’s Two-factor Theory
MOTIVATORS

LESS MORE

JOB SATISFACTION

HYGIENE FACTORS

LESS MORE

JOB DISSATISFACTION
 R80.00 (almost
impossible)

R40.00 (50%)

R20.00 (80%)

R10.00 (easy)
McClelland’s Needs Theory

Achievement (nAch) Affiliation (nAff)

Power (nPow)
CONTEMPORARY THEORIES
of motivation
Self-Determination Theory

AUTONOMY COMPETENCE RELATEDNESS

Job Engagement
The investment of an employee’s physical, cognitive and emotional energies into job
performance.
• Excerpts from Fin24 Level of employee engagement in SA dismal – survey (26 Aug 2015)
• Results from PDT’s 2015 State of Employee Engagement in South Africa survey suggest a growing
disconnect between organisational management and their staff structures.  
• The report, run in collaboration with Fin24, surveyed over 1 100 people from a variety of sectors,
including banking, mining, retail and government.
• The report indicates a general decline in the level of employee engagement in South Africa since the
release of PDT’s 2014 report, with at least 42 out of every 100 staff members not motivated to
affect real change in their organisations.
• PDT Business Development Director, Christopher Clark, explains that what many companies fail to
understand is that employee engagement can radically affect their bottom line. “Several
international studies support this narrative,” says Clark. “British multi-national, Aon, produced
statistics that link just a 5% increase in employee engagement with a 3 % subsequent growth in
revenue.
Job Engagement
• Excerpts from Fin24 Level of employee engagement in SA dismal – survey (26 Aug 2015)
• “Organisational leadership needs to make employee engagement a key discipline which in turn will
have a direct impact on company profit and productivity,” he explains.
• At least 73% of respondents in the 2015 survey highlighted the need for better communication from
their managers – this is up from 67% in 2014. In direct contrast, not a single senior managers
believed that improved management communication is required.
• In response to this growing disconnect, PDT has developed TV Republic, a multi-platform
communications tool that allows CEOs and other management to push video content directly to
their employees' cell phones, computers or video displays.
• “We need to change the way that businesses view communication and engagement. From CEO to
secretary, a paradigm shift in thinking and empowerment is needed in South Africa if we want to
move our companies forward”, says Clark.
Engagement is empirically linked to positive work
outcomes
• Engaged people are more invested in their work, enjoy their work and have high
levels of productivity
• Fewer safety incident
• Lower turnover
• Better work performance
• Meaningful work leads to increased engagement, which in turn leads to increased
commitment
• Employees must believe it is meaningful to engage in work
• Meaningfulness is partially determined by job characteristics and access to sufficient
resources
• Employee organisation value match
• Leadership behaviours that inspire workers to a greater sense of mission
Engagement
Goal-Setting Theory
• Specific goals increase performance
• Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do
easy goals
• Feedback leads to higher performance than non-feedback

• 3 other factors influence the goal-performance relationship:

• Goal commitment
• Task characteristics
• National culture
Management by Objectives
compare and contrast with goal-setting theory

A programme that encompasses specific goals, participatively set, for an explicit time period, with
feedback on goal progress
Self-Efficacy Theory

• Refers to an individuals belief that he/she is capable of performing a task

• The higher your self efficacy the higher your confidence in your ability to succeed
• In difficult situations…
• Individuals with a low self-efficacy are more likely to reduce their effort or give up
altogether
• Individuals with a high self-efficacy will try harder to master the challenge

Increased performance

Increased task engagement

High self-efficacy
Sources of Increasing Self-Efficacy
• Enactive mastery
• Vicarious modelling
• Verbal persuasion
• Arousal
Reinforcement Theory
• Behaviouristic view: reinforcement conditions behaviour, i.e.
behaviour is environmentally caused
• Operant conditioning theory – behaviour is influenced by the
reinforcement or lack of reinforcement brought about by the
consequences of behaviour
Reinforcement Theory
social-learning theory - we learn through both observation and experience

Models are central to the social-learning viewpoint:

• Attentional processes – we tend to be most influenced by models that are attractive,

repeatedly available, important to us, or similar to us in our estimation
• Retention processes – influence of model depends on how well the individual remembers
the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available
• Motor reproduction processes – after a person has seen a new behaviour by observing the
model, watching must be converted to doing
• Reinforcement processes – if positive incentives follow the modelled behaviour, the
individual will be motivated to exhibit the modelled behaviour (positively reinforced
behaviours are given more attention, learned better and performed more often)
Equity Theory
Four referent comparisons:

1. Self-inside
2. Self-outside
3. Other-inside
4. Other-outside

Six choices in response to inequity:

1. Change inputs
2. Change outcomes
3. Distort perceptions of self
4. Distort perceptions of others
5. Choose a different referent
6. Leave the field
Equity Theory
Organisational Justice

Organisational Justice – I think this is a fair place to work

Procedural Justice – I had

Distributive Justice input into the process used
Interactional Justice –
When telling me about
– I got the pay to give raises and was given
my raise, my supervisor
a good explanation of why I
raise I deserved received the raise I did was very complimentary
Expectancy theory
A theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain
way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be
followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of the outcome
to the individual.
Expectancy theory
Indiv Indivi Organ Pers
dual isatio
idual onal
perfor nal
effor 1 manc 2 rewar goal
3
t e ds s
This theory focuses on 3 relationships:

1. Effort-performance relationship

2. Performance-reward relationship

3. Rewards – personal goals relationship

Integrating contemporary theories of motivation

Job
design
Attitudes
Evaluative statements or judgements concerning objects, people or
events – how we feel about things
Attitudes
The three components

Cognitive

Behavioural Affective
Attitudes
The relationship between behaviour and attitudes

Attitude

Behaviour
Cognitive Dissonance
An incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or
more attitudes or their attitudes or behaviour
People seek a stable state, with minimum dissonance
They either alter the attitude or behaviour, or develop a rationalisation
for the discrepancy
The desire to reduce dissonance depends on moderating factors:
• Importance
• Influence
• Rewards
Most Powerful Moderators of the Attitudes
Relationship
• Importance of the attitude
• Correspondence to behaviour
• Accessibility
• Presence of social pressure
• Direct experience
Major Job Attitudes
• Job Satisfaction – a positive feeling about one’s job resulting from an evaluation of its
characteristics
• Job Involvement – the degree to which a person identified with a job, actively participates in
it and considers performance important to self-worth
• Psychological empowerment – employees’ beliefs in the degree to which they affect their
work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job and their perceived
autonomy in their work
• Work-based Identity – a work-based self-concept, constituted of a combination of
organisational, occupational, and other identities that shapes the roles a person adopts and
the corresponding ways he or she behaves when performing his or work
• Organisational Commitment – the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular
organisation and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the organisation
• Perceived Organisational Support – the degree to which employees believe an organisation
values their contribution and cares about their well-being
Job Satisfaction
• Measuring Job Satisfaction
• Single Global
• Summation of Job Facets
• Effect of Core-self Evaluations (+/-) on Job Satisfaction
• Bottom line conclusions individuals have about their capabilities,
competence and worth as a person
Outcomes of Job Satisfaction and
Dissatisfaction
• Job performance
• Organisational Citizenship Behaviour
• Customer Satisfaction
• Absenteeism
• Turnover
• Workplace deviance
Implications for managers