Organizational

Behaviour

Module No. 007

Motivation Concepts

By
Muhammad Shahid Iqbal
 Motivation
○ Motivation: is the processes that account for an individual’s
intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a
goal. The level of motivation varies both between individuals and
within individuals at different times.
○ The three key elements of motivation are:
○ Intensity is a measure of energy, drive, and vigor. A motivated
person puts forth effort and works hard. However, the quality of
the effort must be considered as well as its intensity.
○ Direction: High levels of effort don’t necessarily lead to
favorable job performance unless they are channeled in a
direction. Efforts that are directed and consistent with
organizational goals are required from employees.
○ Finally, motivation includes a persistence dimension. Employees
must be persistent in putting forth effort to achieve those goals.
 Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Maslow)
○ Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: In 1943, Abraham Maslow, a
psychologist, developed the hierarchy of needs theory. This
theory suggests that people rank their needs into five general
categories. Once they achieve a given category of needs, they
become motivated to reach the next category.

Self-
Actualization
Esteem
Social

Safety
Physiological
 Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Maslow)
Maslow was a psychologist who proposed that within every person
is a hierarchy of five needs:
1. Physiological needs: A person’s basic requirements for survival
such as food, drink, shelter, sex, and other physical requirements.
2. Safety needs: A person’s needs for security and protection from
physical and emotional harm.
3. Social needs: A person’s needs for affection, belongingness,
acceptance, and friendship.
4. Esteem needs: A person’s needs for internal esteem factors such
as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement and external esteem
factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization needs: A person’s needs for growth, achieving
one’s potential, and self-fulfillment; the drive to become what
one is capable of becoming.
 Theory X and Theory Y
○ Douglas McGregor proposed two distinct views of human
beings: lablebed Theory X and Theory Y.
○ Theory X: is a negative view that assumes employees dislike work
and job responsibilities and will avoid work if possible.
○ Theory Y: is a positive view that assumes employees are willing to
work and prefer more responsibility.
○ Under Theory X manager assumes workers have little ambition,
dislike work, want to avoid responsibility, and need to be closely
controlled to work effectively. Under theory Y manager assumes
employees enjoy work, seek out and accept responsibility, and
exercise self-direction.
○ Supervisors who believe in Theory X will likely use tight control over
workers, with little or no delegation of authority. Employees will be
closely monitored to ensure that they perform their tasks.
○ Conversely, supervisors who believe in Theory Y will delegate more
authority because they perceive workers as responsible. Supervisors
 Two-Factor Theory
○ Herzberg’s Motivation-hygiene Theory: Herzberg wanted to
know when people felt exceptionally good (satisfied) or bad
(dissatisfied) about their jobs. He concluded that people felt good
about their jobs were significantly different from the replies they
gave when they felt badly.
○ Certain characteristics were consistently related to job
satisfaction, and others to job dissatisfaction.
○ When people felt good about their work, they tended to cite
intrinsic factors arising from the job itself such as achievement,
recognition, advancement, growth and responsibility.
○ When they were dissatisfied, they tended to cite extrinsic factors
arising from the job context such as company policy and
administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, salary,
job security, status and working conditions.
 Herzberg’s Motivation-hygiene Theory
○ Herzberg believed that the factors that led to job satisfaction
were separate and distinct from those that led to job
dissatisfaction.
○ Therefore, managers who sought to eliminate factors that
created job dissatisfaction could keep people from being
dissatisfied but not necessarily motivate them.
○ The extrinsic factors that create job dissatisfaction were called
hygiene factors. When these factors are adequate, people won’t
be dissatisfied, but they won’t be satisfied (or motivated) either.
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs
○ McClelland’s theory of needs was developed by David
McClelland and his associates. It looks at three needs:
Need for Achievement Need for Affiliation
The drive to excel, to achieve The desire for friendly
in relationship to a set of and close interpersonal
standards, to strive to succeed. relationships.

Need for Power nPow

The need to make others
behave in a way that they
would not have behaved
otherwise.
nAch nAff
 McClelland’s Theory of Needs
○ High achievers perform best when they perceive their probability of
success as 0.5. They dislike gambling with high odds because they get
no achievement satisfaction from success that comes by pure chance.
Similarly, they dislike low odds (high probability of success) because
then there is no challenge to their skills. They like to set goals that
require stretching themselves a little.
○ Relationships between achievement need and job performance.
○ when jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback
and an intermediate degree of risk, high achievers are strongly
motivated. a high need to achieve does not necessarily make someone a
good manager, especially in large organizations. People with a high
achievement need are interested in how well they do personally, and not
in influencing others to do well.
○ Needs for affiliation and power tend to be closely related to managerial
success. The best managers are high in their need for power and low in
their need for affiliation.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Self-determination theory
○ Self-determination Theory: which proposes that people prefer
to feel they have control over their actions, so anything that
makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an obligation
than a freely chosen activity will undermine motivation.
○ Maria worked 15 hours a week at the Humane society as a
volunteer without pay for 3 months. Then she was hired full
time for Rs.50 an hour. But she is not finding it to be as much
fun as earlier. Why? People prefer to feel they have control over
their actions, so anything that makes a previously enjoyed task
feel more like an obligation than a freely chosen activity will
undermine motivation.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Cognitive evaluation theory
o Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Providing an extrinsic reward
for behavior that had been previously only intrinsically
rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of motivation. if the
rewards are seen as controlling.
o Extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic interest in a task. When people
are paid for work, it feels less like something they want to do and
more like something they have to do.
o As managers, we should understand that people are driven by a
need for autonomy, and seek ways to achieve competence.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Self concordance theory
○ Self Concordance Theory: The degree to which peoples’
reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and
core values.
○ If individuals pursue goals because of an intrinsic interest, they
are more likely to attain their goals and are happy even if they
do not.
○ In contrast, people who pursue goals for extrinsic reasons
(money, status or other benefits) are less likely to attain their
goals and less happy even when they do achieve them. WHY?
○ Because the goals are less meaningful to them.
○ So, choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic rewards.
○ As managers, provide intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Job engagement
○ Job engagement: the investment of an employee’s physical,
cognitive, and emotional energies into job performance.
○ It has been found a positive link between level of engagement
and with a variety of practical outcomes.
○ There are far more engaged employees in highly successful than
in average organizations, and groups with more engaged
employees have higher levels of productivity, fewer safety
incidents, and lower turnover.
○ What makes people more likely to be engaged in their jobs?
○ the degree to which an employee believes it is meaningful to
engage in work. This is partially determined by job.
characteristics and access to sufficient resources to work
effectively. The match between the individual’s values and those
of the organization. Leadership behaviors that inspire workers
also increase employee engagement.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Goal-Setting Theory
○ Goal-Setting Theory: in fact reveals impressive effects of goal
specificity, challenge, and feedback on performance.
○ Goals tell an employee what needs to be done and how much
effort is needed.
○ Evidence suggests:
○ Specific goals increase performance since specificity itself seems
to act as an internal stimulus.
○ Difficult goals when accepted, result in higher performance than
do easy goals.
○ challenging goals get our attention and thus tend to help us focus.
○ difficult goals energize us because we have work harder to attain
them.
○ when goals are difficult, people persist in trying to attain them.
○ Finally, difficult goals lead us to discover strategies that help us
perform the task more effectively.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Goal-Setting Theory
○ Feedback leads to higher performance than does non-feedback.
feedback guides behavior, Self-generated feedback is more
powerful than externally generated feedback. In addition to
feedback, three other factors influence the goals-performance
relationship: goal commitment, adequate self-efficacy, task
characteristics, and national culture.
○ Goal-setting theory assumes that an individual is committed to
the goal. Commitment is most likely when goals are made
public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and
when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.
○ Goals themselves seem to affect performance more strongly
when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather
than novel, and independent rather than interdependent.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Self-Efficacy Theory
○ Self-Efficacy Theory: (known as social cognitive theory or social
learning theory) refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable
of performing a task.
○ People with higher self-efficacy have more confidence in their ability
to succeed.
○ people with low self-efficacy are more likely to lessen their effort or
give up altogether in difficult situations, while those with high self-
efficacy will try harder to master the challenge.
○ Self-efficacy can create a positive spiral in which those with high
efficacy become more engaged in their tasks and then, in turn, increase
performance, which increases efficacy further.
○ Individuals high in self-efficacy also seem to respond to negative
feedback with increased effort and motivation, while those low in self-
efficacy are likely to lessen their effort after negative feedback.
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Self-Efficacy Theory
○ There are four ways self-efficacy can be increased:
○ Enactive mastery: gaining relevant experience with the task or
job. If you’ve been able to do the job successfully in the past,
you’re more confident you’ll be able to do it in the future.
○ Vicarious modeling: becoming more confident because you see
someone else doing the task.
○ Verbal persuasion: becoming more confident because someone
convinces you that you have the skills necessary to be
successful. Motivational speakers use this tactic.
○ Arousal: Arousal leads to an energized state, so the person gets
“psyched up” and performs better. But if the task requires a
steady, lower-key perspective (say, carefully editing a
manuscript), arousal may in fact hurt performance.
Joint Effects of Goals and Self-Efficacy
on Performance
 Contemporary Theories of Motivation
Reinforcement Theory
○ Reinforcement theory says that behavior is a function of its
consequences. Those consequences that immediately follow a
behavior and increase the probability that the behavior will be
repeated are called reinforcers.
○ Reinforcement theory ignores factors such as goals,
expectations, and needs. Instead, it focuses solely on what
happens to a person when he or she does something.
○ Using reinforcement theory, managers can influence employees’
behavior by using positive reinforcers.
○ Managers should ignore, not punish, undesirable behavior.
Although punishment eliminates undesired behavior faster than
nonreinforcement does, its effect is often temporary and may
have unpleasant side effects including dysfunctional behavior
such as workplace conflicts, absenteeism, and turnover.
 Equity Theory/Organizational Justice
○ Equity theory proposes that Employees perceive what they get
from a job situation (salary levels, raises, recognition) in
relationship to what they put into it (effort, experience,
education, competence), and then they compare their outcome–
input ratio with that of relevant others.
○ If we perceive our ratio to be equal to that of the relevant others
with whom we compare ourselves, a state of equity exists; we
perceive that our situation is fair and justice prevails. When we
see the ratio as unequal and we feel underrewarded, we
experience equity tension that creates anger. When we see
ourselves as overrewarded, tension creates guilt.
○ When inequities occur, employees attempt to do something about
it. The result might be lower or higher productivity, improved or
reduced quality of output, increased absenteeism, or voluntary
resignation.
 Equity Theory/Organizational Justice
There are 4 referent comparisons:
1.Self-inside. An employee’s experiences in a different position
inside the current organization.
2.Self-outside. An employee’s experiences in a position outside the
current organization.
3.Other-inside. Another individual or group of individuals inside
the employee’s organization.
4.Other-outside. Another individual or group of individuals outside
the employee’s organization.
 Equity Theory/Organizational Justice
Based on equity theory, Choices for dealing with inequity.
1.Change inputs (exert less effort if underpaid or more if overpaid)
2.Change outcomes (individuals paid on a piece-rate basis can
increase their pay by producing a higher quantity of units of lower
quality).
3.Distort perceptions of self (“I used to think I worked at a moderate
pace, but now I realize I work a lot harder than everyone else.”).
4.Distort perceptions of others (“Mike’s job isn’t as desirable as I
thought.”).
5.Choose a different referent (“I may not make as much as my
brother-in-law, but I’m doing a lot better than my Dad did when he
was my age.”).
6.Leave the field (quit the job).
Model of Organizational Justice
○ Expectancy Theory: states 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. It includes three relationships
1. Effort–performance relationship: The probability perceived
by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead
to performance
2. Performance–reward Relationship: The degree to which the
individual believes performing at a particular level will lead to
the attainment of a desired outcome.
3. Rewards–personal goals relationship: The degree to which
organizational rewards satisfy an individual’s personal goals or
needs and the attractiveness of those potential rewards for the
individual.
 Motivating by Job Design:
○ The Job Characteristics Model: JCM identifies five core job
dimensions, their interrelationships, and their impact on
employee productivity, motivation, and satisfaction.
1. Skill variety: is the degree to which a job requires a variety of
different activities so the worker can use a number of different
skills and talent.
2. Task identity: is the degree to which a job requires completion
of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
3. Task significance: is the degree to which a job affects the lives
or work of other people.
4. Autonomy: is the degree to which a job provides the worker
freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling work and
determining the procedures in carrying it out.
 Motivating by Job Design:
○ Feedback: is the degree to which carrying out work activities
generates direct and clear information about your own
performance.
 Employee Involvement and Employee
Motivation
○ How can jobs be redesigned?
○ Job Rotation: The periodic shifting of an employee from one task
to another, with similar skill requirements at the same
organizational level (also called cross training).
○ If employees suffer from overroutinisation. Eg: At Singapore
airlines, a ticket agent may take on the duties of a baggage
handler. Singapore Airlines is rated one of the best airlines in the
world to work in.
○ Increases flexibility and avoids lay offs. Eg: If workers are
trained to work on all parts of the assembly, then they can work
on the necessary part of the machine as per the incoming orders.
○ Pros: Reduces boredom. Increases motivation. Helps employees better
understand how their work contributes to the organization. More
flexibility in scheduling work, filling vacancies.
 Main Ways Jobs Can Be Redesigned
○ Job enrichment : The vertical expansion of jobs, which increases
the degree to which the worker controls the planning, execution
and evaluation of the work.
○ Five ways to enrich a job:
● Combining tasks.
● Forming natural work units
● Establish client relationships (clients can be internal and external)
● Expanding jobs vertically gives employees responsibilities and control
formerly reserved for management.
● Opening feedback channels lets employees know how well they are doing
and whether their performance is improving, deteriorating, or remaining
constant.
● Increasing the meaningfulness of work by relating employee experiences
to customer outcomes.
● By providing employees with stories from customers who benefitted from
the company’s products or services.
 Variable-Pay Programs and Employee
Motivation
○ Using rewards to motivate employees:
○ What to pay : Establishing a pay structure
○ How to pay : Rewarding individual employees through variable
pay programs
● Piece-rate pay: means of compensating production workers with a
fixed sum for each unit of production completed. A pure piece-
rate plan provides no base salary and pays the employee only for
what he or she produces
● Merit-based pay: pays for individual performance based on
performance appraisal ratings. A main advantage is that people
thought to be high performers can get bigger raises. If designed
correctly, merit-based plans let individuals perceive a strong
relationship between their performance
● Bonuses: An annual bonus is a significant component of total
compensation for many jobs.
 Variable-Pay Programs and Employee
Motivation
● Skill-based pay: is an alternative to job-based pay that bases pay
levels on how many skills employees have or how many jobs they
can do.
● Profit-sharing plans: A profit-sharing plan distributes
compensation based on some established formula designed around
a company’s profitability. Compensation can be direct cash outlays
or, particularly for top managers, allocations of stock options.
● Gainsharing: is a formula-based group incentive plan that uses
improvements in group productivity from one period to another to
determine the total amount of money allocated. Its popularity
seems narrowly focused
○ Employee stock ownership plans
○ Flexible benefits : Developing a benefits package
○ Intrinsic Rewards : Employee Recognition Programs