Role Motivation Theories

John B. Miner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781138475670
• eBook ISBN: 9781134811335
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Role Motivation Theories is concerned with four types of organisations and what makes them work. The four are not exhaustive of all possible organisational types but they do represent the major forms found in the world today. If we wish to understand organisational functioning in modern society then we need to have substantial insight into these four types of organisations.
Drawing upon many years of research, John B. Miner argues that the organisational effectiveness required to produce high levels of productivity results from achieving a state of integration between the type of organizatonal system and the kind of people who fill the key positions in the system. Role Motivation Theores is the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of this work available.

Chapter 1

The role motivation theories

This is a book about four types of organizations, and what makes them work. The four are not exhaustive of all possible organizational types, but they do represent the major forms found in the world today. If we wish to understand organizational functioning in modern society, it is necessary to have substantial insight into these four types of organizations. The four role motivation theories are intended to provide this insight.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL TYPES

The four types of organizations are widely identified and described in the literature, although each one is usually considered independent of the other three. Thus Weber (1968) considers hierarchic systems, Vollmer and Mills (1966) treat professional systems, Collins, Moore, and Unwalla (1964) focus on entrepreneurial systems, and Herbst (1976) deals with socio-technical systems. Clearly these authors do mention other types of organizations beyond that which is their primary concern, but such references tend to be fleeting.

Although discussions of this kind in the literature provide useful inputs to an understanding of the organizational types, it seems preferable to rely on empirical data that distinguish among them. Data of this kind have been provided by Oliver (1981; 1982; Oliver and Fredenberger, 1987). The types are distinguishable in terms of their structures, the processes by which they operate, and the jobs that play a key role.

Hierarchic organization

In hierarchic systems management, being at the higher level plays the key role. The extent to which management is key is evident in the following list of defining characteristics:

1. Work rules and regulations are established by management.

2. Job results are evaluated by superiors.

3. Organizational changes are carried out by management.

4. Individual competence is judged by management.

5. Pay levels are based on seniority or hierarchical position.

6. Freedom of action is limited by organizational guidelines.

7. Organizational leaders are appointed by management.

8. Punishments are established by management.

9. Screening and selecting new employees is accomplished by a personnel unit.

10. Counseling of problem employees is carried out by superiors.

11. Replacement of absent employees is accomplished by superiors.

12. Job changes are initiated by management.

13. Risk of failure is assumed by top-level managers.

14. Resources for work accomplishments are allocated by management.

15. Meetings are called and conducted by management.

Such an organization is large enough so that formalized, written communication is necessary, not merely face-to-face interaction (Stinchcombe, 1974). Management induces contributions down through the hierarchy by manipulating positive and negative sanctions. The energy thus generated is channeled to organizational goal attainment through the establishment of role prescriptions (division of labor) as specified in such documents as organizational charts and written job descriptions. General Motors, or any other large corporation, would be an example.

Professional organization

In professional or knowledge-based systems, role requirements derive from the values, norms, ethical precepts, and codes of the profession, rather than from the managerial hierarchy. They are transmitted through early professional training, by professional associations, and by colleagues. In professional organizations members of the core profession assume the key roles and perform many of the activities that managers perform in hierarchic organizations. In the conduct of their affairs the professionals use committees and voting procedures extensively. The overall structure tends to be flat with status differentiations based on professional expertise and experience. The law firm Alston and Bird based in Atlanta would be an example.

That the dominant profession plays the key role in an organization of this type is apparent from its defining characteristics:

1. A large number of jobs are classified as professions.

2. Work satisfaction is based on enjoyment of one’s profession.

3. Learning how to do the job is based essentially on professional training.

4. On-the-job training is intended primarily for professional development.

5. Long hours due to professional commitment are typical.

6. Important day-to-day communications are always with fellow professionals and clients.

7. Individual efforts are devoted to professional goals.

8. The benefits of work go to clients or professional colleagues.

9. Relationships with clients are based on professional knowledge and trust.

10. Career development is oriented toward professional development.

11. Primary loyalty is to the profession.

12. Leaders are selected on the basis of professional competence.

13. The professional job is central to one’s life and part of one’s individual identity.

14. Professional knowledge is more important than any other type.

15. Status is based on professional and occupational competence.

Task organization

In task systems the pushes and pulls of sanctions are built into the work itself. Instead of being mediated by higher managers or professional norms, they are part of the task. A prime example is the entrepreneur in an entrepreneurial organization, although profit center managers, corporate venture managers, straight commission sales representatives of the kind found in real estate, for example, and manufacturers’ representatives among others may also serve in the key task system role. Much job enrichment appears to engage the task domain.

Taking the entrepreneur as a prototype, pulls or positive sanctions are inherent in the prospects for sizable financial rewards, community status, and personal gratification; pushes to stay in the entrepreneurial situation and to exert effort emanate from the threat of business failure and bankruptcy. These influences operate not only on the entrepreneur involved, but on family members and others who anticipate holding, or do hold, an ownership position. Entrepreneurs are generalists; they become engaged in every aspect of the business. They move to wherever the action is and whatever threats to the business appear, without regard for formal hierarchic channels. Communication is face-to-face and oral, rarely written. Forwarding Services Inc., a small but growing firm located in North Tonawanda, New York, provides an example of this organizational type.

Task systems operate on a personal or individual basis; the person involved is very close to the task, with no manager or profession or group mediating the definition of the job to be done. However, the person typically does establish goals to divide up the task in both scope and time; entrepreneurs do this frequently. The defining characteristics of task systems clearly emphasize the key role of the task performer and the goals set by that person:

1. Work rules and regulations are established by oneself to ensure goal accomplishment.

2. Rewards accrue consequent to effective task accomplishment.

3. Responsibility for daily work loads belongs to the individual.

4. Job results are evaluated by the individual.

5. Competence is judged by the individual.

6. Long hours are accepted to gain personal rewards and achievement.

7. Day-to-day work decisions are determined by personal job goals.

8. Job changes are made by the individual without permission from anyone.

9. Personal drive is the most valued characteristic of workers.

10. Risk taking is considered necessary for personal achievement.

11. Pay is based on successful task completion.

12. Daily work judgments are determined largely by personal goals.

13. Personal drive is directed to the achievement of personal goals.

14. Punishments are directly related to failure to achieve personal goals.

15. Advancement is based on personal goal accomplishment.

That the difference between task and hierarchic systems is not merely a matter of size may be illustrated with reference to a situation that developed at General Mills some years ago (Cox, 1982). General Mills had experienced a period of rapid growth through acquisitions of much smaller firms. The basic strategy was to buy up firms in a wide range of businesses that were still being run by their founder-owners and to make these same entrepreneurs division heads under the leadership of the executives in the company’s general office in Minneapolis. Although the divisionalized structure was used, it actually operated with much more decentralization and many fewer controls from the top than are usually the case. The entrepreneurs retained much of their autonomy and continued to run all phases of their operations in the same personal but often autocratic manner that they had been used to in the past.

Ultimately a clash occurred between this entrepreneurial mode of operation and bureaucratic structure. Chief Executive Bruce Atwater felt it essential to introduce more structure and control over the division heads, in the interest of the company as a whole. Firm financial controls were introduced from the top. It was felt that continuing the independence that had existed for fifteen years or more would eventually lead to chaos. This shift from a cluster of task systems to a hierarchic structure led the entrepreneurs to claim that top management lacked understanding of their individual businesses. There were some bitter exchanges and a number of the entrepreneurs resigned. As so often happens in situations of this kind, the hierarchic system prevailed.

Group organization

In group systems decisions are made by consensus or majority vote and leadership is emergent, occurs at the will of the majority, and is often rotating. Communication tends to be face-to-face and the basic unit is the work group. These groups achieve goal-directed effort by exerting concerted pressure on members to behave in certain ways, as originally discovered in the Hawthorne research (Cass and Zimmer, 1975). For such a system to operate there must be a cohesive group with stable membership. The key performers are the group members in good standing. Although to an extent the energy of group systems is inherent in the process of participating in decisions and thus owning them, negative sanctions may also be invoked by the group in support of group norms.

A special problem for group systems is that groups often must be linked into a larger whole in some manner, even though there is no hierarchy or set of professional norms to accomplish this. One resolution is that the organization develops a pervasive ideology or culture, which ties the groups together. It is not uncommon for some group members to serve in more than one group, and thus operate as linking pins, spreading the organizational culture and coordinating the groups (Likert and Likert, 1976).

The key role played by work group members in good standing in these systems is evident in the defining characteristics:

1. Job learning is a consequence of group efforts to share skills and knowledge.

2. Responsibility for daily work loads is shared by group members.

3. Individual job results are evaluated by the work group.

4. Competence is judged by the work group.

5. Important day-to-day communications are with work group members.

6. Job rotation within the group is encouraged.

7. New worker selection is based on work group evaluations.

8. Individual daily work problems are a responsibility of the work group.

9. Sacrifices are made for the good of the work group.

10. Incompetence is judged by the work group.

11. Screening and selection of new employees is a responsibility of the work group.

12. Conflicts within the group are resolved by discussion and compromise.

13. Counseling of problem employees is a responsibility of the work group.

14. Replacement of absent employees is accomplished by the work group.

15. Housekeeping duties are performed by all work group members.

Clearly the work groups themselves take over many functions that in a hierarchic system would be carried out by management. Instances of group systems are autonomous work groups (Emery and Thorsrud, 1976) and voluntary groups (Wilderom and Miner, 1991). The autonomous work groups that exist in a number of plants at Mead Corporation would serve as an example.

Additional types

Although the hierarchic, professional, task, and group typology covers most organizational systems in modern society, it is not meant to be exhaustive. Weber (1968), for instance, gives considerable attention to patrimonial organizations, in which traditional authority is largely manifest, and to charismatic communities characterized by charismatic leader-follower relations. Weber considers both of these forms prebureaucratic, although both can be identified on occasion today.

Patrimonial systems lack the separation of private and official spheres that occur in bureaucracy, and allegiance is to an individual leader rather than to an office. Decisions are ad hoc, rather than according to a set of rational rules, and performance is evaluated relative to the degree of favor in which a person is held by the leader. Certain kingdoms and family undertakings are examples. In such systems leadership achieves its impact because it can draw upon, or play upon, a common set of early learning experiences among members. Such concepts as super ego, ego ideal, and positive transference from psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1930) are particularly applicable. Because this type of system requires homogeneous and stable early socialization, it seems less likely to operate effectively in a world with as much mobility as we now experience. Groups of individuals who have been raised to honor and obey a particular person throughout their lives, and thus accept that person’s commands whatever they may be, are no longer easy to find.

Charismatic systems require that supernatural, superhuman, or at the very least exceptional powers, be attributed to a leader. As in patrimonial systems, ties to this leader are highly emotional, but now the leader must prove the special powers repeatedly to induce continuing member contributions. Often there is a religious element involved, as in sects and certain communes. Empirical research on charismatic systems, which requires the development of an index of charisma, appears almost nonexistent. One reason appears to be that, just as when Maslow (1954) set out to study self-actualization, he found few subjects to draw on, efforts to study true charismatic systems face the difficulty that very few such organizations currently exist.

It is also possible to identify a factor labeled self-control (Miner, 1975) which represents the antithesis of a true organizational system. In certain cases an organization exists only nominally, perhaps after the disintegration of a previously existing organizational system. Where self-control rules there is very little if any power exerted by hierarchy, profession, task, or group. What exists is an interacting, largely self-motivated set of individuals. Only the individual conscience as a residue of early parental value training serves to constrain entirely self-serving behavior. Relying on self-control invites organizational anarchy, just as removing the force of law invites societal anarchy. Where self-control prevails, and external inducemen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedicaiton
• Contents
• List of Figures and tables
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 The role motivation theories
• 2 Role motivation theory in the wider theoretical context
• 3 Operationalizing role motivation theory variables
• 4 Validation of the hierarchic role motivation theory
• 5 Validation of the professional role motivation theory
• 6 Validation of the task role motivation theory
• 7 Changing role motivation experimentally
• 8 Changes in managerial talent supplies over time
• 9 International comparisons
• 10 Age, race, and gender differences
• 11 Looking back and looking forward
• References
• Name index
• Subject index