Work Motivation in Organizational Behavior

Craig C. Pinder

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317561460
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

This second edition of the best-selling textbook on Work Motivation in Organizational Behavior provides an update of the critical analysis of the scientific literature on this topic, and provides a highly integrated treatment of leading theories, including their historical roots and progression over the years. A heavy emphasis is placed on the notion that behavior in the workplace is determined by a mix of factors, many of which are not treated in texts on work motivation (such as frustration and violence, power, love, and sex). Examples from current and recent media events are numerous, and intended to illustrate concepts and issues related to work motivation, emotion, attitudes, and behavior.

Part One
How Theories of Work Motivation are Developed

1
Work Motivation, Productivity, and the Economy

The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.

F. W. Taylor

“Hope. Vision. Action.”

These three words comprised the theme of the convocation address that Frank O’Dea delivered to the audience attending the June 2005 graduation ceremony at Royal Roads University at Victoria, B.C. Mr. O’Dea, who had just become Dr. O’Dea after receiving the university’s doctor of laws degree honoris causa, was telling the story of how he rose from living on the streets in downtown Toronto in the late 1960s to a position of prominence in Canadian business and society. He described how he and his friends would panhandle on Yonge Street, spend their money on cheap wine, and, if it were cold at the time, on a thin bed in a flop house that night. If it was relatively warm, he said, they would sleep on park benches. Every day, he and his friends would promise one another to improve their lives “tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow.” For a long time, tomorrow never came.

Eventually, in 1968 when O’Dea was 23 years of age, he began to turn his life around. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has not had a drink since. By 1974 he ran a successful political campaign for a local politician and co-founded The Second Cup in 1975, which is today Canada’s largest chain of gourmet coffee and tea stores. He has created and sold a number of businesses and become a major Canadian philanthropist. In the mid-1980s, he helped to raise more than $2.5 million to create an animated film for educating destitute children in Africa about HIV-AIDS. He helped found Street Kids International, War Child (Canada), The Canadian Landmine Foundation, and an airline to transport people from remote regions who are in need of medical care. In May 2004 he was recognized for his many contributions to the poor of Canada and abroad by being named an Officer of the Order of Canada by the Governor General.

The secret of his success, O’Dea repeated many times during his convocation address, was found in the three concepts: Hope, vision, and action – three concepts that capture much or most of the essence of work motivation, the topic of this book. Hope is one of many energizing internal forces that can arouse an individual toward action (Luthans, 2003). Vision provides direction(s) for the person’s actions as well as the sense of conviction and tenacity to persist when the going gets tough (Senge, 1990). Finally, action itself is what brings about change in a person’s circumstances, such as those of Dr. Frank O’Dea when he realized that he would not survive long unless he radically changed his life and, along the way, the lives of countless beneficiaries in Canada and abroad. Dr. Frank O’Dea, in the parlance of this volume, is full of work motivation, and he is infectious when he tells his personal story.

Purpose of this Book

This book is about the multiple reasons people work. It examines the origins of the impulse to work and the many reasons people either enjoy their work or hate it. It explores the scientific and humanistic insights into why work is such a central – even defining – characteristic of human activity. This is not a book intended to instruct second and third parties on how to “motivate” others to work, although applied implications of the analysis will be presented where appropriate. Hence the content and tone of most of the text is descriptive rather than normative and critical as well as comparative rather than of a proselytizing nature. My goal is to be dispassionate in my treatment of current theories related to work motivation and behavior. A key purpose in all that follows is to entice others to explore theories, models, and hypotheses that shed light on work motivation, one of the most central, most important, and most researched topics in the organizational and social sciences (Miner, 2003).

The topic of work motivation is popular in the media although it frequently appears in disguised forms as authors, consultants, social critics, and management theorists explore real or putative trends in people’s work behavior and habits, job satisfaction levels, entrepreneurial activity, leisure behavior, or career turbulence. Because work is such an important institution in everyday life, it is certainly a topic of considerable discussion and even controversy. In many ways, most people believe themselves experts when any aspect of work is raised for examination and discussion. We frequently read newspaper opinions or the results of studies purporting to demonstrate that people don’t work as hard as they used to (or that they work harder), that the desire for leisure is driving out the desire to work and prosper, that “today’s” employees aren’t as eager as were their ancestors, or that people in other countries are collectively outworking those of us here in North America.

For example, The Economist (2006) magazine recently published a secondary report of a working paper released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (see Aguiar & Hurst, 2006). The research examined the validity of the commonly held belief that Americans are working harder these days than they did in previous decades and generations. Aguiar and Hurst (2006) concluded that this belief is largely a myth but the existence of the original research and its reportage in The Economist reflect the popular importance of the issue in daily discourse. Nevertheless, the cover story of the October 2, 2005 edition of Business Week (see Mandel, Hamm, Matlack, Farrell, & Therese, 2005) claimed that “more than 31% of college-educated male workers [in the United States] are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980.” The article also claimed that “Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours sleep on weekdays… up from 31% in 1980.” The same Business Week article reported that since 1991, average annual work hours have dropped in Japan by 11%, in France by 10%, by 6% in Germany and Britain, and 5% in South Korea (Mandell et al., 2005).¹ It is the Koreans who have been seen as the most highly motivated among the world’s workforce in recent years. By contrast, Germany and France are often accused of not being particularly devoted to their work, in part because of the shorter work week and employment laws in the European Community. A study reported in Sweden – and cited in the Times Colonist (September 18, 2004, p. A12 via American Press) – found that 40% of the population there believe it is okay to stay away from work (and seek sick-leave compensation) when they are tired or having a difficult time getting along with their colleagues.

It is important to state at the outset that most of the ideas to be presented in this book are either theory or derived from theory. There are virtually no laws or solid facts pertaining to human behavior. The complexity of human behavior is something most of us are quick to acknowledge in some settings, but equally quick to forget when we seek solutions to behavioral problems in other settings. Some of the theories to be presented contradict one another, either conceptually or in application. That is the state of the science related to work motivation as it is of the art of management. This is something that the reader will simply have to accept. The pithy advice offered by many of the airport paperbacks we mention later notwithstanding, there are no simple, single “quick fixes” that have withstood the scrutiny of the social scientist and the intelligent manager over the long haul. As we will see throughout this book, many old ideas from social science have appeared and reappeared more than once, usually with new names and buzzwords, since World War II.

In short, this book is about the nature of differences among people in their motivation to work, whether it is working for oneself, a small employer, a government agency, or some part of a large multinational conglomerate. It seems that we must, collectively, be willing to put our feet on the floor on cold, rainy mornings to work if we are to survive and flourish as individuals and as a safe, comfortable, and stable economic society. Individually, we must be productive; collectively, we must be productive. Yet, as we will see shortly, the productivity mentality that has characterized the concepts of work and working since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution may have, ironically, become a portent of the doom of many millions of people while being the indicator of success for only a selected few. What is productivity, and how is it related to work motivation? We address these questions in the following sections.

Productivity: A Relative Concept

In his 2005 budget speech in front of the Canadian House of Commons, then-finance minister Ralph Goodale stated:

A nation’s ability to achieve higher levels of prosperity is a function of two ingredients – a steadily growing work force and steadily improving productivity… We need to encourage that work force to be as smart and skilled as possible – to beat its international competition and to adapt to changing times.

(The Globe and Mail, October 3, 2005, p. B6)

Indeed, the competitive economic edge and subsequent well-being of countries such as Canada, the United States, Sweden, and Switzerland in recent decades has largely been a result of the high comparative levels of productivity in the economies of those countries over the past few generations. High productivity and comparatively high increases in productivity have permitted high wages, inexpensive goods and services, abundant public amenities and social services, and a generally high standard of living for all (Hall & Jones, 1999; Mahoney, 1988). High productivity has long been both a measure of, and a contributing factor to, the quality of life we can enjoy. It is important to note that a considerable amount of the attention devoted to issues of who works harder than whom (as discussed in the previous paragraphs) is frequently sparked by reports of comparative productivity between and among national economies. This is the first of many examples to appear in this book of the importance of being precise when discussing inter-individual differences on the grounds of concepts and constructs such as motivation and productivity. Indeed, individual motivation is only one component – albeit an important one – among the forces that determine a nation’s productivity and attendant economic well-being. In short, cross-national comparisons of productivity (or cross-industry or cross-organizational comparisons, for that matter) must not be confused with cross-unit comparisons of work motivation. That said, we turn now to a short discussion of productivity, per se, because of the role that work motivation plays in determining productivity levels, increases in productivity levels, and, consequently, economic well-being.

In its simplest terms, productivity is the value of the economic output achieved in an industry or economy per unit of human labor and fixed capital required to attain it. It is a measure of how much work people accomplish at their jobs, divided by the amount of time they spend doing those jobs – time spent collecting salaries (or wages) and benefits. It is usually measured in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP) produced per person in a given year. When the level of economic output per unit of input increases, more people can enjoy more goods and services without causing others to consume less (Rees, 1980). Using Germany’s GDP per person as its base of 100 points, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Economic Promotion Geneva, 2003) reported that the United States had the highest productivity index (at 152), followed by Ireland (131), Switzerland (125), Belgium (116), France (115), Great Britain (107), Italy (106), Austria (104), and the Netherlands (103). By way of extolling the high standing of Switzerland in this largely Western-European analysis, the Swiss State Secretariat credited that country’s liberal labor laws, few regulations, consistent social stability in its labor markets (i.e., comparatively few strikes and lockouts), and the fact that its social insurance system is jointly funded by employers and Swiss workers.

Mahoney (1988) pointed out that increases in production are accomplished through either or both of two means: (1) increased use of production inputs (for example, capital, land, water resources, and labor); and (2) increased efficiency in the transformation of inputs into usable outputs (such as goods or services). For Mahoney and most economists, productivity has to do with the second of these two approaches – getting more goods and services for a given or fixed level of input factors. Moreover, productivity has meaning only in relative terms: “There is no ideal level of productivity, and judgments are limited to ‘more’ or ‘less’ comparisons” (p. 14). Therefore, we can reasonably compare the productivity of a given firm or economy with its own level from a previous time, and/or we can make comparisons among firms or entire economies for a common time period.

Economists, business executives, shareholders, and public leaders are constantly concerned with the productivity problem, and make both of the two types of comparison described by Mahoney (1988). Productivity is measured by a variety of indicators, such as profit, customer satisfaction, reduced costs, units produced, and so on. Productivity ratios, such as return on investment, net earnings per share and output per employee are other examples. There is no “one best way” to measure productivity: Different types of measure are required for different contexts and purposes. Moreover, regardless of how it is measured, increases in one’s own productivity over time are universally seen as good, as situations where one’s own level of productivity is either higher than someone else’s level or higher than their own particular rates of increase in productivity. To repeat: “[C]omparative level and rate of change are the key aspects of productivity measurement” (Mahoney, 1988, p. 22). The range of disparity across nations in output per worker is shocking: In 1988, for example, output per worker in the United States was more than 35 times higher than that of workers in Niger (Hall & Jones, 1999)!

Sometimes the wages, salaries, and benefits paid to a nation’s workforce rise faster than its productivity. Hence, when we speak of declining productivity, we mean that it is taking comparatively more human labor to accomplish the same amount of economic output as before – fewer goods and services for the same investment as in the past. The consequence, in part, is that the benefits an economy can deliver cost everyone more than in the past – a phenomenon referred to as cost-push inflation (Blair, 1975). Traditional economists (e.g., Malkiel, 1979) see declining productivity (or a failure to increase productivity as much as other countries increase theirs) as the most serious threat to the health of the economies of the Western world. It seems that most concerns about productivity and analyses related to it focus on the private and manufacturing sectors. But productivity is also an important issue in the service sector (cf. Schneider, Ehrhart, Mayer, Saltz, & Niles-Jolly, 2005), as well as in government (Crane & Jones, 1991), affecting the quality of life enjoyed by all of us.²

Determinants of Productivity

What determines the level of productivity in an industrial economy? A traditional answer to this question might begin by observing that there are many contributing factors, and that it is possible to categorize them into two major groups.

Large-Scale, National-Level Influences on Productivity

The first group consists of large-scale factors generally beyond the control of individual managers, executives, corporations, or governments. In fact, some of them, as we will see, may eventually be responsible for an ironic, cataclysmic redefinition of the very nature of human work. Hall and Jones (1999) have argued on the basis of comparative analyses of the productivity of 127 national economies that a cluster of factors they refer to as social infrastructure explains the vast variance among economies in productivity. Social infrastructure is defined as:

[T]he institutions and government policies that determine the economic climate within which individuals accumulate skills, and firms accumulate capital and produce output. A social infrastructure favorable to high levels of output per worker provides an environment that supports productive capacities and encourages capital accumulations, skill acquisition, invention, and technology transfer. Such a social infrastructure gets the prices right so that… individuals capture the social returns to their actions as private ...