Motivation in the Workplace

10 Key excerpts on "Motivation in the Workplace"

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  This chapter discusses job performance in terms of several popular theories, with a focus on motivation rather than ability. (In Chapter 10, we will explore other things that affect performance, as well as other forms of work behavior, such as turnover.) This chapter begins by defining motivation in the context of the work environment. It then introduces work motivation theories and provides a brief overview of the nine theories to be covered. Each theory is next discussed in greater detail, along with the research evidence for its validity. Theories of Employee Motivation Work Motivation Theories 185 What Is Motivation? Motivation is defined as an internal state that induces a per- son to engage in particular behaviors. From one perspective, it has to do with the direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior over time. Direction refers to the choice of specific behaviors from a large number of possible behaviors. For example, an employee might decide to volunteer for an extra work project that will require him or her to work overtime instead of going home on time and watching television. Intensity refers to the amount of effort a person expends at doing a task. If an employee is asked to sweep a floor, the person can exert a lot of effort by sweeping hard and fast or exert a little effort by sweeping softly and slowly. Persistence refers to the continuing engagement in a behavior over time. An employee might try to accomplish something over an extended period of time, such as studying to pass the CPA exam to become a certified public accountant, even though it might take several attempts. From another perspective, motivation is concerned with the desire to acquire or achieve some goal. That is, motivation derives from a person’s desires or wants. Some people, for example, are highly motivated to acquire money. It is presumed that a high level of motivation to have money affects the behavior relevant to acquiring it.

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  Organizational Behavior and Public Management, Revised and Expanded

  • Michael L. Vasu, Debra W. Stewart, G. David Garson, Michael L. Vasu, Debra W. Stewart, G. David Garson(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3Motivation in Organizations

  Introduction

  Every organization needs motivated people! Why? Because all organizations seek to be effective, to get the job done. They also seek to be efficient, that is to maximize the outputs per unit of input. Efficiency is typically calibrated in terms of an organization’s productivity. To be both efficient and effective public managers must work with and through people. In the most generic sense, an organization is a group of people working toward a common goal. Both experience and common sense indicate that all people do not expend equal effort toward the realization of organizational goals. When they do not motivation problems are reflected in such factors as low productivity, absenteeism, and rapid employee turnover.

  As an academic area of study, human motivation is the subject of textbooks itself and has a variety of dimensions (McClelland, 1988; Beck, 1990; Steers and Porter, 1991). The important focus, from a management perspective, is on motivation and its relation to work behavior (Quick, 1985; Carlisle and Murphy, 1986; Mook, 1987; Wright, 1992; Robertson and Tang, 1995, Behn, 1995). They are typically concerned with what causes or drives behavior and how to direct and sustain that behavior toward specific organizational goals (Wright, 1992). However, managers need to understand that motivation takes place within a contextual framework. This contextual framework adds more variables to questions of organizational performance than motivation alone.

  Motivation in Context

  The cause of differences in the effort expended by individuals at work is the result of a number of factors. One of these factors is related to different levels of ability among employees. Differences in ability arise from the simple fact that there are significant individual differences that affect work performance. A given individual, for example, may be in the 90th percentile in math ability, 20th percentile in spatial ability, 75th percentile in resistance to fatigue, and 99th percentile on written ability, etc. However, ability itself is only part of the equation. Clearly, whatever the ability level of individuals, the effort

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  Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  Research and Practice

  • Paul E. Spector(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  They also explain other types of work behavior 187 188  Chapter 8. Theories of Employee Motivation that do not involve job performance. Most of the theories, however, have focused on job performance because job performance has been a central variable for the I/O field. This chapter discusses job performance in terms of several popular theories, with a focus on motivation rather than ability. (In Chapter 10, we will explore other things that affect performance.) It also covers explanations for other forms of work behavior, such as turnover. The chapter begins by defining motivation in the context of the work environment. It then introduces work motivation theories and provides a brief overview of the nine theories to be covered. Each theory is next discussed in greater detail, along with the research evidence for its validity. Objectives: The student who studies this chapter should be able to:  Define motivation.  List the major work motivation theories that are discussed in this chapter.  Describe how each of the major work motivation theories explains work behavior.  Compare and contrast the major work motivation theories.  WHAT IS MOTIVATION? Motivation is generally defined as an internal state that induces a person to engage in particular behaviors. From one perspective, it has to do with the direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior over time. Direction refers to the choice of specific behaviors from a large number of possible behaviors. For example, an employee might decide to volunteer for an extra work project that will require him or her to work overtime instead of going home on time and watching television. Intensity refers to the amount of effort a person expends at doing a task. If an employee is asked to sweep a floor, the person can exert a lot of effort by sweeping hard and fast or exert a little effort by sweeping softly and slowly. Persistence refers to the continuing engagement in a behavior over time.

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  21st Century Management: A Reference Handbook

  • Charles Wankel, Charles B. Wankel(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  For instance, various models point to ways in which workers can be energized by appealing to particular needs that they are expected to have. Other mod-els provide insight into the direction work-related efforts are likely to take by examining the particular behavioral choices that people make. Finally, theories derived from principles of psychological learning help us understand why certain behaviors are more likely to be sustained than others are. Although the validity of these motivational processes and their relevance to work-related behavior has been demonstrated in a large body of empirical research, this work is typically used to understand processes underlying the behavior of individual workers as separate agents . As a result, 20th-century insights into work motivation tend to emphasize people’s individual needs, their own indepen- dent goals and expectations, and the personal outcomes they find rewarding. Yet at the same time, developments in the workplace have created a range of situations in which the function of individual needs, goals, expectations, or rewards is less clear. Not least, this is because individual workers have to function in concert and cannot always be seen as representing independent entities. As a result, workers are not necessarily driven by personal consider-ations alone. Instead, individual motivation is projected upon, informed by, and adapted to the needs, goals, expec-tations, or rewards of the team or organization in which people work. In short, the world of work is not just a world of in-dividuals; it is also a world of groups. Accordingly, we need to understand social, group-specific dynamics in order to understand people’s motivation within this world. We need to understand what drives “us,” not just what drives “me.” MOTIVATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY Traditional theories of work motivation were developed at a time when workers were mostly concerned with the production of goods, often through physical labor.

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  Organization Theory and Technocratic Consciousness

  • Mats Alvesson(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  5. Job Satisfaction, Motivation and Meaning of Work The well-being and job satisfaction of personnel are not in themselves of major interest from the management perspective. Job satisfaction, how-ever, is regarded as being closely related to motivation. Since the problem of motivation is of the greatest interest to executives these must, at least indirectly, take account of the well-being of their personnel. In order to understand why working life assumes the form it does and why employees feel as they do, the attitude of companies (management) to job satisfaction and motivation poses an interesting problem. The management-orientated organization theoretical literature often as-cribes greater interest to motivation than to job satisfaction. In this chapter I shall also focus on the motivation problem, job satisfaction being treated more implicitly. I wish to emphasize that in this chapter I examine the aspects of motivation above all as they are relevant from the point of view of management perspective. Most of the literature I have studied is based on this perspec-tive. Amongst other things this fact has certain implications for the concepts which are applied. Normally I prefer to use words such as engagement or intentionality rather than motivation when describing the interest of indi-viduals in taking action. In management-orientated motivation theory these expressions are not frequently used. If it is a question of motivation (engagement, intentionality) in connection with an acting/behaving con-cerning tasks which are narrowly defined and controlled by a management function, motivation is perhaps a more accurate expression than engage-ment, for example. The former concept is associated with instrumental reason, while engagement refers to the negation of this reason (see Ch. 1).

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  Work in the 21st Century

  An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  • Jeffrey M. Conte, Frank J. Landy(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  motivation Concerns the conditions responsible for variations in intensity, per- sistence, quality, and direc- tion of ongoing behavior. MODULE 8.1 An Introduction to Motivation 312 Chapter 8 The Motivation to Work Historically, factory and mill work has been a popular target for the application of motivational theories. But today’s auto plants and textile mills are very different, with substantial automation and liberal use of robots to free the human operator from much of the boredom and danger of factory work. A great deal of the work of both managerial and nonmanagerial employees is done by computers with dynamic dis- plays, multiple tabs, touch screens, and elaborate menus. No need for kittens here. In addition, our understanding of motivation has progressed from kittens on the fac- tory floor to elaborate models involving worker expectancies, goals, feelings of com- petence, and vastly more interesting tasks for the worker to perform. In this chapter, we will consider many of the modern models of work motivation, as well as earlier research and theories that brought us to this point. A Brief History of Motivation Theory in I-O Psychology The earliest I-O theories of motivation were anchored in the notions of instincts, principally driven by psychodynamic theories of personality, most notably Freud’s approach. Instincts were thought to be inborn tendencies that directed behavior. An individual was said to engage in some activity (e.g., work) because of an economic “instinct,” but the existence of that “instinct” was inferred from the fact that the indi- vidual engaged in work. This approach eventually proved useless because of its circu- lar nature. In addition to the problem of circularity, since instinct theory emphasized internal “causes” of behavior, it largely ignored the interaction between an individual and an environment. The term “instinct” was gradually replaced with terms such as “need,” “motive,” and “drive” (Viteles, 1953).

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  Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

  Evidence-based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt, Cynthia A. Thompson, Cynthia A Thompson(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Clearly, researchers are only beginning to examine how social forces within an organization can shape employee motivation and performance. CHAPTER SUMMARY The first major section of this chapter reviewed what are considered to be the major theories of motivation in organiza- tional research and how organizations have used ideas from these models to enhance motivation. The major theories covered included expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, behavioral theories, SDT, and JCT. The Expectancy and Goal Setting theories are both cognitively oriented, addressing how employees think about the connection between behaviors and outcomes. The Behavioral Approach to employee motiva- tion involves using principles adapted from behaviorism to influence behavior in organ- izations. The principle used most frequently is reinforcement, although others, such as punishment, shaping, and extinction, may be used in certain situations. SDT empha- sizes the importance of not only the quan- tity, or amount, of motivation, but the quality of that motivation. Proponents of this theory state that employees driven by autonomous motivation at work will be more satisfied and perform better than employees who experience their behavior as controlled by others. This theory has received a great deal of support outside of the organizational context and generated a great deal of research in recent years. The second major section of the chapter examined how organizations have applied these theories to influence employee motiva- tion. Without a doubt, the most widely used mechanism that organizations use for moti- vating behavior is reward systems. Tangible rewards include merit pay, incentive pay, bonuses, and fringe benefits. Research over the years has shown that tangible rewards such as pay can be very powerful motivators of employee behavior.

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  Skills of Management and Leadership

  Managing People in Organisations

  • W. David Rees, Christine Porter(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  The potential impact of national culture on motivation is also covered. The motivational implications of job design are examined, as is the concept of job distortion . A key issue is the extent to which job demands and individual needs can be reconciled, particularly if national economies are experiencing little or no growth. Increasing market turbulence is causing some employers to introduce flex-ible employment policies. Whilst this can have advantages for employees, it can also cause a reduction in employer commitment whilst expecting an increase in employee commitment. The accelerating pace of change may be one factor causing increasing stress at work, including reduced job security. Managers need to protect both themselves and their subordinates from undue stress. Whilst some attention is given to the role of money as a motivator, it is considered in more detail in Chapter 7. The further related issues of selection and training are dealt with in Chapters 9 and 11. Work performance Maximizing work performance can be defined as ‘providing the right condi-tions for people to work effectively’. One aspect of maximizing work per-formance will involve motivation. Motivation overlaps with the concept of morale, which is a measure of the extent to which employees feel positively or negatively about their work. While levels of performance and morale are usually positively correlated this is not always the case. There can be cases of people performing well under authoritarian but competent managers, perhaps out of fear, but who feel badly about their work. Similarly you can have instances of people doing as they please and enjoying it but not meeting The HR manager, Helen Richards, knows that Samantha is well paid compared with other secretaries and compared with the external market. She also knows that Samantha is capable and ambitious.

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  Motivation

  The Manager's Key to Closing the Commitment Gap

  • Marvin R. Gottlieb Ph.D.(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  56 Motivation I am not suggesting that people aren’t motivated by appropriate com- pensation, although as Herzberg pointed out over a half century ago, money has a greater potential for being a demotivator when someone per- ceives he or she is underpaid. In fact, all of the factors listed above are motivating. It is instructive that when priorities are assigned, managers and employees rank the top motivators in opposite directions. In Chapter 3 we talked about extrinsic rewards as a double-edged sword. Because they appear tangible, extrinsic rewards seem to be the go-to strategy when motivation comes into question. But the enhance- ment of intrinsic rewards is usually the more powerful motivator. Because supervisors sometimes believe that employees are motivated primarily by pay and benefits, they can feel powerless to influence their subordinates. However, as most administrators know from personal experience, there can be significant differences between the motivation and productivity of employees working for the same organization but for different supervi- sors. These differences are the result of effective and ineffective supervi- sory practices. A supervisor’s behaviors and attitudes have a direct impact on the ways employees perceive their roles and responsibilities; how strongly they identify with the organization’s values and mission; and how valuable they perceive they are to their organizations, coworkers, and communities. Table 4.3 Motivation Factors—Employee Ranking Motivation Factor Ranking Achievement 2 Responsibility 3 Opportunities for Growth 1 Recognition from Community and Friends 10 Job Status 7 Interpersonal Relations 5 Pay 8 Job Security 9 Provisions for Family 6 Support for Hobbies and Interests 4 When, in fact, employees who are asked for the same type of ranking respond this way: The Manager as Motivator 57 Most managers feel stretched to their limit.

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  Organizational Behavior

  • Michael A. Hitt, C. Chet Miller, Adrienne Colella, Maria Triana(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  While there are no foolproof approaches, there are sound tactics to use. Exhibit 6‑4 iden- tifies connections between the various motivation theories and five categories of motivation practices that managers can use. As shown in the exhibit, multiple theories have similar implications for managers. We discuss these implications in the remainder of the chapter. Find Meaningful Individual Rewards Content theories suggest that individuals vary in what they find motivating. Expectancy theory implies that individuals assign different valences to outcomes. This means that by tailoring individual rewards to individual needs and desires, companies can create a com- petitive advantage in attracting and motivating associates. One area in which this is obvious is the provision of benefits. An unmarried 28-year-old associate with no children likely places different values on various retirement and insurance plans relative to a 50-year-old associate with three children in college, for example. One mistake that managers often make when trying to determine what motivates individual associates involves placing too much emphasis on extrinsic rewards (e.g., pay increases, bonuses, pay level, job security, job titles) while underemphasizing intrinsic rewards (e.g., satisfaction based on exciting and challenging work, feelings of accom- plishment). 80 Indeed, one survey of a random sample of U.S. adults indicated that they ranked “important work” as the most important aspect of their jobs. Pay was ranked third. When, however, these same people were asked what motivates “other people,” 75 percent responded that pay was the primary motivator of others. 81 Apparently, most people feel they are motivated by outcomes that meet higher-order growth or achievement needs, but think others are primarily motivated by money as a way to meet physiological and security needs.

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