Motivation

Motivation

Motivation refers to forces either within or external to a person that arouse enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a certain course of action. Needless to say, employee motivation affects productivity and one part of a manager's job is using this productivity towards the accomplishment of organizational goals. The study of Motivation helps managers to understand what prompts people to initiate action, what influences their choice of action and why they persist in that action over time.

If we try to express motivation process as a simple model, we can describe it in three steps: (1) people have basic needs (food, achievement, monetary gain), (2) these needs increase and become tense to create behaviours to fulfil them, (3) the more the behaviour is successful, the better the individual is satisfied or rewarded. Individuals can be rewarded in two ways, i.e. by intrinsic rewards (receive personal satisfaction in performing an action) or extrinsic rewards (receive rewards from other people for performing that action). The reward also tells the person that the behaviour is appropriate and can be used again. The manager's attitude about motivation and the way they use rewards depend on his perspective on motivation.

Different Perspectives on Motivation

Since the work of Fredrick Taylor on scientific management, people have been dealing with employee performance and searching for the ways of improving it for the sake of improving organizational performance and hence organizational profits. Although the approaches and the ways they perceive workers have changed, the ultimate goal has always been the same. By satisfying employees needs, the managers wanted to achieve higher productivity and lead this performance towards the achievement of organizational objectives.

Within the traditional approach, economic rewards were provided to workers to increase their performance as they viewed workers as economic people and hoped they would work harder for higher pay. With the Human relations approach to motivation, the economic man who was assumed to have only economic needs was replaced by the concept of the social man in manager's minds and with this assumption in mind, employees were tried to be motivated by using noneconomic rewards. The Human Resource Approach has combined the concepts of the economic man and the social man and viewed employees as complex and motivated by many factors. While the Traditional and Human Relations approaches were trying to manipulate the workers through economic and social rewards, the Human Resources approach assumed that employees are competent and able to make major contributions for the enhancement of organizational performance. In fact, this approach has laid the groundwork for the Contemporary approaches on employee motivation.

Contemporary Theories of motivation

Under this broad topic of Contemporary Theories on employee motivation, there are three distinct groups of Motivation theories which are grouped according to different perspectives they apply to employee motivation. These three groups of motivational theories are Content Theories which stress the importance of underlying human needs in employee motivation, Process Theories which concentrate on the thought processes of individuals that influence their behaviour and Reinforcement Theories which focus on observable actions or employee learning of desired work behaviour, rather than what is happening inside the employee's head.

Content Theories on Motivation

These theories suggest that motivation results from the individual's attempts to satisfy needs. We will focus on the better known content theories that have been proposed by Abraham Maslow, Clayton Alderfer, David McClelland, and Frederick Herzberg. There are slight differences between these theories in the way they view the needs individuals bring with them to work.

Abraham Maslow proposed the Hierarchy of Needs Theory. This theory identifies five distinct levels of individual needs. (1) Physiological, (2) Safety, (3) Social, (4) Esteem, (5) Self-actualization, going from the bottom to top of the hierarchy, respectively.

The first three needs are also described as the lower order needs in Maslow's hierarchy and these are the physiological, safety and social needs in ascending order. At the very bottom level of the hierarchy, there are Physiological needs that are defined as most basic of all human needs which include the person's needs for biological maintenance such as need for food, water and sustenance. On the next level, there are safety needs which are the needs for security, protection, and stability in the physical and interpersonal events of day-to-day life. Ascending one level, there are Social Needs or Belongingness Needs. These are described as the need for love, affection and sense of belongingness in one's relationships with other persons.

The last two needs are also described as the higher order needs and these are Esteem Needs and Self-Actualization Needs. Esteem Needs are an individual's need for esteem (high regard) of others in the form of respect, prestige, recognition, need for self esteem, personal sense of competence and mastery. On top of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we see the needs for Self-Actualization. This is the highest need level and this is the need for individuals to fulfil oneself, to grow and use abilities to fullest and most creative extent.

According to Maslow's assumption, some needs are more important than others and these have to be satisfied before other needs can serve as motivators. Although this view is very popular for some groups, there is some evidence from the researches that fail to support this view. One criticism is concerning the rigidity of this five-step hierarchy and suggests that these needs are more likely to operate in a flexible hierarchy. Some research suggests that higher order needs, tend to become more important than lower order needs as individuals move up the corporate ladder. According to some other research, needs may also vary according to a person's career stage, the size of the organization and even the geographical location. Another criticism or lack of evidence for this theory is that, the research evidence does not prove that the importance of one lower order needs decreases when it is satisfied and that the importance of the next higher need is increased. One final criticism for this theory is from the cultural point of view. When these needs are examined closely, we see that their importance or degree of dominance of each