Motivational Theory and Techniques Used Within Organizations

Literature Review

Motivational Theory and Techniques used within organizations.

Student: Ronan Manning

Course: M.App.Sc. In Operations and Quality Management (Part-time)

Subject: Research Reports - Report No. 2

Submitted To: Dr. David O'Sullivan

Industrial Engineering Department

Submission Date: 14th March 2007

Abstract

This literature review explores the concept of motivation, different motivational theories and details some of the motivational tools used within business organizations on a macro level. Motivation theories and techniques are widely used both within normal every day life and the corporate environment. Managers now understand the importance and effects of motivation on their employees in achieving business goals and objectives. The review concludes by explaining how an organization's success depends on the ability of managers to provide an environment, which motivates personnel and maintains an environment of productive, happy and satisfied employees.

Keywords (Motivation, Classification, Theory, Learning Organization)

1. Introduction

Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. In psychology, motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior. Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state and it should not be confused with an individual's personality or emotions. Different things motivate everyone and some of these factors are not monitory orientated: instead they react more effectively to incentives that offer personnel recognition and achievement. Motivation is based on individual needs, not external influences. When an individual wants to do something for need, motivation occurs automatically.

Within an organization motivation can have an effect on critical business outputs such as yield, customer complaints and customer demand. Organizations rely heavily on the competence and efficiency of its operations staff to ensure that products are manufactured in numbers that meet the customer demand and the required levels of quality. If employees lack the motivation to manufacture products to meet customer demand, then lots of problems arise leading to various degrees of consequences. Employees in an organization are its greatest asset and no matter how efficient the knowledge, technology and equipment may be, it is no match for the effectiveness and efficiency of a well-motivated team of employees. Rewarding employees for their extraordinary work acts as a major moral booster and helps to create a world class-working environment. Research has shown that the main reason for an employee to leave an organization is the inability of the organization to acknowledge the employee's work or value.

Trying to understand the needs of employees is the basic principle of what motivation theory tries to do. This turns out to be exceedingly difficult. Many theories posit a hierarchy of needs, in which the needs at the bottom are the most urgent and need to be satisfied before attention can be paid to the others.

There are two aspects to motivation that have being developed, these intrinsic and extrinsic drivers.

Intrinsic Motivation is evident when people engage in an activity for its own sake, without some obvious external incentive present; an example would be a hobby or pastime. Intrinsic motivation has been intensely studied by educational psychologists since the 1970's and a numerous studies have found it to be associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students. There is currently no exact or set theory to explain intrinsic motivation, most of the work that has been done to date combines different theories.

Extrinsic Motivation has traditionally being used to motivate employees. Extrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from outside an individual. The motivating factors are external, or outside, rewards such as money or shares. These rewards provide satisfaction and pleasure that the task itself may not provide.

An extrinsically motivated person will work on a task even when they have little interest in it because of the anticipated satisfaction they will get from some reward. The rewards can be something as minor as a smiley face to something major like fame or fortune. For example, extrinsically motivated people who dislikes math may work hard on a math equation because want the reward for completing it. In the case of a student, the reward would be a good grade on an assignment or in the class. Extrinsic motivation does not mean, however, that a person will not get any pleasure from working on or completing a task.

People in general have different wants, part of what a theory of motivation tries to do is explaining and predicts who has which wants. Many theories posit a hierarchy of needs, in which the needs at the bottom are the most urgent and need to be satisfied before attention can be paid to the others. Strategies used to influence employee loyalty can be intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation.

2. Motivation Theory

The advent of the industrialized age forced many organizations and companies to study what motivates their employees in an attempt to increase productivity. It was believed that money was a key motivational factor in driving employee performance. In later studies conducted other factors besides money where found to have a greater effect on employees in relation to their attitude and work ethic (Linder, 1998). There are two different categories of motivation theories such as content theories, and process theories.

* Content theories place emphasis on what motivates, seeking to identify and account for the specific influences that motivate people.

* Process theories of motivation view motivating factors as a complex set of variables that, when taken together, enable motivation.

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