Vroom - Expectancy Theory

According to Vroom to motivate someone mere offering a person something to satisfy his important needs will nt be sufficient. In order for the person to be motivated, he must also be reasonably sure that he has the ability to obtain the reward. An employee's motivation increases when he values a particular outcome highly and when he feels a reasonably good chance of achieving the desired goal. This definition says that : Any individual acts in a way to reach a maximal effect with a minimal effort.

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Stated in other words workers motivation will be high when they believe that high levels of effort will lead to high performance and high performance will lead to the attainment of desired outcomes. Further, according to the theory, a man's motivation is determined by three influencing factors-

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Expectancy - As already explained a person's level of expectancy determines whether he or she believes that a high level of effort will result in a high level of performance. Expectancy is, thus, the belief that efforts are linked to performance.

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Instrumentality - A person's perception about the extent to which performance at a certain level will result in the attainment of outcomes. There should be firm conviction within the employee that high performance will lead to desirable outcomes. Instrumentality is, in short, the belief that performance is related to rewards.

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Valence - The importance placed upon the reward. It refers to how desirable each of the out comes available from a job or organization is to a person. This is becase according to the theory people may differ in the preferences for outcomes.

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High motivation therefore results from high levels of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. If any one factor is low, motivation will be low.

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Managers should strive to ensure that employees' levels of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence are high so that they will be highly motivated.