Lecture 2: Motivation Flashcards
(36 cards)
What is work motivation?
A set of forces that originate both within as well as beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work-related behaviour, and to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration
Recognises both environmental and inherent forces as influential in work motivation
What is the formula for performance?
Motivation x ability = performance
What are the 4 traditional approaches to work motivation?
- Hierarchy of needs theory
- Equity theory
- Expectancy theory
- Goal-setting theory
What is the background of the hieraarchy of needs?
- Created by Maslow in 1943
- Most of Maslow’s writing are not concerened with work motivation - later interest in application
- People are motivated at work by unfulfilled needs
What are the stages of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
- Physiological Needs: (Survival and Bodily comfort e.g. food, water, warmth, rest)
- Safety Needs: (Stability and safety in family and organisation)
- Belonging and love needs: ( E.G: mutual social and intimate relationships, membership
- Esteem needs: (Competence, approval status and sense of achievement)
- Self actualisation: (E.G: achieving one’s full potential)
What are the propositions of the hierarchy of needs?
- It is universal to all people
- The needs exist in a hierarchy
- An individual will systematically satisfy needs by starting with basic ones and moving up the hierarchy
- Basic needs always takes precedence over all higher ones
- A substantially satisfied need no longer motivates the individual
How can the hierarchy of needs be applied to work?
- When pay and security are poor employees will be motivated toward these needs
- As conditions improve social needs (support from co-workers and managers) will become more important
- With an improved work environment, work becomes important for self-esteem and self actualisation
- Need to ensure employees’ needs are fulfilled to get the best out of them
What are evaluations of the hierarchy of needs theory?
- Difficult to test and a lack of consistent empirical support
- There are some practical applications but mainly a philosophical theory (how do we shift from one need to the other? Are needs hierarchal or do we need them all at once? Vague concept of self-actualisation)
- Cultural differences might mean that everyone doesn’t have the same universal needs
What is the background of equity theory?
- Formed by Adams 1965
- Based on principle of social comparison
- Basic premise is that individuals seek fairness at work
- People are motivated to work when they perceive unfairness in comparison to other people
Propositions of equity theory:
- A perceives themselves in comparison with others.
- Balance of inputs (effort, time, ideas) and outputs (pay, working conditions, recognition)
- Worker might become demotivated if they perceive their outputs to not be fair in proportion to their inputs (fairness is perceived when individuals compare themselves to others)
Equity theory implications
- Inequity can lead to positive outcomes in the case over overpayment (if you want someone to work harder, pay them more)
- However people don’t always change their behaviour
- Can distort inputs and outputs
- Importance of fairness in rewards
- Importance of visibility of procedures
- People WILL make comparisons and secrecy can lead to these being based on rumours or misinformation
What is a related theory to equity theory?
Organisational justice theory (Greenberg 1987)
What is organisational justice theory?
- Same premise as equity theory but only recognises three forms of justice
Distributive/substantive justice: Do people believe they have received fair rewards for their contributions and is the allocation of rewards fair?
Procedural justice: Are there procedures used to make organisational decisions considered fair?
Interpersonal justice: The degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity and respect by decisionmakers when executing procedures or determining outcomes
What are the implications of organsiational justice?
Equity theory focuses solely on distributive justice (fairness regarding outcomes like rewards rewards, pay etc)
- Organisational justice theory suggests we should also consider fairness regarding procedural aspects of the mployee relationship to understand impact on employee motivation and performance
- Employee relations practices (e.g: employee involvement) may be extremely important
Equity theory / justice evaluation:
Support from research studies:
- Higher levels of perceived organisational justice leads tohigher performance and citizenship behaviour
- Lower levels leads to counterproductive behaviour
- Meta-analysis of 183 studies by Colquitt et all 2001
Is all based on perceptions: people may perceive the ame inputs and outputs differently
What is the background of expectancy theory?
- Founded by Vroom (1964)
- Motivation is understood in the form of a mathematical equation
- People are motivated to work when they can see a clear effort-reward link between the effort they put in and getting rewards they want
What are the expectancy theory propositions?
Motivational force (MF) = V x I x E
Valience (V): employees’ feelings about job outcomes, ususally defined in terms of attractiveness (-10 to 10; 0 = indifference)
Instrumentality (I): perceived relationship between performance and attainment of each outcome (0 = no relationship, 1 - strongest possible relationship)
Expectancy (E): is the perceived performance between effort and performance (0 = no relationship, 1 = strongest possible relationship)
What are the implications of expectancy theory?
Increasing desired outcomes is one way to increase motivation
- Desired outcomes will depend on the individual employee (some people want more pay; others want recognition)
-BUT employees must also see a clear link between the effort they put in and their work
- Management can support the effirt-performance link through training and resources
- Performance-reward link can be strengthened through perfromance-related pay or appraisals
What are evaluations of expectancy theory?
Empirical support that V I and E are important contributors to motivation
- Van Eerde and Thierry (1996) meta-analysis of 77 studies (Behaviour is predicted by adding the three components V I and E and multiplying them
Theory better at predicting individual’s motivation towards different tasks than motivation levels of different people
- Overly complicated, unclear if that is actually how decision-making works for people in real life
What is the background of goal-setting theory?
- Founded by Locke and Latham (1960)
-Goals are targets a person is trying to attain
- People are motivated to work by the goals they set about their performance
What are the propositions of goal-setting theory?
- More difficult goals lead to higher levels of job performance as they require more commitment (goals must be achievable however)
- Goals can vary in specificity (the more specific a goal, the more concentrated the person’s effort and more directed the behaviour)
- Important for people to receive feedback about task performance
- Participation in goal setting theory is also important (required commitment to achieve the goal)
What framework should goals be set under?
SMART
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Results-orientated
T: Time-bound
What is the evaluation for goal-setting theory?
Substantial empirical support for basic principles
- BUT support is mainly from student samples
VERY practical theory
- 79% British organisations use some form of goal striving (Institute of Personnel Management)
Some questions unanswered: How do we cope with multiple goals? Are there individual differences in goal motivation?
What are the downsides of goal-setting theory?
Goals may encourage people to use unethical methods to achieve them or misrepresent performance
- Focuses attention on achievment rather than process
- Draws attention away from morality of behaviour
- Helps peoples justify unethical behaviour or displace responsibility
