CHAPTER 7
Motivation I: Basic Concepts
Motivation: the processes that account for an individual’s intensity,
direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.
Intensity describes how hard a person tries. High intensity is unlikely to
lead to favourable job-performance outcomes unless the effort is
channelled in a direction that benefits the organization. Finally, motivation
has a persistence dimension. This measures how long a person can
maintain effort.
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS THEORY
Hierarchy of needs theory (Abraham Maslow):
1. Physiological Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other
bodily needs.
2. Safety Security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
3. Social Affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
4. Esteem Internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and
achievement, and external factors such as status, recognition, and
attention.
5. Self-actualization Drive to become what we are capable of
becoming; includes growth, achieving our potential, and self-
fulfilment.
Physiological and safety needs were lower-order needs, and social, esteem
and self-actualization were higher-order needs. Higher-order needs are
satisfied internally, whereas lower-order needs are predominantly satisfied
externally.
Maslow’s theory has received wide recognition. It is intuitively logical and
easy to understand. However, research does not validate it.
THEORY X AND THEORY Y
Douglas McGregor proposed two distinct views of human beings: one
basically negative, labelled theory X, and the other basically positive,
labelled theory Y.
Theory X: managers believe employees inherently dislike work and must
therefore be directed or even coerced into performing it.
Theory Y: managers assume employees can view work as being as
natural as rest and play, and therefore the average person can learn to
accept, and even seek, responsibility.
No evidence exists that either set of assumptions is valid or that acting on
theory Y assumptions will lead to more motivated workers.
TWO-FACTOR THEORY
, Motivation-hygiene theory.
According to Herzberg, the factors that lead to job satisfaction were
separate and distinct from those that lead to job dissatisfaction.
When hygiene factors are adequate people will not be dissatisfied;
neither will they be satisfied.
Criticisms include:
- Herzberg’s methodology is limited because it relies on self-reports.
When things are going well, people tend to take credit. Contrarily,
they blame failure on the extrinsic environment.
- The reliability of Herzberg’s methodology is questionable. Raters
have to make interpretations, so they may contaminate the findings
by interpreting one response in one manner while treating a similar
response differently.
- No overall measure of satisfaction was utilized. A person may dislike
part of a job yet still think the job is acceptable overall.
- Herzberg assumed a relationship between satisfaction and
productivity, but he looked only at satisfaction. To make his research
relevant, we must assume a strong relationship between satisfaction
and productivity.
MCCLELLAND’S THEORY OF NEEDS
It looks at three needs:
- Need for achievement (nAch) The drive to excel, to achieve in
relationship to a set of standards.
- Need for power (nPow) The need to make others behave in a way
they would not have otherwise.
- Need for affiliation (nAff) The desire for friendly and close
interpersonal relationships.
When jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback and
an intermediate degree of risk, high achievers are strongly motivated.
A high need to achieve does not necessarily make someone a good
manager, especially in large organizations. People with a high
achievement need are interested in how well they do personally, and not
in influencing others to do well.
Need for affiliation and power tend to be closely related to managerial
success. The best managers are high in their need for power and low in
their need for affiliation.
Because McClelland argued that the three needs are subconscious – we
may rank high on them but not know it – measuring them is not easy.
SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY
