Lectures Motivation, Power & Leadership
Lecture 1: Introduction (coordination or motivation challenges)
Motivation, power and leadership are important aspects of organizational functioning. Further, it is
related to many societal issues in politics, but also on smaller scales.
Why manage people? The ‘problem’
Humans are group-living animals and, therefore, have to cope with many coordination and
movation challenges
Coordination challenges: people may have to coordinate their actions to attain particular goals
you have a sports team, how do you manage that everyone washes their jerseys
Motivation challenges: people may have to be motivated to attain particular goals why are
people motivated when they are bored? Then there is no motivation to be somewhere
Motivation challenges:
1. In the attainment of goals
a. Individual motives
b. Framework: self-determination theory
2. In social interactions
a. Social motives
b. Framework: interdependence theory
1) Motivation challenges in the attainment of goals
Sources of (work) motivation
1. Extrinsic motivation: you do something for external reasons
2. Intrinsic motivation: you do something for internal reasons
3. No interest in particular behavior
Those are all not the same!
Article Gagné & Deci
Self-determination theory: distinction between different kinds of motivation
1. Amotivation: absence of any intention Controlled
2. Extrinsic motivation:
- External regulation: contingent on punishment of reward e.g. he might be willing to
swim because he is anticipated to earn a lot of money for himself (it is not external
regulation when the money goes to charity)
- Introjected regulation: contingent on self-worth and ego-involvement the regulation
is within the person, but it is controlled by the internalized extrinsic motivation. They
have the feeling that they have to do it, to feel worthy and it can be a boost of your ego
e.g. lets swim 200 km to feel worthy
- Identified regulation: contingent on congruence with a goal or value, even when the
behavior is boring or unpleasant but they do really identify with this value e.g. lets
swim 200 km because it’s valuable
- Integrated regulation: contingent on instrumental importance for one’s identity. They
really see it as a center of who they are and how they want to be seen by others e.g.
lets swim 200 km because it’s who I am
3. Intrinsic motivation: interest and enjoyment e.g. lets swim 200 km because it is fun
N.B. The more you go to the right, the more it is internalized. Autonomous
How do we get people who are amotivated, to internalize their motivation?
,Intrinsic motivation and internalization require fulfillment of the personal need for:
- Autonomy (or agency): “I feel free to do this”
- Competence (or self-efficacy): “I feel I can do this”
- Relatedness (or belongingness): “I feel connected to others by doing this”
NOT research agenda or link with other theories
2) Motivation challenges in social interactions
There is a conflict between self-interest and collective interest
Social dilemma: which interest to pursue? Maintaining scarce resources or providing public
goods
What makes them dilemmas?
Two defining features of social dilemmas:
1. For each individual it is more beneficial to further their self-interest (defect) than to further
the collective interest (cooperate)
2. All individuals are worse off if no one furthers the collective interest
Various factors have been identified that promote or hinder cooperation in social dilemmas and
several theories provide an integrative framework
Article Parks et al.
What is important of the article of Parks et al. interdependence theory
Social dilemma: two people/groups, two strategies (cooperate and defect) prisoners dillema
- Greed motive: free riding, social loafing. It is always better to defect
- Fear motive: sucker effect
Why would people go beyond direct self-interest?
Given matrix of objective outcomes transformation of motivation effective matrix of subjective
outcomes
Subjective outcome:
Prosocial value orientation: you value the fact that you both earn a lot, so therefore it is more
tempting to cooperate objectively it can be a dilemma, but subjectively not
You expect to interact with the other again: the dilemma changes again
You are reluctant to hurt the other, so you don’t like when you defect and they cooperate. The
dilemma is therefore not there, because you do not want to hurt others.
Transformation does not always lead to no dilemma. You can also have the subjective outcome to
compete with the other, and then the dilemma is even stronger.
, Motivation challenges in social interaction
- Pursuit of self-interest possibility that people free-ride, they do not necessarily want the
collective to fail, but they just don’t want to do the work either
- Antagonism: oppositional behavior toward other(s), they want the collective to fail
E.g. intellectual property in the pharmaceutical industry it is in your interest to
sell it for the highest price, but for the collective it is not the best outcome
E.g. Political parties that thwart each other
Recognize which outcomes there are: third parties etc.
Do people want ‘management’?
Leader-followers structures emerge spontaneously
Leaderless group discussion:
- Group discussion on a problem
- Observers graded the performance of the individuals and the group
- Observers actually rated the leadership status of the individuals
Leaderless groups do not stay leaderless for long
Leader-follower structures are prevalent throughout (modern) human societies (CEO, army, mother
vs child). But it is not self evident that we have these structures. Because, from an evolutionary
perspective, followership is puzzling. The best outcome is for the leadership position, so you exepct
that everyone is striving for the leadership position. To understand leadership, we also have to
understand followership.
Article Vugt et al.
Leadership vs. followership:
- Humans are not a despotic species: submissive followers of one dominant leaders wolves
are such kinds of species, humans are not evolved in such species
- Humans are an egalitarian species:
o Informal, consensual and situational leadership
o Followers strive for fairness
Circumstances today not necessarily align with the circumstances that selected for our design (2.5
million years ago) we now might favor a despotic social system
In the article, why is this mismatch there and what are the consequences?
Article Edelson et al.
Leadership is the acceptance of responsibility for others:
Responsibility aversion: reduced willingness to make decisions when the collective welfare is at
stake are people willing to accept the responsibility? responsibility aversion good predictor for
if people are willing to take the lead
- Act is the gamble, not act is sure thing, defer was exit action, they can make a better
decision when they decide as a group (majority vote)
- Majority actually preferred to avoid responsibility, so in the group most people choose to
defer. This predicts quit well how well they score on leadership scales (it predicts
leadership), if you do not want to make a decision you did not scored high on the leadership
score.
