Motivation to Work and Organisational Performance - Assignment Example

The importance of employee incentive in m-power and what role does it play in organizational performance and to what extent (in what capa does itmotivate employees) TABLE OF CONTENT 1.0Introduction The field of human resource (HR) management is one of the many interesting area of research that has witnessed a paradigm shift within the last few decades (Huselid, A. M., (1995), Doty &Delery 1996). Within this area of research, an increasing body of literature contains the argument that, high performance work practices, including comprehensive employee's recruitment, selection procedures, incentives compensation and performance management systems, and extensive employee's involvement and training can improve the knowledge, skills and abilities of firms (Huselid,1995, Doty &Delery 1996). Agency Theory When looking at factors that affect job satisfaction, I find that Agency theory might be helpful as it explains the extent to which organisations need to think of their human resource responsible in producing the output needed by organisations to meet shareholders value. Agency theory is concerned with issues related to the ownership of the firm when that ownership is separated from the day-to-day running of the organisation. It assumes that in all but owner- managed organisations the owner or owners (known in agency theory as the "principal") of an organisation must vest authority to an "agent"-corporate management- to act on their behalf. Harrison R and Kessels J. (2004, Pp 25-26). The principal recognises the risk, here and act on the assumption that any agent will look to serve its own as well as the principal interests as it fulfils it contract with that principal. However, this is not the situation in real life situation. As all agents are perceived to be opportunistic (Williamson, 1985; Seth and Thomas, 1994). These approaches to examining the problems of human exchange derived from the field of finance and economics but they are often applied to the study of shareholders Risk Management (SHRM) (Harrel-Cook and Ferris, 1997). Agency theory is therefore used to analyse this conflict in interest between the principal . (shareholders of organisations) and their agents (leaders of these organisations). Whereby the "Agents" in keeping with the interest of the shareholders and organisational goals turn to use financial motivational aspects like bonuses, higher payrolls, pensions, sick allowances, risk payments, perks to reward and retained their employees and enhance their performance. There is a strong lobby propounding the view that human resources and their management are the source of competitive advantage for the business, rather than, say, access to capital or use of technology. It is therefore logical to suggest that, attention needs to be paid to the nature of this resource and its management as this will impact on human resource behaviour and performance and consequently the performance of the organisation. Indeed Boxall and Steeneveld (1999) argue that there is no need to prove the relationship between firm critical influence on performance and labour management as it is self evident that the quality of human resource management is a critical influence on the performance of the firm. Concern for strategic integration, commitment flexibility and quality, has called for attention for employees motivation and retention. Given this perception, the principal in an organisation feels unable to predict an agent's behaviour in any given situation and so brings into play various measures to do with incentives in other to tie employee's needs to those of their organisation. Thus getting employee's identification with respect to the organisation, and thus increasing their commitment level. As an approach to mediate the employment contract, elements of human resource strategy (especially those to do with rewards and retention) can offer a way of ensuring an efficient transaction process that enables both parties to get committed towards the fulfillment of each other needs. The fundamental problem, dealt with is what drives or induces people to exploit their potential resources in the way they do in organisations The issue of motivation and performance are they positively related By focusing on the financial aspect of motivation problem like bonus system, allowances perks, salaries, etc. By paying attention to the financial aspect of motivation, I intend to probe in to the role this aspect has on enhancing employee's performance. I believe, financial motivation has become the most concern in today's organisation, and tying to Mallow's basic needs, non-financial aspect only comes in when financial motivation has failed. Gibson, Ivancevick, Donnelly, (2004, Pp 214) a space is then set for non-financial measures. Though in some situation, it is being operated side by side. But as a research topic for my thesis I will employ the financial aspects of motivation used by the agents of organisation in enhancing their employee's performance and the extent to which non-financial aspects of motivation turn to enhance employee's performance. To evaluate the methods of performance motivation in organisation in organizing some motivational factors like satisfies and dissatisfies will be used to evaluate how employees motivation is enhanced other than financial aspects of motivation what is motivation According to Greenberg and Baron (2000 p190) this definition could be divided into three main parts. The first part looks at arousal that deals with the drive, or energy behind individual (s) action. People turn to be guided by their interest in making a good impression on others, doing interesting work and being successful in what they do. The second part referring to the choice people make and the direction their behaviour takes. The last part deals with maintaining behaviour clearly defining how long people have to persist at attempting to meet their goals. Kreitner (1995), Buford, Bedeian &Linder (1995), Higgins (1994) all cited in Linder (1998,p3) defined motivation as "the psychological process that gives behaviour purpose and direction, a predisposition to behave in a purposive manner to achieve specific unmet needs, an unsatisfied need, and the will to achieve, respectively. Young (2000, p1) suggest that motivation can be defined in a variety of ways, depending on who you ask .Ask some one on the street, you may get a response like "its what drives us" or "its what make us do the things we do." Therefore motivation is the force within an individual that account for the level, direction, and persistence of effort expended at work." Halepota (2005, p16) defines motivation as "a persons active participation and commitment to achieve the prescribed results. "Halepota further presents that the concept of motivation is abstract because different strategies produce different results at different times and there is no single strategy that can produce guaranteed favourable results all the times." According to Antomioni (1999, p29), "the amount of effort people are willing to put in their work depends on the degree to which they feel their motivational needs will be satisfied. On the other hand, individuals become de-motivated if they feel something in the organisation prevents them from attaining good outcomes. It can be observed from the above definitions that, motivation in general, is more or less basically concern with factors or events that moves, leads, and drives certain human action or inaction over a given period of time given the prevailing conditions. Further more the definitions suggest that there need to be an" invisible force" to push people to do something in return. It could also be deduced from the definition that having a motivated work force or creating an environment in which high levels of motivation are maintained remains a challenge for today's management. . This challenge may emanate from the simple fact that motivation is not a fixed trait -as it could change with changes in personal, psychological, financial or social factors. For this thesis, the definition of motivation by Greenberg & Baron (2003) is adopted, as it is more realistic and simple as it considers the individual and his performance. Greenberg &Baron defines motivation as: "The set of processes that arouse, direct, and maintain human behaviour towards attaining some goal". (Greenberg &Baron, 2003, p190) Bassett-Jones &Lloyd (2005, p931) presents that two views of human nature underlay early research into employee motivation. The first view focuses on Taylorism, which viewed people as basically lazy and work -shy", and thus held that these set of employees can only be motivated by external stimulation. The second view was based on Hawthorn findings, which held the view that employees are motivated to work well for "its own sake" as well as for the social and monetary benefits this type of motivation according to this school was internally motivated. Motivational theories Even though much research been conducted on the field of financial motivation and many researchers and writers have proposed theories on the concept of financial motivation, and its role in enhancing employee's performance in every organisation some of these models have been widely used and accepted by today's organisations leaders. In this thesis discussion on some of the motivational theories will include Alders (ERG theory), Maslow (Need theory), Vrooms (Expectancy theory), Adams (Social equity theory), Taylor (productivity theory), Herzberg (Two factor theory), Mac Gregory (theory X and Y), Geogopalaus (path goal theory) and skinner (Reward theory). To better understand this discussion a summary of the theories is presented and an indebt discussion on Maslow and ERG theories on which the review centers on.. Alder asserts in his Existence relatedness and growth theory commonly known as the ERG theory that there are three basic human needs: Existence, relatedness and growth, which must be meet by an employee to enable him, increase performance. Maslow (1943) suggests that human needs can be classified into five categories and that these categories can be arranged in a hierarchy of importance. These include physiological, security, belongings, esteem and self-actualisation needs. According to him a person is motivated first and foremost to satisfy physiological needs. As long as the employees remain unsatisfied, they turn to be motivated only to fulfil them. When physiological needs are satisfied they cease to act as primary motivational factors and the individual moves "up" the hierarchy and seek to satisfy security needs. This process continues until finally self-actualisation needs are satisfied. According to Maslow the rationale is quite simple because employees who are too hungry or too ill to work will hardly be able to make much a contribution to productivity hence difficulties in meeting organisational goals. Vroom (1964) proposes that people are motivated by how much they want something and how likely they think they are to get it he suggest that motivation leads to efforts and the efforts combined with employees ability together with environment factors which interplay's resulting to performance. This performance interns leads to various outcomes, each of which has an associated value called Valence. Adams (1965) on his part suggests that people are motivated to seek social equity in the rewards they receive for high performance. According to him the outcome from job includes; pay, recognition, promotion, social relationship and intrinsic reward .to get these rewards various inputs needs to be employed by the employees to the job as time, experience, efforts, education and loyalty. He suggests that, people tend to view their outcomes and inputs as a ratio and then compare these ratios with others and turn to become motivated if this ratio is high. Taylor (1911) observed the soldering by employees, which is a situation whereby workers work less than full capacity. He argued that soldering occurs due to the fact employee's fear that performing high will lead to increasing productivity, which might cause them to lose their jobs. This slow paces of work where promoted by faulty systems however this situation is not what prevails with contemporary employees who organisations evaluate them through their performance. Herzberg suggested that there are factors in a job, which causes satisfaction. These he called intrinsic factors (motivators) and other factor he refers to as dissatisfies (hygiene factors). According to him if the motivational factors are met, the employee becomes motivated and hence performs higher. Mac Gregory suggested that there exist two sets of employees (lazy and ambitious employees) With lazy employees representing theory X, hard and ambitious workers representing Y. According to him the lazy employee should be motivated to increase performance in an organisation Geogopalaus path Goal theory of motivation states that, if a worker sees high productivity as a path leading to the attainment of one or more of his personal goals, he will turn to be a high producer. But if he sees low productivity as the path leading to the attainment of his goal he will turn to be a low producer and hence needs to be motivated. This discussion on the above motivational theories explains the fact that the concept of employee's motivation has been a critical factor addressed by previous authors as what determines the core competence of every organisation in achieving a competitive position. Skinner who propounded that any behaviour that is rewarded tends to be repeated supported this view. The term motivation has been used in numerous and often contradictory ways. Presently there appears to be some agreements that the crucial thread that distinguishes employee's motivated behaviours from other behaviour is that it is goal directed behaviour, Bindra (2000 P223) agues that the core of motivating individuals lays in the goal-directed aspect of behaviour. Jones suggested "motivation is concern with how behaviour gets started, is energised, is sustained, is directed, is stopped and what kind of subjective re-action is present in the organisation while this is going on. Bassett-Jones & Lloyd (2005,p 932) suggests that the "content theorists led by Herzberg, assumed a more complex interaction between both internal and external factors, and explored the circumstances in which individuals respond to different internal and external stimuli. On the other hand, process theory, where victor Vroom was the first exponent considers how factors internal to the person result in different behaviours. From the focus point of these two groups, one could observe that the process theories attempt or try to understand the thinking processes an individual might go through in determining how to behave in a workplace. The primary focus was on how and why questions of motivation, how a certain behaviour starts, developed and sustained over time. It is true that human behaviour in general is dynamic and could affect the individual's personal altitude as well as factors surrounding that individual. These exogenous factors eminent from the environment in which the individual operates generate stimuli to employees. It is my belief that employees in general are goal seeking and look for challenges and expect positive re-enforcement at all times. Hence it could only be of benefit if organisations could provide these rewards and factors. Though I have discussed earlier in this thesis that employees are financially motivated, motivation could be seen as a moving target, as what motivates differs among different people. And may even change for the same person over a given period of time, developments within the modern organisation has probably made motivating employees ever more difficult due to the nature of every individual, behaviour increasing the complexity of what can really motivate employees. According to Bassette-jones & Lloyd (2005,p.932) "expectancy, equity, goal setting and reinforcement theory have resulted in the development of a simple model of motivational alignment. The model suggest that once needs of employees are identified, and organisational objectives and also satisfy employee needs .If poorly aligned, then low motivation will be the outcome". According to (Wiley, 1997,p264) "modern approaches to motivation may be organised into three related clusters: (1) personality-based views (2) cognitive choice or decision approaches and (3) goal or self-regulation perspective; where personality-based views emphasise the influence of enduring personal characteristics as they affect goal choice and striving. Workplace behaviour is posited to be determined by persons current need state in certain universal need category. Cognitive choice approaches to work motivation emphasise two determinant of choice and action; expectations, and subjective valuation of the consequences associated with each alternative. These expectancy value theories are intended to predict an individual choice or decision. Goal framework to work motivation emphasise the factors that influence goal striving which focuses on the relationship between goals and work behaviour. The assumption is that an employees conscious intentions (goals) are primary determines of task-related motivation since goals direct their thoughts and action". It is worth noting that an in-depth review of all the different theories mentioned above, is beyond the scope of this thesis. However, the personality-based perspective of work motivation within which Maslow need theory of motivation and Alders ERG theory falls will provide the main support and serve as a foundation for the research reported in this thesis. Specifically, as organisational scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the idea that people are motivated to use their jobs as mechanisms for satisfying their needs. 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