Theories of Motivation - Essay Example

? MOTIVATION THEORIES by Presented to Theories of Motivation of and Paper Due THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 1 Theories of Motivation This paper describes three classical motivation theories and illustrates their application in different business situations, with special emphasis on their usefulness to the 21st century business manager. Motivation “is literally the desire to do things. It’s the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. It’s the crucial element in setting and attaining goals” (Psych Basics: Motivation). The three motivational theories dealt with in this paper are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, one of the most important motivational theories so far; Employee Motivation: Motivation in the Workplace; and the Incentive Theory of Motivation. The first theory that this paper deals with is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. To reiterate, this theory is considered to be one of the most important available motivational theories and is used by many professionals in various institutions. It has a broad—and even, perhaps, a universal—appeal. It is actually a very common-sense theory in that “it suggests that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other needs” (Cherry, K.). The depiction of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs enables easy understanding of his theory. The base of the diagram, which contains the basic needs, is broad and, as with all pyramids, comes to a point at the top. This should indicate that in relation to other levels of the pyramids, humans have more basic needs than other needs. The most basic needs are the physiological needs for water, food, warmth, air, and sleep. It can be readily seen that if an employee does not have these satisfied, that (s)he is not going to be motivated—and, in fact, not able—to be productive. These needs seem so simple—albeit so essential—that businesses may not even wonder if the salary of certain of their employees is sufficient for them to purchase enough food to keep the hunger THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 2 pangs away, let alone access healthy and energizing foods. Businesses should also be concerned about where their lower paid employees sleep. Catching a few hours of sleep on a friend’s couch or in a car is insufficient to be able to stay alert and produce quality work. The second of the five levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are those of safety and security, which although necessary for survival are not as crucial as those of the first level. Examples of second-level security needs are shelter from the environment, safe neighbourhoods, steady employment and health insurance (ibid.). There is grass roots and political movement afoot in some areas for employers to pay their employees a living wage, the amount differing somewhat depending upon the cost of living in any given area. Minimum wages in some areas are barely sufficient to pay rent and bus fare to work. The food banks help. Businesses would be wise to consider what loyalty and quality production can be expected from employees in such situations, especially if they have a toothache but have no money nor dental insurance to have a dentist take care of the problem. Many a business manager has been heard to lament that it is impossible to find good employees today. If such managers, gave up their lifestyle for a couple of months and tried living on the wages paid to their minimum or close-to-minimum-wage paid employees, they would, undoubtedly, have a rude awakening. Even if the employees’ physiological and security needs are met, if their social needs—the third level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—are, for whatever reasons, barely being met, these employees are hurting inside and, consequently, in most cases are not sufficiently motivated nor capable of giving their all to their work. The needs in level three are social needs. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 3 According to Maslow’s theory, social needs are met through friendships; romantic attachments; families; and social, community, or social groups (ibid). There are a number of circumstances that pave the way for these needs being unmet. A single employee may have relocated from another town for a job, knowing nobody in the city nor in the workplace. There is a great deal of stress involved in this and quite a bit a good 21st century business manager can do to relieve some of it, which would not only help the employee but also the company. Meeting the employee upon arrival into town and taking him or her to the booked temporary accommodation would be a good start. The next day a company employee could pick up the new person and take him or her to the office to be shown around, introduced to staff, and invited to a coffee and/or lunch break, and so begin the process of welcoming and orientating the new employee to the new place of employment, residential areas, recreational areas and facilities, and so begin the process of meeting the level three needs. Next comes level four of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and these consist of esteem needs (ibid.). Here is where a business manager can either make or break an employee. Everybody needs a certain degree of positive self-esteem, of a feeling of personal worth, of social recognition, and accomplishment. If superiors in a business seldom give any positive reinforcement, but lots of negative reinforcement, employees will not feel valued and appreciated. They will adopt a can’t do instead of a can do feeling and this will be reflected in their performance. Communication should not always flow from the top, but also from the bottom. Employees should be encouraged to submit suggestions and given recognition for good ones and especially for those that are implemented. Business managers should lead—not order—by example, so that employees will want to follow in their footsteps. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 4 At the tip of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid is the self-actualizing level, a level not everyone reaches and of those who do, not everybody reaches the same degree within this level. This is where—if levels one to four, inclusive, have been successfully navigated—individuals are “self aware, concerned with personal growth, less concerned with the opinion of others and interesting in fulfilling their potential” (ibid.). Not everybody has the same potential level, and that is okay. The point here is that at this level individuals are interested in fulfilling their potential, and wise 21st century business managers will give such employees every opportunity to reach it, mentoring and reinforcing them along the way. Another important classical theory of motivation with excellent application potential to business situations and especially to the 21st century business manager is Employee Motivation: Motivation in the Workplace. This theory begins by stating that “the job of a manager in the workplace is to get the work done through the employees. To do this, the manager should be able to motivate employees. But that’s easier said than done” (Employee Motivation). This article states that motivation is neither well understood nor well practiced. “To understand motivation, one must understand human nature itself. And therein lies the problem!” Nevertheless, this understanding is a prerequisite to effective management and leadership (ibid.). “Research and observations show that well motivated employees are more productive and creative” (ibid.). A schematic shows that under existing conditions of an organization work content is added by defects in design or specification; it is also added by ineffective design or operation; and that there is ineffective use of time due to the fault of management and of workers. However, productivity was increased when the work was made easier, simpler, quicker, rewarding, safer, and fun. To do this, “ the importance of the application of ergonomics THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 5 and effective formal and informal communication is stressed. Good ergonomics reduces time and effort”(ibid.). In good ergonomics desks, chairs, lights., etc., are made to fit the employee and not the other way around. If employees are comfortable and have everything they require to do their job, they will be motivated to do it—and to do it well. On the other hand, say the lighting is so poor that the employees cannot see their tasks well, they will likely not do their work well and they will get headaches and miss work, all of which will likely reflect poorly on their evaluations and, consequently, demoralize them, something a savvy 21st century business manager would not allow to happen. Another principle stressed in this theory is to know that “amazing ideas come from those most undervalued employees—talk and listen to them. Seek and you will find, ask and you will receive” (ibid.). This same suggestion was made earlier in this paper while discussing Maslow’s theory because when a manager talks and listens to the employees on the lower rungs of an organizational chart, they feel valued; and when people feel valued, they are motivated to perform well at given tasks. Studies that have borne this out extremely well are the Hawthorne Studies carried out between 1927 – 1932 at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois. In this study regardless of the experimental manipulation, the productivity of the workers seemed to improve. Although the study was to last only one year, it lasted five years because the researchers were set back each time they tried to relate the manipulated physical conditions to the workers’ efficiency. The bottom line is that a major result of these studies is the term, “the Hawthorn Effect—an increase in worker productivity produced by the psychological stimulus of being singled out and made to feel important” (Hawthorne Effect), which is right in line with level four of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 6 Some theorists believe that motivation is the result to reduce bodily needs. For example, if a person is hungry (s)he will seek out food and eat it. The Incentive Theory, however, explains motivation in terms of external stimuli that pull an individual towards some goal. Accordingly, a person does not eat food because of hunger but because the food is there (on the desert tray) and it looks good and tasty. Thus, “incentives are objects or events in the environment that motivate the individual in the absence of any apparent biological need.” Also, “Incentives can be either positive or negative. We are motivated to obtain positive incentives, whereas we are motivated to avoid negative incentives” (Educational Material). It is really good that we are motivated to avoid negative incentives because if we do not do so, negative drift can creep into our perceptual field and make us more negative than we may be at any given time. “Everybody has the potential to be positive, but it does not come easily. Few people are endowed with a positive attitude that does not take great inner strength to maintain” (Chapman, E., 1993, p. 33). Knowing this and knowing that people with a positive attitude get along better with their colleagues, have fewer work absences, and a higher productivity rate, 21st century business manager should avoid throwing negatives their way. If such employees at sometime are not doing something correctly, there are certainly ways of offering constructive criticism that does not demean those individuals and allow a negative drift into their perceptual field. Remember also to use positive reinforcement whenever possible. To reiterate, the Incentive Theory explains motivation in terms of external stimuli that pull an individual towards some goal (Educational Material). Prof. B. F. Skinner believed this as well and was, therefore, “specifically interested in controlling those responses that seem to occur with no direct simulation, such responses are emitted rather than elicited by obvious THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 7 environment stimulus” (ibid.). Eventually, he developed a process known as operant conditioning, which involved shaping, extinction, spontaneous recovery, and reinforcement, of which shaping is the most important. It involves the use of “selective reinforcement to bring certain desirable changes in the behaviour of the organism The basic process in shaping is successive approximation of the desired behaviour” (ibid.). Savvy 21st century business managers can—and many do—use shaping to turn employees—especially recent graduates—into the company mould. With shaping, even the smallest step in the right direction is rewarded (returning from a coffee break on time) several times and, then, ceased because the intention is for the individual to by that time have taken a bigger step (returning on time from all coffee breaks) and so forth. Skilful managers can meet with great success using operant conditioning, especially when positive transfer of learning takes place, making a subsequent task easier to learn because of the previously learned material. For example, people who typed on the manual typewriters found it much easier and quicker to type on the electric ones than people who had never typed (Morris, 1976, p. 149.) In conclusion, executives must be able to apply their knowledge of human behaviour to real life situations in order to obtain acceptable performance from their workforce. “There is no simple formula to tell the manager how to lead and motivate his people” (Beach, p. 445). It is important to recognize that employees may carry out tasks for either intrinsic or extrinsic rewards, the latter being those the skilful manager is better able to help fulfill (Life Success Secrets.com). Remember “if you want to make things happen, the ability to motivate yourself and others is a crucial skill” (Editor in Chief, Pick the Brain). THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 8 Bibliography Beach, D. S. (1980). Personnel: The Management of People at Work. Fourth Edition. Prentice-Hall Inc.: Englewood Cliffs. Chapman, E. (1993). Up Your Attitude: Changing the Way You Look at Life. Crisp Publications: Mento Park, California. Cherry, K. Hierarchy of Needs: The Five Levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Available February 03, 2012, on http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/ahierarchyofneeds. Editor in Chief, Pick the Brain. Pick the Brain: Grow Yourself. Available February 03, 2012, on http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/21-proven-motivation-tactics. Educational Material. Need, Drive and Incentive Theory of Motivation. Available on February 03, 2012, on http://www.nicefun.net/need-drive-and-incentive-theory-of-motivation-vt265. Employee Motivation: Theory and Practice. Available February 03, 2012, on http://www.accel-team.com/motivation. Hawthorne Effect. Available February 03, 2012, on http://www.nwlink.com/-donclark/hrd/history/hawthorne.html. Life Success Secrets.Com. Available on February 03, 2012, on http://www.life-success-secrets. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION 9 Bibliography com/motivation-theories.html. Morris, C. G. (1976, p.149). Psychology: An Introduction. Prentice-Hall Inc.: Englewood Cliffs. Psych Basics: Motivation. Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC. Available on February 03, 2012, on http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/motivation. Read More