Managing Organisational Behavior - Essay Example

Topic: Managing Organisational Behaviour Lecturer: Presentation: Introduction People often do the things that they feel areright, beneficial for them or if there is some thing that motivates them. Motivation acts as an external stimulus to accomplishment of tasks by employees in the workplace. Performance in employment is usually based on skills and motivation. Unlike skills that are acquired over a long period of time, motivation is usually a flexible aspect in the workplace and can be acquired within a short period depending on the strategy of motivation applied. Motivation can be achieved through generating high expectations among the employees, encouragement through reasonable treatment, punishing the employees who do not perform, enhancing satisfaction of employee needs, goal setting, job streamlining as well as through performance and reward management. The choice of the strategy for motivation depends on the management. The motivators used are usually focused on accomplishing the ultimate goal of the organization. Different people have different motivators that can improve their performance. Some employees are motivated by job security; others are motivated by opportunities for career development while others are concerned about the nature of their work and self actualization. Employee benefits and reward schemes are also applied to motivate employees. This paper presents a critique of the recent scandal over MPs expenses claims coupled with, many would argue, the excessive bonuses paid out in the financial sector, which leads one to think that maybe money, as F. W. Taylor’s scientific management theory states, is a more realistic motivator in contemporary employment than any of the ideas offered by the Needs Theorists. Scientific Management Theory The theory developed by F.W. Taylor regarding motivation in the workplace was based on various suppositions regarding human behavior in the workplace. In his assumptions, he compared humans with cogent money-making animals whose major concern was to maximize the financial gains from their work (Davenport, 1999). In other words, the need for man to work was solely viewed as an economic affair. On the other hand, Taylor’s view of the behavior of employee was that they work well as individuals depending on their financial ambitions. The more the financial ambitions, the more an individual worked. He believed that these ambitions were different among different workers and therefore they could not be treated as a group. Standardization of the people meant that they could be made to work in a particular way. All these assumptions according to Taylor could be made true by money. The workers would be motivated to become what the employer wanted if they were offered an amount equivalent to their output at work. The lower the output the lower the pay was supposed to be. Workers who produced more than a fair day’s work were entitled to a bonus. In essence, Taylor’s theory ignored the fact that employees are unique in their motivation towards work. It is not possible for a particular strategy to go well with everybody in the workplace. Generally, this approach did not appreciate diversity and the fact that there was more to work than just the financial gains. In reality, the initial drive towards work is the financial gain from work that helps a person to satisfy personal needs. This means if people had no needs, they could not go to work. However, focusing on money as the sole cause for people to work is wrong if looked at in different perspectives. It means that when people work and amass enough wealth, they will stop working, and the employers would not have any other motivator for people to work. On the other hand, humans are rational beings and they can not work beyond the capacity of their bodies. In spite of the financial rewards offered, they may not meet targets due to exhaustion regardless of the level of supervision. In essence, it is not money that works but the people (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006). MPs are politicians whose ambitions are driven by various interests mainly popularity and power. Most of the politicians are usually wealthy and may not necessarily be focused on money while vying for the highest post. However, as Kondratuk et al. (2004) observes, contemporary politics are controlled by the amount of wealth that the politicians command. Without money, it is difficult to maintain popularity in a constituency. When a candidate is elected to parliament, the other competitors are challenged to ensure that they defeat him/her in the next election. In essence, politicians do not relax over their ambitions to maintain power. To keep the power, the politician needs to use money on his own people as well as to develop strategies to counter the opposition in the constituency. Nevertheless, they can not use their salary to undertake these activities; hence they have to establish an alternative source of funds. To maintain a personal image of integrity, the MPs offer explanations that their work is too involving and that the allowances they get are not be enough. In essence, Taylor’s theory does not apply in the case of MPs since they are already paid more than the average wage. The motivation in monitory terms that workers received in scientific management was far less than what the MPs demand as compensation. The employers ensured that the bonuses and compensation given to the employees did not hurt the profitability of the company. Otherwise, the organization would be working for salaries and the objectives could not be accomplished. Rather, motivation was meant to ensure that the organization reaps maximum profits. Tax payers’ money is used to pay for the salaries and benefits of the MPs. If the state would be considered as an organization, it is the tax payers who would be the employers as they are at present, and they would also be the ones to identify the best way that their employers can be motivated without hurting the organization’s profitability. Currently, the owner has no control over the employees’ benefits and motivation. The MPs are the employees of the public and they enjoy high salaries and the freedom to determine what motivates them without supervision. This is contrary to scientific management whereby the employees had to be supervised for them to perform (Mullins, 2007). Money alone can not be the supreme motivator for employees to be productive in the workplace. The needs based theories hold a lot of meaning especially due to the fact that all employees do not have the same needs. This means that motivation is supposed to be approached as an individual issue. When all the employees are motivated through a single strategy, the employer needs to understand that something might be wrong in the organization (Katzenbach, 1998). Abraham Maslow’s theory was focused on the needs that need to be satisfied to ensure that the employee remains productive. These needs are arranged in a hierarchy whereby a person moves to the next level of the hierarchy after the lower level of needs is satisfied. MPs are not in any of the lower levels whereby money would be needed for them to survive. They are high in the hierarchy and the benefits they claim are actually not motivators. Mitzenberg identified some factors in the workplace whose absence may lower the morale of employees, but their presence would also not motivate them to work harder. He referred these factors as hygiene factors. In essence, when organizations decide to develop strategies for employee motivation, the managers focus on certain aspects of the job that form the basis of motivation. These include the interests that workers derive from the job, the opportunities that the workers are presented with in the workplace and the amount of responsibility, the recognition they get from their contribution to the accomplishment of organizational goals as well as promotion and job security. The hygiene factors according to Mitzenberg are not related to the real job but rather encircle the job. In essence, when such factors are not present, the employees may not be motivated to work harder (Mitch et al. 2004). For example in the MPs case, money is a hygiene factor. They feel that they are lacking some benefits that they should be offered and therefore they present their claim. However, it is not guaranteed that they will be motivated to visit their constituencies more and initiate more developments when the benefits are given. In other words, when they have not received the benefits, they may not work hard. They only do the extra work when the financial benefits are provided. In the contemporary employment, money is an important tool to motivate people to do something. Johnson (1998) observes that people can do weird jobs to get the money. However, in the real sense, many are not satisfied with the work and their needs are not met. But they have to work to get money, which is an essential resource that is associated with power. If looked at in a different approach, the needs theories would seem more applicable to motivation than the use of money for motivation. For example, workers who are given money to work overtime may spend more than 60 hours per week without rest. They earn a lot but they may not be motivated to work. In other words, they sacrifice their leisure time because of the money and not because they would like to work. An organization applying such a motivation strategy loses its productivity in the long-run due to fatigue and stress. Money can be an important reward but it does not override the employee satisfaction. When the needs of employees are met, they are able to concentrate on the organizational tasks. For example, when employees are able to accomplish a work-life balance, they are able to plan on what to do during their free time, which gives them time to deal with their social matters away from the workplace. But an employee who suffers from stress due to social issues is likely to perform poorly regardless of the financial gains from the daily workplace tasks. According to Hitt et al. (2005), money is one of the extrinsic motivators. These are the motivators used by employers as a strategy to ensure that they employees understand what they lose if they do not accomplish particular tasks. In other words, they work because there is a benefit or reward. In a different situation, a punishment may be applied, which means that if the person does not do something, he/she might face punishment. The more the rewards, benefits and punishments are used, the more the people get used to them and the likely their performance is lowered. If the intention of the benefits for the MPs was to motivate them initially, it must have failed since as people continue to receive rewards and extra benefits, they tend to integrate them in their pay and count them as part of what they are entitled to as wages. When such benefits are removed, work becomes difficult and in most cases crises result. Proper motivation involves the management beginning to think of people as rational beings rather than focusing on their behavior. Behavioral strategies that are focused on changing their behavior for them to accomplish tasks may not be long-lived since behaviors change over time. Basically, focusing on the people helps the management to understand that there are certain things that they need. They begin to investigate what can be done to help the people meet their needs. For example, as Herbert (1997) observes, people usually desire to have autonomy in their day to day activities. With such understanding, the management begins to establish democracy in the workplace whereby the employees’ views are taken in to consideration and integrated in to the strategic plan. Promotion of a sense of belonging for the employees towards the organization enhances their ownership of organizational goals, which become easily achievable. Such people oriented management generates motivation in the workplace that can not be equated to the reward based motivation. Moreover, whenever rewards are used for motivation, the managers have to ensure that all the employees are rewarded equally. Disproportionate benefits and rewards lower the morale of others and may result in reduced performance. For example, other players in the economy are not pleased by the expense claims and benefits for the MPs since they are offered selectively to them alone while other public servants have nothing to claim. Conclusion There are various motivation theories that explain how employee motivation can be accomplished. Scientific management developed by Taylor was focused on money as the key motivator for employees to increase their performance. In his assumptions, he compared humans with cogent money-making animals whose major concern was to maximize the financial gains from their work. However, it is not money alone that is the sole motivator. Some times it may not even work since employees are different in their attitude towards their work. The needs based theories are significant in since they focus on satisfying the individual needs of employees. References Davenport, T. O. 1999. Human Capital: What It Is and Why People Invest It, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Brooks I. 2002. Organisational Behaviour: Individuals, Groups and Organisation, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall Hatch, M. J. & Cunliffe, A. L. 2006. Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press Herbert A.  S. 1997. Administrative Behaviour: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations, 4th Ed.  New York City: Simon & Schuster Ltd Hitt, M. A., Miller, C. & Colella, A. 2005. Organizational Behavior: A Strategic Approach, Indianapolis: Wiley Johnson, J. R. 1998. “Embracing change: a leadership model for the learning organization”. International Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 2, 2 pp 141-147 Katzenbach, J. 1998. Teams at the Top, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kondratuk, T. B., Hausdorf, P. A., Korabik, K. and Rosin, H. M. 2004. “Linking career mobility with corporate loyalty: How does job change relate to organizational commitment”. Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 65 (2), pp 332-349. Mitch, D. Brown, J. and Marco H. D. (2004). Origins of the Modern Career. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mullins, L. 2007. Management & Organisational Behaviour, 8th Edition, Harlow: FT Pearson Read More