Motivation Profiles - Essay Example

Maslow (In Huit, 2004) refers to these needs as physiological. Ella's needs may also include safety or security or the need to be out of danger, but it is not necessarily so. She has not strived very much to the higher levels of education but just enough to get her a job. She is contented to be paid enough for her family's daily needs for food and shelter. As her family's needs grow, she finds that she has to move for promotion which she looks at in terms of bigger take home pay, but not necessarily bigger responsibility.

The fight for promotion is tight at Ella's workplace. To be promoted, she resorts to giving gifts to her supervisor or persons having to do with promotion in her place of work. Like her, she thinks people primarily find satisfaction in material gain and she may find favor from her superiors. Ella is submissive to authority and represses her own impulses. In fact, her own idea of a boss is authoritarian. The hostile boss is not a problem to her if she receives a promotion (bigger pay). She is willing to forego much personal freedom in favor of a promotion that would assure her of food and shelter every month.

She defers from Marcelo and Masoko in that her needs are very basic - just of the existence level described by Alderfer (1972).MarceloMarcelo's needs may be said to occupy the two second higher level needs described in Maslow's hierarchy: belongingness and love, and esteem needs (See Huit, 2004). Marcelo is therefore expected to easily affiliate with others and be accepted. At the same time, he sees the drive to achieve at his level, be competent, gain approval and attain recognition. There is a strong need to be liked which may not be good in terms of decision-making (See McClelland, 1987).

Status is a prime motivator to Marcelo. There is greater personal satisfaction in receiving praise or recognition with Marcelo and a promotion would realize these things for him. (See McClelland, 1987).Marcelo believes that promotions are given in exchange for something given, not necessarily hard work. It is a give and take situation. So he tries to praise his supervisors, do as he is ordered without any complain that he may be liked. In exchange for pleasing his boss, he believes he is working for promotion.

For all his investments in gaining approval and at the same time being affiliative with his supervisor, he expects that promotion is in store.Marcelo has been toeing every rule given in his workplace, conscious that every broken rule requires a punishment and farther away from attaining a promotion. Therefore, he keeps quiet and never questions whatever policies he disagrees with. His needs, however, are higher than that of Ella's. He needs affirmation and affiliation over and above mere biological needs.

Marcelo may be said to be other-oriented in that his work life involves relationships with significant others. He is satisfied by mutually sharing thoughts and feelings, and that acceptance, confirmation, understanding, and influence are elements important to him (Alderfer, 1972). MasokoMasoko sees more freedom in thinking than Ella and Marcelo. His actions are governed by the interplay of possible