Behavioral Studies: The Development of Motivation Theory - Essay Example

1. Human resources are the most significant of all the resources in any business, but also the most difficult to manage. Excellence can be achieved only through the excellent performance of every person in a firm. Thus motivation of HR becomes a crucial moment in management. Motivation is synonymous with leadership. Good leaders are always able to find a proper approach to employees. Management science is mostly based on the practical material. And practice shows that different people need different motivation. This becomes especially important in the conditions of the ever changing global economy and workplace diversity. The development of motivation theory goes in the direction of individual approach to every employee. Abraham Maslow was the first to point to the fact that money and benefits aren’t the only factors motivating people. Frederick Herzberg and his colleagues carried out a broad research examining the factors contributing to job satisfaction and excellent performance of employees. As a result of their work Herzberg formulated the Motivation-Hygiene Theory or Dual-Factor Theory. Herzberg distinguished two types of separate factors. The first type are motivators resulting in job satisfaction, while the second type are hygienes, which simply prevent dissatisfaction. The motivators include: achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, and advancement. The hygienes are: company policy and administration, supervision, working conditions, salary, interpersonal relations, status, and security. If applied effectively, hygienes may prevent dissatisfaction, but do not provide a guarantee of employees’ long-term satisfaction. If applied poorly, they result in negative feelings about the job. Motivators contribute to psychological growth and development on the job. They are associated with the concept of self-actualization and involve a challenge and opportunity to get pleasure of achievement and feeling worthwhile. If a manager wants to motivate people, it is necessary to concentrate on the job itself and not only on working conditions, provide opportunities for growth and development. However, this theory cannot be applied to all the employees. The practice shows that many people are quite satisfied by good working conditions and do not strive for further development. Moreover, people’s needs and goals change with time and motivators may be different in different situations, conditions and time periods. Victor Vroom argued that to make employees happy and satisfied with a job it is necessary to feel what they need and provide them with such tasks, which lead to achievement of their individual goals. “A process governing choices, made by persons or lower organisms, among alternative forms of voluntary behaviour” (Vroom in Stuart-Kotze 2008). Vroom underlines that task goals aren’t real goals, but serve the achievement of some personal needs, a second level of outcomes, which are real goals of an individual. Thus people complete difficult tasks and achieve goals for the sake of their own interests. The more an individual gets from a task accomplishment, the more he strives to complete it effectively. Vroom’s theory points to the significant side of motivation. People work with a chin of goals and rewards, and goals achieved in one may be only means of achieving goals in another area (Stuart-Kotze 2008). The two theories seem to provide the insight into motivation of employees. While Herzberg’s dual-factor theory underlines the fact that good working conditions and money aren’t sufficient to motivate all employees, Vroom’s theory helps us to understand that a manager should be attentive to the needs to employees. Knowing one’s people, it is easy to predict what will make them happy. Interestingly, this provides not only a chance to motivate people properly, but even to economize. It often happens that workers are offered larger salaries, when they want more responsibility. On the other hand, sometimes people are given too much work and responsibility, while they would be much happier completing simple tasks. 2. Norms and roles provide grounds for the consolidation of groups and their structures. Norms can be defined as unwritten, generally-agreed on rules of a group, shared views and they prescribe the expectations to all group members, guiding their behavior in the group. Roles are shared expectations about members’ behavior under certain circumstances and in specific positions. Roles identify the relationships between members, influencing group processes. Role differentiation provides a regulated and well-tuned functioning of a group. There are two categories of roles: task roles and socio-emotional roles. Task-oriented roles include such as initiator-contributor, information giver/seeker, opinion giver/seeker, energizer, elaborator, coordinator, orienter, or recorder. Socio-emotional roles include harmonizer, compromiser, encourager, gatekeeper, group observer. Besides, it is possible to distinguish self-oriented roles such as blocker, recognition seeker, dominator, avoider, aggressor, self-confessor, help seeker, clown. While the three types of roles enumerated above usually evolve naturally, there also exist formal, prescribed roles defined by position title, job description and organizational directives. However, roles establishing stable patterns of behavior, their disruption can be rather stressful. Norms can be prescriptive and proscriptive. While the former define the behavior that should be performed, the latter dictate behaviors that should be avoided. Norms foster employee loyalty, honesty, appropriate behavior and dress. Norms direct group members’ behavior in different areas. They can be performance-related (task-related), appearance-related (dress and behaviors), concern informal social arrangements (cliques and coalitions), allocations and resources (who gets what in a given situation). Norms fulfill a number of functions. First of all, they provide the survival of a group. People join groups for some reason and they always want their groups to succeed. Norms are adjusted to the current conditions. If something threatens the success of a group, norms can be and re-evaluated and changed. Second, norms provide the predictability of members’ behavior, which is also very important for a group success and efficiency. Norms clarify and reinforce the central values of a group, providing reasons for belonging. Distinctiveness of a group, its uniqueness becomes a reason for joining the group. Thus it is necessary to encourage the behaviors making the group special and attractive for people. Establishing certain roles for each member, norms prevent embarrassing interpersonal problems for members. Members discounting, diminishing or ignoring the norms of the group can be punished or banished. Norms are essential for groups, while people can function effectively only when they know exactly their roles, rights and obligations. When an individual faces uncertainty, he experiences cognitive dissonance and don’t know how to behave, makes mistakes and feels embarrassed, as a result, becoming ineffective. Roles serve the same purposes the norms do, governing group members’ behaviors and enforcing the conformity of a group. The distribution of roles should be clear and concise, while role ambiguity causes frustration and reduces efficiency of members. Role ambiguity can be defined as lack of clarity regarding responsibilities, duties and authority. Role ambiguity can emerge due to the complexity of a job or lack of worker experience. Role ambiguity may cause interrole and intrarole conflicts. We speak of interrole conflicts in case an individual is given simultaneous roles with conflicting expectations. Intrarole conflicts arise when one member of a group is sent many directives. Though people are able to complete several tasks simultaneously, their efficiency falls. Thus it is necessary to observe the clarity of roles and tasks given to employees. To avoid role ambiguity a manager should provide precise role descriptions and simplify tasks (Ratzburg 2001). Norms and roles are the basic fundamentals of a group, providing its existence, efficiency and success. 3. There exist a number of leadership styles. First of all, leaders may focus 1) on the task and 2) on employees. A leader, who chooses a task-oriented style, directs his employees through tasks, setting goals and daily activities of a group, controlling their actions and leading them to accomplishment of a task. This style is also referred to as a transactional leadership. A leader keeping to people-oriented style provides support to his employees, creating a positive work environment maximizing the productivity of each person. This style is referred to as a participative leadership. Basing on these two criteria it is possible to distinguish four leadership styles: 1) High concern for results and high concern for people; 2) High concern for results and low concern for people; 3) Low concern for results and a high concern for people; 4) Low concern for results and a low concern for people. The researches have shown that the best conditions for excellence are created in case of high concern about people as well as high concern for results. Thus Scandinavian scholars added a third dimension – development (ALDC 2007). Participative management means sharing information with employees and their involvement in decision-making. This style, based on employee leadership and empowerment, highly flexible structure, business unit autonomy, innovation and interactivity, has become the distinctly American one (McMillan 2006). It is generally believed that such a management style enhancing communication, cross-functional collaboration and joint decision making, in combination with flexible organizational structure and minimum of bureaucratic barriers to innovation should bring optimal performance level. It is viewed as the most beneficial in the constantly changing global economy, while it allows quick adaptation and re-organization of a company, providing numerous visions of the problems solutions and motivating employees to improve their performance However, in practice effective leaders use a variety of leadership styles depending on the situation. Fielder’s contingency theory proposes that before making decision on the best people-task mix, leaders should mind three contextual factors: leader-member relations, task structure and leader positional power. Situations can be classified into one of three categories: favorable, moderately favorable and unfavorable. Developing Fiedler’s ideas, Hersey and Blanchard proposed situational leadership theory, identifying four different leadership styles: 1) a delegating style (low task- low relationship) – a leader hands the work down n to others showing little concern about the task and people involved; 2) a supportive style (low task –high relationship) – a leader motivates staff and involves them into the accomplishment of a task without telling them how to do things; 3) a directive style (high task – high relationship) – a leader tells people how to do things without concern whether they like it or not; 4) a coaching style (high task – high relationship) – a leader coaches willing people assisting in the accomplishment of a task. Will and abilities become the criteria for choice of a style. When both are high a leader may choose a delegating style. When staff possesses skills, but lacks will, a supportive style can be suitable. When people have neither will nor abilities a leader needs to apply directive style. When staff is willing but lacks skills, a coaching style would be the best ALDC 2007). Business conditions change quickly and a manager should be flexible and able to adapt to new situation and circumstances. Working with different people a manager should see what is the best leadership style appropriate with given employees. This way a manager is able to reveal the maximum potential of each employee and achieve excellence in performance. References: Australian Leadership Development Centre. ABC of Effective Leadership. A practical overview of leadership theories. 2007. Available at: www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au/Content_Common/pg-effective-theory.seo - 107k McMillan, A. Management Styles. The Encyclopedia of Management, Thomson Gale, 2006. Available at: www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Log-Mar/Management-Styles.html - 35k Ratzburg, Wilf H. Group Roles and Norms. OB Notes. 2001. Available at: www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1650/htmlobtoc02.html Stuart-Kotze, Robin. Motivation Theory. Goal Setting Guide Com. 2008. Available at: www.goal-setting-guide.com/motivation-theory.html - 43k Read More