Motivation
Outline
•
What is Motivation?
•
Content Theories
•
Goal Setting Theory
•
Expectancy Theory
•
Organizational Justice
•
Applied Motivation Practices
Motivation
•
• Result of interaction of individual and situation
•
• Motivated employees are willing to exert a particular level of effort
(intensity) for a certain period of time (persistence) toward a particular
goal (direction)
Content Theories of Motivation
• Explain the dynamics of employee needs and why people
have different needs at different times
• Content (Needs) Theories
– Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
– Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
• Motivation-Hygiene Theory
– Alderfer’s ERG Theory
– McClelland’s Theory of Needs
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
• There is a hierarchy of five needs within every human
being
Self-actualization
Esteem
Social
Safety
Physiological
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory (cont’d)
Self-actualization
Esteem
•
Social
– As each of the needs becomes substantially
satisfied, the next need becomes dominant
Safety
Physiological
• Although no need is ever fully gratified, a substantially
satisfied need no longer motivates
• If we want to motivate someone, according to Maslow,
we need to understand what level of the hierarchy that
person is currently on
Alderfer’s ERG Theory
• Revision of Maslow’s theory
• Three groups of core needs
– Existence need: Maslow’s physiological and safety needs
– Relatedness: Maslow’s Social Needs
– Growth: Maslow’s esteem and self-actualization needs
•
•
– If we are unable to satisfy a higher need, we become frustrated and
regress back to the next lower need level
Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
•
• Certain job characteristics (i.e., motivators) tend to be consistently
related to job satisfaction and others (i.e. hygiene) to job dissatisfaction
– Motivators include recognition, personal growth, whereas
– Hygiene factors include job security, working conditions, etc
• To motivate people, managers need to emphasize intrinsically
rewarding that are associated with the work itself or to outcomes
directly derived from it
• Removing hygiene factors from a job does not necessarily make the
job satisfying
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
• Focus on three needs
– Need for achievement, Need for power, and Need for affiliation
• Individuals with a high need for achievement prefer job with
high responsibility, feedback, and intermediate degree of risk
•
•
Practical Implications of
Content Theories
• People have different needs at different times
• Offer employees a choice of rewards
– a flexible reward/benefits system
• Do not rely too heavily on financial rewards
– they mainly address lower level needs
Organizational Justice
•
• Explains how people develop perceptions of fairness in the distribution
and exchange of resources
• Explains what people are motivated to do when they feel inequitably
treated
• Two major components of organizational justice
–
• The perceived fairness of the amount and allocation or rewards distributed
among people
–
• The perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of
rewards
Distributive Justice: Equity Theory
• Distributive justice
–
• Adams (1965) - People appraise rewards in terms of their equitability
• Argues that we calculate our outcome/input ratio, which is compared to others.
Based on this comparison, we feel equity or inequity
– Outcome/input ratio
• Inputs - what employee contributes (e.g. skill)
• Outcomes - what employees receive (e.g. pay)
– Comparison other
• Person/people we compare ratio with
– Equity evaluation
• Compare outcome/input ratio with comparison other
Equity Theory (Cont’d)
Comparison
Other
You
Outcomes
Outcomes
Inputs
Outcomes
Inputs
Outcomes
Inputs
=
Inputs
Outcomes
<
Inputs
>
Outcomes
Inputs
Equity Theory (Cont’d)
• Consequences of Inequity
– Changing inputs: less effort
– Changing outcomes: ask for
more desired outcome
– Cognitively distorting
perceptions of our inputs
and outcomes
– Cognitively distorting
perceptions of comparison
other’s inputs and outcomes
– Changing comparison other
– Leaving the field: turnover
• Manager’s guidelines
– Treat people fairly in the
distribution of rewards
 Avoid underpayment
 Avoid overpayment
– Give people a voice in
decisions affecting them
– Explain outcomes
thoroughly using a socially
sensitive manner
– Be sensitive to feelings of
inequity and change reward
criteria if employees believe
current system is unfair
Procedural Justice
•
• Focuses on the manner in which the decision-making
process is conducted
•
• Fairness of the end result and the fairness of the
determining process can be evaluated independently
Procedural Justice (Cont’d)
• Effects
– Satisfaction
– Commitment
– Citizenship behaviors
• Volunteering for extra job activities, helping others, and engaging in
similar positive behavior
–
• Still satisfied because they feel that outcome was reached through a
fair process
• Remain committed
• Employees are likely to view their bosses and the organization as
positive
Procedural Justice (Cont’d)
• Procedures consistent across time
• Based on shared standards of the group
– Takes into account everyone’s concerns
• Procedure is free of bias
– Decisions based on accurate information
•
Interactional Justice
• Third Dimension of Organizational Justice
• Focus on leader, rather than system.
• Quality of the treatment they receive at the hands of decision makers,
i.e. leaders
• Sub-dimensions
– Interpersonal justice: The degree to which leaders treat people with
respect and dignity
– Informational justice: The degree to which leaders explain the rationale
for decisions thoroughly
Interactional Justice (Cont’d)
• Effects
– OCB (Organizational Citizenship Behaviors)
– Task Performance
– Trust in supervisor and organization
– Organizational Commitment
– Reduce negative affect and counterproductive work behavior
– People respond much more favorably to negative outcomes
Goal Setting Theory
• One of the most effective and widely practiced theories of motivation
•
• A goal serves as a motivator because it causes people to compare their
present capacity to perform with that required to succeed at the goal.
• Goals
– The immediate or ultimate objective that employees are trying to
accomplish from their work effort
Characteristics of Effective Goals
Task
Effort
Task
Performance
Managers’ Guidelines for
Setting Effective Performance Goals…
1.

Specific goals > “do your best” or no goals.


8 - 16% increase in performance.
Oklahoma lumber camp study.



Loggers filled trucks only to 60% of capacity for 3 months.
A specific goal challenged them to reach 94%.
Dramatic improvement was sustained 7 years after goal was first set.
Why Do Vague Goals Result in
Lower Performance?
•
•
A much greater range of success can be interpreted
•
–
There is no “benefit of the doubt” with specific goals.
Managers’ Guidelines for
Setting Effective Performance Goals…
2.



91% of studies found that difficult goals result in better performance
than easy goals.
 10-16% boost in performance due to goals
People work for challenging goals within their limits.
As goals become too difficult, performance suffers.
Effect of Goal Difficulty on Performance…
Task Performance
High
Low
Area of
Optimal
Goal
Difficulty
Moderate
Challenging
Goal Difficulty
Impossible
Managers’ Guidelines for
Setting Effective Performance Goals…
3.


Study on pizza delivery drivers.




Observed drivers’ stopping habits in 2 towns over 9 months.
Experimental group = asked to come to complete stop 75% of time and given
feedback over 4 months.
Control group = no goal.
Results = feedback helped experimental group approach goal until feedback was
withdrawn.
Joint Effects of Goals and Feedback…
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
SD goal
DYB goal
No Feedback
Feedback
sample data: weight loss
Managers’ Guidelines for
Setting Effective Performance Goals…
4.


Commitment and acceptance (involve employees).
Ability/Self-efficacy.
Expectancy Theory
• Work effort is directed toward behaviors believed to lead to
desired outcomes
• Effort: key variable, the individual’s actual exertion of energy
E-to-P
Expectancy
Effort
P-to-O
Expectancy
Performance
Outcome
Valence
Reward
Personal
Goal
Expectancy Theory (Cont’d)
•
– An individual’s perceived probability that his/her effort will result
in a particular level of performance
•
– An individual’s perceived probability that a specific behavior or
performance level will lead to specific outcomes
•
– The anticipated satisfaction or dissatisfaction that an individual
feels toward an outcome
• If any of these three components weakens, motivation
weaken
Expectancy Theory in Practice
• Expectancy theory provides clear guidelines for increasing
employee motivation
•
– Training, selection, resources, clarify roles, provide coaching and
feedback
•
– Measure performance accurately, explain how rewards are based
on past performance
•
– Use valued rewards, individualize rewards, minimize countervalent
outcomes
Applied Motivation Practices
• Job Design
– Job Specialization
– Job Rotation
– Job Enlargement
– Job Enrichment
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•
•
•
Management by Objectives
Employee recognition programs
Employee involvement programs
Rewards systems
– Variable pay systems
– Skill-based pay systems
•
Flexible benefits
Job Design
•
Motivation can be enhanced by making jobs more appealing to people
•
Assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks with other
jobs
•
Employees expected to perform a variety of work (employability)
•
Approach
–
–
• Job Rotation
• Job Enlargement
• Job Enrichment: Job Characteristics Model
Job Specialization
•
• Dividing work into separate jobs
– Each job now includes subset of tasks necessary to complete the
product/service
•
– Systematically determining how to partition work into smallest elements
and how to standardize tasks for maximum efficiency.
– Frederick Winslow Taylor (early 1900s) -- advocated job specialization,
goal setting, training, person-job matching, individual incentives
– Methods-time measurement - systematically observe/measure physical job
behavior for work efficiency
Job Specialization
Advantages
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•
•
•
•
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Less time changing tasks
Job mastered quickly
Better person-job matching
Disadvantages
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• Discontentment pay
• Lower quality
•
Efficient use of the diversity
of skills
• Job Redesign
– Job Rotation
– Job Enlargement
– Job Enrichment: Job Characteristics Model
Job Rotation and Enlargement
Job Rotation
Job 1
Undergraduate OB
Job 2
MBA OB
Job 3
PhD OB Seminar
Job Enlargement
Job 1
Job 2
Job 3
Undergraduate OB
MBA OB
PhD OB Seminar
Undergraduate OB
MBA OB
PhD OB Seminar
Undergraduate OB
MBA OB
PhD OB Seminar
Job Enrichment Strategies
•
• Empowering employees
– giving employees more autonomy
– feeling of control and self-efficacy
• Forming natural work units
– completing an entire task
Job Characteristics Model
•
An approach to job enrichment (Hackman and Oldham)
•
Jobs can be designed to help people get enjoyment out of their job and to care
about the work they do
•
How jobs can be designed to help people feel that they are doing meaningful
and valuable work
•
Five core job dimensions
– Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback
•
– Experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility, and knowledge of results
Job Characteristics Model (Cont’d)
Core Job
Characteristics
Critical
Psychological
States
Outcomes
Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Meaningfulness
Work
motivation
Autonomy
Responsibility
Feedback
from job
Growth
satisfaction
Knowledge
of results
Individual
differences
General
satisfaction
Work
effectiveness
Job Characteristics Model (Cont’d)
• Putting it all together
– MPS (motivating potential score)
•
Skill variety + Task identity + Task Significance
* Autonomy* Feedback
3
• Summary index of a job’s potential for motivating people
• The higher the score for a give job, the greater the likelihood of
experiencing the personal and work outcomes specified by the
model
• Does the model apply to everyone?
Management by Objectives (MBO)
• Means of using goals to motivate people
•
Emphasizes converting overall organizational objectives into specific
objectives for organizational unit and individual members
• Four common components
–
• mutually set - both top-down and bottom-up
–
• each goal has specific objectives to meet
• each goal has specific time period
–
• feedback on progress during goal period
• Evaluation based on success in meeting the goals which were set
Employee Recognition Programs
• Basic philosophy
–
• Often not associated with money
– Tangible vs Intangible
• Recognition
– Source of feedback on performance
– Source of rewards for performance
– Most powerful motivator
• Increase satisfaction
• Increase commitment
Employee Involvement Plans
• A participative process that uses the entire capacity of
employees
• Designed to increase satisfaction and commitment to
the organization
• Source of information/knowledge sharing
– Allows those above or company to make better decisions
• Examples
– Participative management, representative participation, quality
circle
Variable Pay Systems
• A portion of individual pay is based on some measure of
performance
•
• Pay becomes variable with the performance of individual,
group or organization
•
• Examples
– piece-rate plan
– profit sharing
– gainsharing
Skill-based Pay Plans
• Pay levels are based on how many skills the
employee has
•
• Encourages employees to be
– continue to learn and grow
– work cooperatively with others
– more flexible
Flexible Benefits
• Workforce diversity
–
• Allow employees to pick from a menu of benefit
options
• These programs allow
Summary
•
What is Motivation?
•
Content Theories
•
Goal Setting Theory
•
Expectancy Theory
•
Organizational Justice
•
Applied Motivation Practices