Chapter
Five
Work Motivation
And
Performance
Thomson South-Western
Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e
1
Chapter Overview
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– A Model of Motivation and Performance
• Expectancy Theory
• Supplemental Theories
• Overview of the Model
– Valence: Need Theories
• Maslow’s Need Hierarchy
• Murray’s Theory of Manifest Needs
– Instrumentality: Learning Theories
• Reinforcement Theory
• Social Theory
– Expectancy: Self-Efficacy Theory
• Self-Efficacy and Behavior
• Sources of Self-Efficacy
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Chapter Overview (cont.)
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– Accuracy of Role Perceptions: Goal Setting Theory
• Important Goal Attributes
• Goal Commitment and Participation
• Goals and Strategies
– Ability and Experience Revisited
• Nonmotivational Determinants of Performance
• Experience and Cyclical Effects
– High-Performance Work Systems
• Merit Pay and Incentive Systems
• Profit-Sharing and Cost-Savings Plans
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Introduction
 One way for an organization to gain a competitive
advantage over its rivals is to generate a more
motivated workforce
 Motivation: refers to the energy a person is
willing to devote to a task
 One way to create motivation is through rewards
 Perhaps the easiest thing to say to a manager, in
theory, is that he or she should “pay for
performance” or “link rewards to
accomplishment” while perhaps the most difficult
thing to do, in practice, is to implement this advice
in a manner that does not backfire
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A Model of Motivation and
Performance
 Expectancy Theory:
– Expectancy theory is a broad theory of motivation
that attempts to explain the determinants of
workplace attitudes and behaviors
– Three major components underlie expectancy
theory:
• Valence: based on the assumption that at any given
time, a person prefers certain outcomes to others
• Instrumentality: a person’s belief about the
relationship between performing an action and
experiencing an outcome
• Expectancy: beliefs about the link between making
an effort and actually performing well
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Supplemental Theories
 Two primary reasons explain why, to build a model of
motivation and performance, expectancy theory needs
to be supplemented with other motivation theories
– A number of other theories deal in more detail with
certain motivation components:
• Need theories: provide insights into how valences develop
and change over time
• Learning theories: explain how perceptions of
instrumentality arise
• Self-efficacy theory: describes the origins of effortperformance expectancies and the ways they are
maintained
– Expectancy theory must be extended to explain
outcomes other than desire and effort
• To predict performance, expectancy theory requires
information about human ability, goals, and strategies
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Overview of the Model
 The model of
motivation and
performance built in
this chapter consists of
five components put
together in four steps
to explain three
outcomes
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Valance: Needs Theories
 People differ greatly in their
preferences
 The goal for employers is to find
exactly what drives each
employee and then build reward
systems around those drives, thus
taking advantage of each person’s
unique sets of interests and values
 When it comes to understanding
how valences originate and why
they differ among people, need
theories can prove especially
informative
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Maslow’s Need Hierarchy
Murray’s Theory of Manifest Needs
 Maslow’s Need Hierarchy:  Murray’s Theory of
Manifest Needs:
– Abraham Maslow was a
clinical psychologist and a
pioneer in the development
of need theories
– Maslow’s need theory
proposed the existence of
five distinct types of needs:
Physiological, Safety, Love,
Esteem, and Selfactualization
– Maslow argued these five
needs influence motivation
on the basis of prepotency
which means that needs
residing higher in the
hierarchy can influence
motivation only if lower
needs are largely satisfied
– Henry Murray’s theory of
manifest needs defines needs
as recurrent concerns for
particular goals or end states
– Each need consists of two
components, the object toward
which the need is directed and
the intensity or strength of the
need for that particular object
– Murray regarded needs as
something learned from
interacting with the
environment and proposed
more than 20 needs
– Other researchers expanded
Murray’s work including
David McClelland whose
theory of motivation focused 9
on the need for achievement
Instrumentality: Learning
Theories
 To understand behavior, it must be
known what people believe will lead
to the attainment of what they want;
these beliefs are referred to as
instrumentalities
 The notion that people will generally
behave so as to maximize pleasure
and minimize pain expresses the
concept of hedonism and is
incorporated in virtually all modern
theories of motivation, especially
learning theories
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Reinforcement Theory
 Reinforcement theory proposes that a person engages in a
specific behavior because that behavior has been reinforced by
a specific outcome
– Garment factory and MBNA examples
 This theory is also known as operant learning in that the
person must perform some operation to receive the reinforcing
outcome; this is especially good for reinforcing simple or welllearned responses
 In some cases, complex behavior that might not occur on its
own may need to be encouraged:
– Shaping: rewarding successive approximations to a desired
behavior
– Extinction: a weakened response occurs because the desired
outcome is no longer paired with some positive reinforcer
– Negative reinforcement: the likelihood that a person will engage
in a particular behavior increases because the behavior is
followed by the removal of something the person dislikes
– Punishment: the likelihood of a given behavior decreases
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because it is followed by something the person dislikes
Reinforcement Theory
 Punishment:
– While coming up with rewards is sometimes difficult,
most organizations can easily envision a wide variety of
ways to punish people
 Punishment, by itself, can only suppress undesired
behaviors not promote desired behaviors
 Organizations need to strive to punish employees
effectively and several steps can be taken to move in
this direction:
–
–
–
–
–
Discipline programs should be progressive
Punishment should be immediate
Punishment should be consistent
Punishment should be impersonal
Punishment should be documented
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Social Learning
 Social learning theory was proposed by Albert Bandura
and encompasses a theory of observational learning that
holds that most people learn behaviors by observing others
and then modeling the behaviors perceived as being
effective
 Observational learning is in marked contrast to the process
of learning through reinforcement and it better explains
how people learn complex behavioral sequences
 This theory proposes that people can reinforce or punish
their own behaviors; this is called self-reinforcement
 A self-reinforcing event occurs when:
– Tangible rewards are readily available
– People deny themselves free access to those rewards
– They allow themselves to acquire the rewards only after
achieving difficult self-set goals
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Expectancy: Self-Efficacy Theory
 Self-Efficacy and
Behavior:
 Sources of Self-Efficacy:
– Self-efficacy refers to the
judgment that people
make about their ability
to execute courses of
action required to deal
with prospective
situations

– Self-efficacy determines
how much effort people
will expend and how long
they will persist in the
face of obstacles or

stressful experiences
– For the most part, the
positive aspects of high
self-efficacy outweigh the
negative side effects
– Bandura identified 4 sources
of self-efficacy beliefs:
•
•
•
•
Past accomplishments
Observation of others
Verbal persuasion
Logical verification
Self-efficacy theory is particularly
useful for explaining how
expectancies are formed and
suggesting how they might be
changed
Simply wanting to excel will not
bring about high levels of effort
unless the person has some belief
that such performance is possible14
Accuracy of Role Perceptions:
Goal-Setting Theory
 Role perceptions are
people's beliefs about what
they are supposed to
accomplish on the job and
how they should achieve
those goals
 Goal-setting theory can
foster understanding on
how to enhance the
accuracy of role
perceptions
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Important Goal Attributes
 More than 100 studies support the
assertion that goals should be both
specific and difficult
 Goal setting works most effectively
when teamed with feedback
 Specific and difficult goals:
– Are especially effective when
incorporated into a continuous
improvement cycle
– Appear to promote greater effort and
enhance persistence
– Encourage people to develop effective
task strategies and sharpen mental
focus on the task
– Direct attention to specific desired
results
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Goal Commitment and Participation
and
Goals and Strategies
 The extent to which a 
person feels committed
to a goal can affect
performance
 Research has examined
several ways to increase
commitment to difficult
goals:

– Degree to which goals
are public rather than
private
– Self-setting of goals
– Participation in the goalsetting process
Research on goal setting and
task strategies suggests that
whereas setting specific and
difficult goals may increase
strategy development, the
resulting strategies are not
guaranteed to be effective
Goal orientation:
distinguishes between people
who approach a task with the
goal of learning how to
improve themselves and those
whose goals focus strictly on
performing at a certain level 17
Ability & Experience Revisited:
Nonmotivational Determinants of
Performance
 Task performance is contingent upon the worker’s
abilities
 Two things are worth noting with respect to
nonmotivational determinants of performance:
– People lacking the requisite abilities cannot perform a
complex task even under the most favorable goalrelated circumstances
– Subtle relationships exists among goal-setting,
attention, and cognitive capacity that affect task
performance
 Performance will be high when a person puts forth
significant effort, directs this effort toward the right
outcomes, and has the ability to execute the behaviors
necessary for bringing about those outcomes
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Experience and Cyclical Effects
 This step deals with the links that make the model
dynamic over time:
– The first link is a feedback loop that goes from performance
to valence
– The second link goes from performance to instrumentalities
– The last link goes from performance to expectancy
 These three dynamic links in the motivation model
suggest that motivation can change over time
 Motivation may be lost for three reasons:
– Decreased self-efficacy
– Projected instrumentalities fail to materialize
– Faults are found with the initial valences
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High-Performance Work Systems
 Consider some of the issues that arise when
pay-for-performance programs are
contemplated:
– Should pay increases be based on outcomes
that occur at the individual level, group level,
or the organizational level?
– If the firm pays on the individual level,
should it establish the rules for payment in
advance?
– How large should incentives be?
– How much variability should exist within
and between job categories?
– If the company decides to keep incentives at
an organizational level, should it base the
rewards on cost savings and distribute them
yearly or base them on profits and distribute
them on a deferred basis?
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Merit-Pay and Incentive Systems
and
Profit-Sharing and Cost-Savings Plans
 Individual pay-for-performance 
plans base financial
compensation on the
accomplishments of individual 
workers
 Merit-based plans are the easiest
to administer and control
 In designing merit-based
programs, three considerations
arise:

– What will the average
performer receive?
– What will a poor performer
receive?
– How much will high performers
receive?
Profit-sharing and cost-savings
plans tie pay to performance at a
broader level
Profit-sharing plans distribute
organizational profits to
employees; this plan is difficult
for employees to see the
connection between their
activities and company profits
Cost-savings plans pay workers
bonuses out of the money the
company has saved through the
increased efficacy of its
operations; this plan is easier for
workers to see the connection
between their own work and cost
reductions
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