Motivation Theories

Introduction

If I ask any person who is successful in whatever he or she is doing what motivates him/her, very likely the answer will be "goals". Goal setting is extremely important to motivation and success.

We are still students but almost everybody of us has been working somewhere. I have few simple questions for you. So what motivates you? What do you expect from your current position? What do you think are the most important aspects to a job?

A good first step towards understanding what motivates people is to ask "What do people want from their jobs?" We might answer, "money" or "power" but really it is very difficult to judge because depending on our own individual values and beliefs, we are not all motivated by the same things to the same degree. Managers need to be aware that the things that motivate them may not necessarily motivate their employees.

Consider the following discussion between two workers. It is clear that the things that they think are important in their jobs are quite different.

Jim - I think that you are crazy for quitting your job at the factory. The work may have been boring but it pays better than any other job around here.

Frank - Maybe you are right but I couldn't hack it. The job drove me up the wall. Even though I don't earn as much money in my new job, I enjoy it. There's something new every day and I'm glad I made the move.

1. WHAT IS MOTIVATION?

Since motivation influences productivity, supervisors need to understand what motivates employees to reach peak performance.

It is not an easy task to increase employee motivation because employees respond in different ways to their jobs and their organization's practices.

Motivation can be defined as a goal-directed behavior as I sad at the beginning of our presentation.

Another way to say this is that it is a concept used to describe the factors within an individual which arouse, maintain and channel behavior towards a goal.

While it is easy to see the things that a person does, it is much harder to guess at why they are doing it.

Since it is part of a manager's job to get their work done through others, managers need to understand why people do things (that is, what motivates them?) so that s/he can convince their employees to work towards the goals of the organization.

Managers need to provide the right organizational climate to ensure that their employees can see that by working towards the organizational goals they are also achieving some of their own goals. These goals could be such things as financial rewards or personal rewards such as the respect of their colleagues or job satisfaction or a combination of any number of things that the employee considers to be important. It is no good giving someone a pay rise if they are dissatisfied with the job and they do not see money as a very important factor in their working life.

There is a formula which gives a good model of the basic requirements and how they relate to each other in order to achieve the best staff performance in the organization.

Performance = Ability x Effort x Organizational support

The performance of the organization’s staff is an equation of their ability to do the job (what they can do) multiplied by the effort that they are actually willing to put into the job multiplied by the amount that the organization helps them to achieve their tasks.

2. APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION

Theories are ways that we try to explain and understand complex and abstract issues and ideas. Abstract ideas are ideas like truth or love. They are very difficult to talk about because they are very hard to describe and define. They are not clear cut or concrete. Motivation is a fairly difficult area and there are a number of theories which have been developed to try to explain why people behave in the ways that they do and to try to predict or guess what people actually will do, based on these theories.

Many methods of employee motivation have been developed. The study of work motivation has focused on the motivator (supervisor) as well as the motivatee (employee). Motivation theories are important to supervisors attempting to be effective leaders. Two primary approaches to motivation are content and process.

The content approach

This approach focuses on what motivates individuals to fulfill inner needs. Content theories focus on the needs that motivate people.

The process approach

Emphasizes how and why people behave in order to meet their personal goals. Process theories focus on external influences or behaviors that people choose to meet their needs. External influences are often readily accessible to supervisors.

CONTENT THEORIES

These theories suggest that people have certain needs and/or desires which have been internalised. (This means that as we have grown up we have learned that these are things that we want and need and we come to believe it so strongly, that we think that it is a natural thing to want these things.) These theories look at what it is about certain people that make them want the things that they do and what things in their environment will make them do or not do certain things. For example why would a person who was getting a lot of money for a job still be unhappy? Maybe there are other things which they consider to be more or equally important such as the work environment or the friendship and support of the people that they work with.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970) developed a theory of motivation based on a hierarchy of needs. This is probably the most popular theory of motivation.

It is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels:

Physiological needs - Basic needs for the body, such as food shelter drink rest etc.

Safety needs - Where the basic needs are reasonably satisfied we turn to thinking about protection from danger, security and order so that we feel safe. These safety needs can be a concern for physical safety but also covers psychological safety needs such as job security etc.

Social needs - Once the first two needs are reasonably satisfied, social needs such as needing acceptance,