Organizations

In today's organizations managers are required to use different motivation techniques to motivate its' employees. Sometimes one technique that is used for one employee may not work for another employee. We will look at the expectancy theory of motivation and why it is the most effective theory to motivate an organization's administrative staff.

The expectancy theory was discovered by Victor Vroom, whom states that motivation is a result of a rational calculation (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn, 2005, chap 6, p.7). He believes that a person is motivated for three different reasons; (1) one's effort will yield an acceptable performance, (2) one's performance will be rewarded, and (3) the value of the reward is highly valuable (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn, 2005, chap 6, p.7). This motivation theory is the best because the employee controls his/her destiny. The employee is in charge of deciding how hard they will work.

When a manager is working with a group when expectancy theory if the best motivation for their employees; than the manager should create reward systems that are attainable and the rewards are meaningful to the employees. The manager should make sure that the employees believe that they can do the task. They should teach them the skills; set up mentoring systems that will not allow them to fail. They should also make it okay to fail, so the employees learns from their mistakes. The manager should make sure they follow through with the promise of a reward. The manager should not promises that can not be kept because this will have a negative effect the next time a big project comes along than the positive ones.