MOTIVATION AND THEORIES OF MOTIVATION NOTES

INTRODUCTION

The definition of motivation is to give reason, incentive, enthusiasm,
or interest that causes a specific action or certain behavior.
Motivation is present in every life function. Simple acts such as eating
are motivated by hunger. Education is motivated by desire for knowledge.
Motivators can be anything from reward to coercion.

Motivation is derived from motive. Motive means a drive or impulse
within an individual that prompts him into action. It is a complex force
that inspires a person at a work to willingly use his capacity for the
accomplishment of certain objectives. It is something that impels a
person into action and continues him in action with enthusiasm.

Dale S. Beach motivation is an inspirational process which impels
members of a team to pull their weight effectively to give their loyalty
to the group to carry out properly the tasks that they have accepted and
generally to play an effective role in the job that the group has
undertaken.

There are two main kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.

• Definition of Motivation of the Extrinsic Kind
  Extrinsic motivation is external .It occurs when external factors
  compel the person to do something. Would include circumstances,
  situations, rewards or punishment, both tangible and intangible that
  participation in, results in an external benefit. Tangible benefits
  could include monetary reward or a prize. Intangible could include
  things like adoration, recognition, and praise.
• Definition of Motivation of the Intrinsic Kind
  Intrinsic motivation is internal. It occurs when people are
  compelled to do something out of pleasure, importance, or desire. It
  includes involvement in behavioral pattern, thought process, action,
  activity or reaction for its own sake and without an obvious
  external incentive for doing so. A hobby is an example. If you are
  desirous of mastering public speaking for the sake of mastery and
  not any reward, you have experienced intrinsic motivation. In
  addition to forces that produce an actuation, there is a need to
  have the ability to fulfill the motivation. For example, a
  paraplegic may have the desire to get out of a wheelchair and walk,
  but lacks the ability to do so. A common place that we see the need
  to apply motivation is in the work place. In the work force, we can
  see motivation play a key role in leadership success. A person
  unable to grasp motivation and apply it will not become or stay as
  leader. Motivation is what propels life. It plays a major role in
  nearly everything we do. Without motivation, we would simply not
  care about outcomes, means, accomplishment, education, success,
  failure, employment, etc.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MOTIVATION, SATISFACTION, INSPIRATION AND
MANIPULATION

Motivation refers to the drive and efforts to satisfy a want or goal,
whereas satisfaction refers to the contentment experienced when a want
is satisfied. In contrast, inspiration is bringing about a change in the
thinking pattern. On the other hand Manipulation is getting the things
done from others in a predetermined manner.

TYPES OF MOTIVATION

• Achievement Motivation
  It is the drive to pursue and attain goals. An individual with
  achievement motivation wishes to achieve objectives and advance up
  on the ladder of success. Here, accomplishment is important for its
  own sake and not for the rewards that accompany it.
• Affiliation Motivation
  It is a drive to relate to people on a social basis. Persons with
  affiliation motivation perform work better when they are complimented for their favorable attitudes and co-operation.
• Competence Motivation
  It is the drive to be good at something, allowing the individual to
  perform high quality work. Competence motivated people seek job
  mastery, take pride in developing and using their problem-solving
  skills and strive to be creative when confronted with obstacles.
  They learn from their experience.
• Power Motivation
  It is the drive to influence people and change situations. Power
  motivated people wish to create an impact on their organization and
  are willing to take risks to do so.
• Attitude Motivation
  Attitude motivation is how people think and feel. It is their self
  confidence, their belief in themselves, their attitude to life. It
  is how they feel about the future and how they react to the past.
• Incentive Motivation
  It is where a person or a team reaps a reward from an activity. It
  is “You do this and you get that”, attitude. It is the types of
  awards and prizes that drive people to work a little harder.
• Fear Motivation
  Fear motivation coercions a person to act against will. It is
  instantaneous and gets the job done quickly. It is helpful in the
  short run.

IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVATION

Motivation is very important for an organization because of the
following benefits it provides:-

• Puts human resources into action
  Every concern requires physical, financial and human resources to
  accomplish the goals. It is through motivation that the human
  resources can be utilized by making full use of it. This can be done
  by building willingness in employees to work. This will help the
  enterprise in securing best possible utilization of resources.
• Improves level of efficiency of employees
  The level of a subordinate or an employee does not only depend upon
  his qualifications and abilities. For getting best of his work
  performance, the gap between ability and willingness has to be
  filled which helps in improving the level of performance of
  subordinates.
• Leads to achievement of organizational goals
  Goals can be achieved if co-ordination and co-operation takes place
  simultaneously which can be effectively done through motivation.
• Builds friendly relationship
  Motivation is an important factor which brings employees
  satisfaction. This can be done by keeping into mind and framing an
  incentive plan for the benefit of the employees.
• Leads to stability of work force
  Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of
  reputation and goodwill of a concern. The employees can remain loyal
  to the enterprise only when they have a feeling of participation in
  the management. The skills and efficiency of employees will always
  be of advantage to employers as well as employees. This will lead to
  a good public image in the
  market which will attract competent and qualified people into a
  concern. As it is said, “Old is gold” which suffices with the role
  of motivation here, the older the people, more the experience and
  their adjustment into a concern which can be of benefit to the
  enterprise.

Motivation is important to an individual as:

• Motivation will help him achieve his personal goals.
• If an individual is motivated, he will have job satisfaction.
• Motivation will help in self-development of individual.
• An individual would always gain by working with a dynamic team.

Similarly, motivation is important to a business as:

• The more motivated the employees are, the more empowered the team is.
• The more is the team work and individual employee contribution, more
  profitable and successful is the business.
• During period of amendments, there will be more adaptability and
  creativity.
• Motivation will lead to an optimistic and challenging attitude at
  work place

MOTIVATIONAL FORCES

Negative motivational forces
Some managers believe that they can achieve results from their teams by
shouting and swearing at them or by threatening them with disciplinary
action. However, although this fear factor can indeed produce results,
the effects will probably be much more short-term and will mean that
staffs are not focused on achieving business objectives but rather on
simply keeping their jobs! Alternatively, setting unrealistic targets
can also have a negative impact – no matter how hard the team works,
they cannot reach the target and therefore can become demotivated.

Positive motivational forces
There is a wide range of positive ways to motivate a team but it is
important to remember that these should also be implemented fairly.

• Offering rewards and incentives – bear in mind that rewards must be
  deserved and recognition should be given only to those who have
  earned it
• Encouraging healthy competition – this can be advantageous but can
  also be detrimental when pitting staff against each other

Identifying individual motivational triggers
Each member of a team can respond in different ways to motivational
factors – what drives some may in fact be what leads to poor performance
in others! You can find out what motivates the team by:

• Simply asking them individually – this shows your personal interest
  in them and that you value their input
• Holding team meetings to discuss general opinions – this can also
  help to improve the team spirit
• The completing of feedback forms or questionnaires – these should be
  confidential so that employees will be open and honest about their
  feelings towards company policies and procedures

MOTIVATIONAL TECHNIQUES

Perhaps one of the most effective ways of motivating a team is to ensure
that they understand and appreciate the aims of an organization and are
supported by their managers in working towards the achievement of those
aims. There are a range of motivational techniques that can be used to
improve productivity, reduce workplace stress and increase self-confidence ;
These include the use of:

• Positive imagery
• Team-building activities
• Training
• Enhanced communication
• Targets, rewards and incentives
• Positive imagery
  Posting motivational themes and messages, in the form of slogans or
  quotes, can help to positively empower a team. By enabling them to
  visualize success, through the words of celebrities or industry
  professionals, they are more likely to be able to imagine similar
  success for themselves thus motivating them to improve their
  performance.
• Team-building activities
  Despite mixed feelings about team-building activities, the fact that
  they encourage people to work together outside the office
  environment can be a definite advantage. They can encourage healthy
  competition and give each member of staff the opportunity to be on
  the winning team. Improving team relationships can result in
  increased productivity and morale,
  and can lead to a much happier and healthier working environment.
  Such exercises can also help in the resolution of pre-existing
  issues within the team. It is important that all teambuilding
  exercises are carefully balanced to ensure that they do not play to
  the particular strengths, or weaknesses, of employees but are
  designed instead to give everybody a chance of success.
• Training
  People can be taught to become more motivated by showing them how to
  deconstruct tasks and challenges, and how to feel less intimidated
  by their job roles. Demonstrating to them how to cope in the
  workplace can lead directly to improved motivation.
• Enhanced communication
  Communication does not only mean talking to your team but also
  listening to them. It is important to ensure their understanding of
  company objectives and their individual job roles but it is equally
  important to show them the importance of their feedback to the
  achievement of targets and standards.
• Targets, rewards and incentives
  It is generally accepted that having targets to work towards, as
  long as they are realistic, is one of the most effective ways of
  improving performance. Hitting targets improves morale and
  self-confidence but remember that those who consistently
  underachieve will end up feeling demotivated. Target achievement can
  be rewarded not only with financial incentives but perhaps with the
  offer of increased responsibility or even promotion. Different
  people are motivated by different things so it is important to make
  sure that you offer the right incentives to the right member of the
  team.

THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

There are a number of different views as to what motivates workers. The
most commonly held views or theories are discussed below and have been
developed over the last 100 years or so. Unfortunately these theories do
not all reach the same conclusions!
There are two different categories of motivation theories such as
content theories, and process theories. Even though there are different
motivation theories, none of them are universally accepted.

Theory of Scientific Management – Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 – 1917) put forward the idea that workers
are motivated mainly by pay. His Theory of Scientific Management argued
the following: Workers do not naturally enjoy work and so need close
supervision and control Therefore managers should break down production
into a series of small tasks Workers should then be given appropriate
training and tools so they can work as efficiently as possible on one
set task. Workers are then paid according to the number of items they
produce in a set period of timepiece-rate pay. As a result workers are
encouraged to work hard and maximize their productivity. Taylor’s
methods were widely adopted as businesses saw
the benefits of increased productivity levels and lower unit costs. The
most notably advocate was Henry Ford who used them to design the first
ever production line, making Ford cars. This was the start of the era of
mass production.

Taylor’s approach has close links with the concept of an autocratic
management style (managers take all the decisions and simply give orders
to those below them) and Macgregor’s Theory X approach to workers
(workers are viewed as lazy and wish to avoid
responsibility). However workers soon came to dislike Taylor’s approach
as they were only given boring, repetitive tasks to carry out and were
being treated little better than human machines. Firms could also afford
to lay off workers as productivity levels increased. This led to an
increase in strikes and other forms of industrial action by
dis-satisfied workers.

Elton Mayo
Elton Mayo (1880 – 1949) believed that workers are not just concerned
with money but could be better motivated by having their social needs
met whilst at work (something that Taylor ignored). He introduced the
Human Relation School of thought, which focused on managers taking more
of an interest in the workers, treating them as people who have
worthwhile opinions and realizing that workers enjoy interacting together.

According to Mayo workers are best motivated by:

• Better communication between managers and workers.
• Greater manager involvement in employees working lives.

Working in groups or teams
In practice therefore businesses should re-organize production to
encourage greater use of team working and introduce personnel
departments to encourage greater manager involvement in looking after
employees’ interests. His theory most closely fits in with a
paternalistic style of management.

Hierarchy of Needs – Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) along with Frederick Herzberg (1923- )
introduced the NeoHuman Relations School in the 1950’s, which focused on
the psychological needs of employees. Maslow put forward a theory that
there are five levels of human needs which
employees need to have fulfilled at work. All of the needs are
structured into a hierarchy and only once a lower level of need has been
fully met, would a worker be motivated by the opportunity of having the
next need up in the hierarchy satisfied. For example a person who is
dying of hunger will be motivated to achieve a basic wage in order to
buy food before worrying about having a secure job contract or the
respect of others.

A business should therefore offer different incentives to workers in
order to help them fulfill each need in turn and progress up the
hierarchy. Managers should also recognize that workers are not all
motivated in the same way and do not all move up the hierarchy at the
same pace. They may therefore have to offer a slightly different set of
incentives from worker to worker. Maslow’s theory argues that
individuals are motivated to satisfy a number of different kinds of
needs, some of which are more powerful than others. The term prepotency
refers to the idea that some needs are felt as being more pressing than
others. Maslow argues that until these most pressing needs are
satisfied, other needs have little effect on an individual’s behavior.
In other words, we satisfy the most proponent needs first and then
progress to the less pressing ones. As one need becomes satisfied, and
therefore less important to us, other
needs loom up and become motivators of our behavior. Maslow represents
this prepotency of needs as a hierarchy. The most proponent needs are
shown at the bottom of the ladder, with prepotency decreasing as one
progress upwards.

• SELF-ACTUALISATION – reaching your maximum potential, doing you own
  best thing
• ESTEEM – respect from others, self-respect, recognition
• BELONGING – affiliation, acceptance, being part of something
• SAFETY – physical safety, psychological security
• PHYSIOLOGICAL – hunger, thirst, sex, rest

The first needs that anyone must satisfy are physiological. As Maslow says:
“Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most proponent of all
needs. What this means specifically is that in the human being who is
missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that
the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any
others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love and esteem would
probably hunger for food more strongly than anything else”.

Once the first level needs are largely satisfied, Maslow maintains, the
next level of needs emerges. Individuals become concerned with the need
for safety and security – protection from physical harm, disaster,
illness and security of income, life-style and relationships.
Similarly, once these safety needs have become largely satisfied,
individuals become concerned with belonging – a sense of membership in
some group or groups, a need for affiliation and a feeling of acceptance
by others.

When there is a feeling that the individual belongs somewhere, he or she
is next motivated by a desire to be held in esteem. People need to be
thought of as worthwhile by others, to be recognized as people with some
value. They also have a strong need to see themselves as worthwhile
people. Without this type of self-concept, one sees oneself as drifting,
cut off, pointless. Much of this dissatisfaction with certain types of
job centre’s around the fact that they are perceived, by the people
performing them, as demeaning and therefore damaging to their self-concept.

Finally, Maslow says, when all these needs have been satisfied at least
to some extent, people are motivated by a desire to self-actualize, to
achieve whatever they define as their maximum potential, to do their
thing to the best of their ability. Several points must be made
concerning Maslow’s model of motivation. First, it should be made clear
that he does not mean that individuals experience only one type of need
at a time. In fact, we probably experience all levels of needs all the
time, only to varying degrees. In many parts of the world, hunger is a
genuine reality but we have all experienced the phenomenon of not being
able to concentrate upon a job because of a growling stomach.

Productivity drops prior to lunch as people transfer their thoughts from
their jobs to the upcoming meal. After lunch, food it not uppermost in
people’s minds but perhaps rest is, as a sense of drowsiness sets in.
Similarly, in almost all organizational settings, individuals juggle
their needs for security (“Can I keep this job?”) with needs for esteem
(“If I do what is demanded by the job, how
will my peers see me, and how will I see myself?”) Given a situation
where management is demanding a certain level of performance
but where group norms are to
produce below these levels, all these issues are experienced.

If the individual does not produce to the level demanded by management,
he or she may lose the job (security). But if he or she conforms to
management’s norms rather than those of the group, it may ostracize him
or her (belonging) while the individual may see him or herself as a
turncoat (esteem) and may have a feeling of having let the side down
(self-esteem.) We do not progress simply from one level in the hierarchy
to another in a straightforward, orderly manner; there is a constant,
but ever-changing pull from all levels and types of needs.

A second point that must be made about Maslow’s hierarchy is that the
order in which he has set up the needs does not necessarily reflect
their prepotency for every individual. Some people may have such a high
need for esteem that they are able to subordinate their needs for
safety, or their physiological or belonging needs to these. The war hero
springs to mind. There is little concern for safety or physical comfort
as the seeker of glory rushes forward into the muzzle of destruction.

A third and very important point to be made about Maslow’s hierarchical
model is the assertion that once a need is satisfied it is no longer a
motivator – until it re-emerges. Food is a poor motivator after a meal.
The point in this is clear for management. Unfortunately, many
organizations and individuals still fail to get the message. Most
incentive schemes are based upon needs that have already been largely
satisfied. If management placed emphasis on needs that have not been
satisfied, employees would be more likely to be motivated towards
achieving the goals of the organization. Human behavior is primarily
directed towards unsatisfied needs.

Finally, an important aspect of Maslow’s model is that it provides for
constant growth of the individual. There is no point at which everything
has been achieved. Having satisfied the lower needs, one is always
striving to do things to the best of one’s ability, and best is always
defined as being slightly better than before. There has been a great
deal of debate over Maslow’s hierarchical concept of motivation. It has
a basic attraction to most people because it seems to be logical, to
make sense.

Dual-Factor Theory – Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg (1923- ) had close links with Maslow and believed in
a two-factor theory of motivation. He argued that there were certain
factors that a business could introduce that would directly motivate
employees to work harder (Motivators). However there were also factors
that would de-motivate an employee if not present but would not in
themselves actually motivate employees to work harder (Hygiene factors)

Motivators are more concerned with the actual job itself. For instance
how interesting the work is and how much opportunity it gives for extra
responsibility, recognition and promotion. Hygiene factors are factors
which ‘surround the job’ rather than the job itself. For
example a worker will only turn up to work if a business has provided a
reasonable level of pay and safe working conditions but these factors
will not make him work harder at his job once he is there. Importantly
Herzberg viewed pay as a hygiene factor which is in direct contrast to
Taylor who viewed pay, and piece-rate in particular

Herzberg believed that businesses should motivate employees by adopting
a democratic approach to management and by improving the nature and
content of the actual job through certain methods. Some of the methods
managers could use to achieve this are:

• Job enlargement – workers being given a greater variety of tasks to
  perform (not necessarily more challenging) which should make the
  work more interesting.
• Job enrichment – involves workers being given a wider range of more
  complex, interesting and challenging tasks surrounding a complete
  unit of work. This should give a greater sense of achievement.
• Empowerment – means delegating more power to employees to make their
  own decisions over areas of their working life.

There are two types of motivators, one type which results in
satisfaction with the job, and the other which merely prevents
dissatisfaction. The two types are quite separate and distinct from one
another. Herzberg called the factors which result in job satisfaction
motivators and those that simply prevented dissatisfaction hygienes
The factors that lead to job satisfaction (the motivators) are:

• achievement
• recognition
• work itself
• responsibility
• advancement

The factors which may prevent dissatisfaction (the hygienes) are:

• company policy and administration
• working conditions
• supervision
• interpersonal relations
• money
• status
• security

Hygienes, if applied effectively, can at best prevent dissatisfaction:
if applied poorly, they can result in negative feelings about the job.
Motivators are those things that allow for psychological growth and
development on the job. They are closely related to the concept of
self-actualization, involving a challenge, an opportunity to extend
oneself to the fullest, to taste the pleasure of accomplishment, and to
be recognized as having done something worthwhile. Hygienes are simply
factors that describe the conditions of work rather than the work
itself. Herzberg’s point is that if you want to motivate people, you
have to be concerned with the job itself and not simply with the
surroundings.

In a medical sense, growth, healing and development occur as natural
internal processes. They are the result of proper diet, exercise, sleep
etc. Hygienic procedures simply prevent disease from occurring. They do
not promote growth per se. Herzberg says that we should focus our
attention on the individuals in jobs, not on the things that we surround
them with. He maintains that we tend to think that growth and
development will occur if we provide good working conditions, status,
security and administration, whereas in fact what stimulates growth (and
motivation to grow and develop) are opportunities for achievement,
recognition, responsibility and advancement.

Herzberg goes further than Maslow, cutting the hierarchy off near the
top and maintaining that motivation results only from some elements of
esteem needs and self-actualization.

The Need for Achievement – David McClelland

The one single motivating factor which has received the most attention
in terms of research is the need for achievement (n-ach). As a result,
we know more about n-ach than any other motivational factor. Much of
this knowledge is due the work of David McClelland of
Harvard. Individuals with a high n-ach have a number of distinctive
characteristics which separate them from their peers. First of all, they
like situations where they can take personal responsibility for finding
solutions to problems. This allows them to gain personal
satisfaction from their achievements. They do not like situations where
success or failure results from chance. The important thing is that the
outcome be the result of their own skill and effort.

A second characteristic of high n-ach people is that they like to set
moderately high goals for themselves. These goals are neither so low
that they can be achieved with little challenge, nor so high that they
are impossible. High n-ach individuals prefer goals that require all-out
effort and the exercise of all their abilities. Once again, the
achievement of this type of objective results in greater personal
satisfaction. This phenomenon can be observed in very young children. A
child may be given a game of ring toss, told that he or she scores
whenever a ring lands over the peg and then left alone to play the game.

A third distinctive characteristic of high achievers is that they want
concrete feedback on their performance. Only certain types of jobs
provide this kind of feedback, however, and so some kinds of jobs are
unattractive to high achievers. For instance, teachers receive only
imprecise, hazy feedback as to the effectiveness of their efforts while
production managers have a daily output chart to look at with either joy or disappointment.

There are some additional minor characteristics possessed by high
achievers. They tend to enjoy travel, are willing to give up a bird in
the hand for two in the bush and prefer experts to friends as working
partners. The image is clear; the high achiever is a personality type
suited admirably to certain jobs and not others. It would be wrong to
treat all individuals as high achievers and attempt to motivate them by
offering them challenging jobs, rapid and objective feedback on
performance and personal responsibility for success or failure.

Expectancy Theory of motivation – Victor Vroom

Victor Vroom has challenged the assertion of the human religionists that
job satisfaction leads to increased productivity. (This theory has been
called the contented cow approach to management.) The assumption is that
if management keeps employees happy, they will
respond by increasing productivity. Herzberg, in a delightful film of
motivation, highlights the fallacy of this assumption with an interview
between a manager and a secretary. The secretary is complaining about
the job, and the manager lists all the things that have been done for
the secretary – increases salary, new typewriter, better hours, status
and so on – at the end of which she looks straight at him and asks, So
what have to done for me lately?

The point may be made that satisfied needs do not motivate people
Hygienes simply keep employees quiet for a time. For an individual to be
motivated to perform a certain task, he or she must expect that
completion of the task will lead to achievement of his or her goals. The
task is not necessarily the goal itself but is often the means of goal
attainment. Vroom defines motivation as:
“A process governing choices, made by persons or lower organisms, among
alternative forms
of voluntary behavior.”

In organizational terms, this concept of motivation pictures an
individual, occupying a role, faced with a set of alternative voluntary
behaviors, all of which have some associated outcomes attached to them.
If the individual chooses behavior 1, outcome A results; if 2 then B
results and so on. However, Vroom makes the point that task goals
(productivity, quality standards or similar goals attached to jobs) are
often means to an end, rather than the end in itself. There is a second
level of outcomes which reflect the real goals of individuals and these
may be attained, in varying degrees, through task behaviour.