Motivation Flashcards
Motivation
process that accounts for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Self-actualisation needs: achieving one’s potential
- Esteem needs: internal factors such as self-respect, external factors like status
- Social needs: affection, belongingness, acceptance, friendship
- Safety needs: protection from both physical and emotional harm
- Physiological needs: bodily needs such as hunger
Social, esteem, self-actualisation are high-order needs that are satisfied by internal factors, physiological and safety are low-order needs, satisfied by external factors
People satisfy needs at the bottom first then up, so managers need to identify the level of needs and try to satisfy the needs of the same or higher level to ensure motivation
Theory X and Theory Y (Douglas McGregor)
Theory X (negative): employees dislike their work and must be directed or forced to perform their tasks
Theory Y (positive): employees accept their work as a natural procedure, seek responsibility and that high-order needs motivate employees
Two distinct views of human beings
Two Factor Theory (Frederick Herzberg)
Intrinsic factors increase job satisfaction and extrinsic factors leads to dissatisfaction when they are not adequate
Intrinsic: achievement, core values
Extrinsic: rewards, supervision
The opposite of satisfaction isn’t dissatisfaction, they are two different but intersection ideas
Self Determination Theory
People prefer to have control over their actions, thus, taking steps to make a task feel more like an obligation will decrease motivation
Cognitive Evaluation Theory
Allocating extrinsic rewards for behaviour that had been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease overall levels of motivation, if the reward can be seen as controlling
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
Three categories of needs:
Need for achievement: excel and achieve with respect to standards which will help you succeed
Need for power: helps others behave in a way in which they normally do not behave in
Need for affiliation: desire to be friendly and have close interpersonal relationships
High achievers prefer challenging goals and they outperform when they believe there is a 50-50 chance of achieving their goals, motivated when jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback accompanied by a medium degree of risk
Successful managers have high needs for power and low needs for affiliation
Self-Concordance
Considers how strongly peoples’ reasons for pursuing goals are in line with their interests and core values. People who pursue goals because of an intrinsic interest are more likely to attain their goals and be happy even if they don’t but people who pursue goals for extrinsic reasons are less likely to attain their goals and be happy.
Self-Efficacy Theory
Refers to an individual’s belief that he/she is capable of performing a task
Self-efficacy can create a positive spiral in which those with high efficacy become more engaged in their tasks which leads to increased performance which then increases efficacy furthermore.
Bringing together goal-setting theory and the self-efficacy theory can increase self-efficacy since challenging goals increase self-confidence.
Four ways to increase self-efficacy:
1. Enactive Mastery: obtaining relevant experience with a task
2. Vicarious modelling: the phenomenon of feeling more confident, when you see someone else performing the task
3. Verbal persuasion: becoming more confident because someone else convinces you that you have the skills to ensure success
4. Arousal: people feel more energetic and are strongly motivated to complete a task
Best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through the Pygmalion effect or Galatea effect.
Pygmalion effect: higher expectations from others increase our performance
Galatea effect: high expectation of your ability lead to increased performance
Goal Setting Theory
Specific and difficult goals, accompanied by feedback, lead to high performance.
Challenging goals attract our attention, help us focus and energise us to discover the different strategies to achieve these goals. Feedback helps individuals determine the discrepancies between their desired behaviour and their actual behaviour.
Three other factors influence the goals-performance relationship:
Goal commitment: the individual believes he/she can achieve the goal and wants to achieve it
Task characteristics: goals themselves affect performance when the tasks are simple rather than complex, well-learned rather than novel, independent rather than interdependent, and on the high end of achievable
National culture: goals have different effects in different cultures, in high-power-distance cultures, achievable moderate goals can be more motivating than difficult ones
Two categories for the way people regulate their thoughts and behaviours during goal pursuit:
Promotion focus: strive for achievement and accomplishment
Prevention focus: strive to fulfil duties, obligations and avoid conditions that pull them away from desired goals
Implementing: Management by Objectives (MBO) - promotes the development of specific goals that are participative set, tangible, verifiable and measurable
Reinforcement Theory
Behaviour is a function of its consequences, individual behaviours can be changed through reinforcement, punishment and extinction.
Equity Theory
People compare their job inputs and outcomes with those of others and then take action to eliminate any existing inequities
If the ratio is equal, we feel fair
If the ratio is unequal and is under-rewarded, anger is created
If the ratio is unequal and is over-rewarded, guilt is created
People who perceive inequity can act in six different ways:
1. change their inputs
2. change their outcomes
3. distort perception of self
4. distort perception of others
5. choose a different referent
6. leave the field
Organisational Justice
Concerned about how employees feel authorities and decision-makers at work treat them.
Perception of fairness in the workplace is composed of:
1. Distributive justice: allocation of rewards
2. Procedural justice: process used to determine the distribution of rewards
3. Informational justice: degree to which employees are provided with truthful explanations and decisions
4. Interpersonal justice: degree to which employees are treated with dignity and respect
Expectancy Theory
Individual effort –> individual performance –> organisational rewards –> personal goals
Effort performance relationship: probability received by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance
Performance-rewards relationship: degree to which the individual believes performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of desired outcome
Reward-personal goals relationship: degree to which organisational rewards satisfy an individual’s personal goals or needs and the attractiveness of those potential rewards for the individual
Job Characteristic Model (JCM)
Motivating by job designing.
We can describe any job in terms of five core job dimensions:
1. Skill variety: degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities so the workers can use a number of different skills and talents
- Task identity: degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work
- Task significance: degree to which a job affects the lives or work of other people
- Autonomy: degree to which a job provides the worker freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling work and determining the procedure of carrying it out
- Feedback: degree to which carrying out work activities generates direct and clear information about your own performance
Motivating Potential Score (MPS) = (Skill variety + Task identity + Task significance) / 3 * Autonomy * Feedback
How can jobs be redesigned?
Job rotation (cross-training): periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another, reduced boredom, increases motivation, helps employees better understand how to contribute to the organisation but increases training costs, reduces productivity and creates disruptions as employees have to adjust.
Job enrichment: increasing the degree to which an employee is responsible for the planning, execution and evaluation, vertical expansion of job, allowing employees to perform freedom and independence, making them feel valued and becoming more intrinsically motivated
Relational job design: shifts the spotlight from the employee to those whose lives are affected by the job that the employee performs, construction of jobs so employees see the positive difference they can make in the lives of other directly through their work
Alternative work arrangements: especially important for diverse workforce such as dual-earner couples, employees caring for a sick or aging relative
Flextime: allows employees to choose the start and end time for their workday, but need to consider the appropriateness of both the work and workers
Job sharing: allows two or more individuals to split a traditional job, but it is hard to find compatible pairs of employees who can successfully coordinate the job
Teleworking: working at home at least 2 days a week, increases flexibility and independence of employees, reduces job satisfaction, level of supervision and the ability to coordinate teamwork, increases isolation
Employee involvement
Process of keeping the employees aligned with the organisation’s values and work ethics
2 major types:
1. Participative management: employees are able to contribute significantly to the decision-making process along with their immediate superiors
2. Representative participation: employees are represented by a small group of employees in organisational decision-making processes
Using Rewards to Motivate Employees
The pay have a strong influence on the motivation of the employees.
What to pay: establishing a pay structure, process of setting pay levels that balances internal equity and external equity
- Internal equity: the worth of the job to the organisation
- External equity: external competitiveness of an organisation’s pay relative to pay elsewhere in its industry
How to pay: rewarding individual employees through variable pay programmes
Piece-rate pay: employee receives a fixed sum for each unit of production completed
Merit-based pay: determines the pay on the basis of their performance appraisal
Bonuses: rewards employees for recent performance rather than historical performance
Skill-based pay: pay employees on the basis of their total number of skills and the jobs they can perform
Gainsharing: improvement in group productivity from one period to another determine the total amount of money allocated
Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP): employee acquires stock often at below-market price as a part of their benefits
Flexible benefits: developing a benefit package plan based on their own needs, personal preferences and situation
1. Modular plans: predesigned packages or modules of benefits
2. Core-plus plans: include essential benefits and a menu-like selection that the employees can choose from
3. Flexible spending plan: permit employees to save pre-tax pay up to the amount offered in the plan to spend on particular benefits
Financial incentives may be more motivating in the short term, but in the long run non-financial incentives may be more motivating.
