What Is Motivation?

Introduction:

What is motivation?

The process that account for an individual's intensity, direction and persistent of efforts towards attaining a goal

Motivation is a defined as process that initiates, guides and maintains goal oriented behavior. Motivation is causes us to act, whether a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading book to gain knowledge

Frederick Irving Herzberg (1923-2000)

He was a psychologist who became one of the most influential names in business management. He is most famous for introducing job enrichment and motivator hygiene theory (two factor theory). He published his article name "One more time, How do you motivate employees?" in 1968 which had sold-out 1.2 million reprints in 1987 and was the most requested article from Harvard Business Review

Theory x suggest that employees are naturally lazy, unwilling to do work until they motivated. The theory formed the concept of KITA (kick in the ass) which suggest that managers have something to do with employees to motivate them for better performance. There are three type of KITA, first is negative physical KITA, motivation by punishment e.g. cut their salaries, increases their working hours, second is negative psychological KITA non tangible punishment e.g. move them to undesirable office, stop speaking to them and third in positive KITA giving them reward and benefits e.g. reducing the working hours, giving them fringe benefit, mange employee relationship.

The two factors theory was based around interviews with 203 American scientists and accountants in Pittsburgh. Herzberg suggests that the factors that cause satisfaction are different from the factors that cause dissatisfaction. The factors that cause dissatisfaction are called Hygiene factors and the factors that cause satisfaction are called Motivational factors.

Job Enlargement, sometimes called horizontal loading, involves expanding the number of tasks associated with a particular job. Employees simply systematically move from one job to another

Frederick Herzberg focused the Job Enrichment, sometimes referred to as Vertical Loading, involves increasing the responsibilities of the job. Compared to job enlargement, the increase in the variety of work of an enriched job may be no more than of an enlarged job, but the responsibility of the job is increased

What is Organizational Behavior?

Organizational behavior is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behavior within an organization. It is an interdisciplinary field that includes sociology, psychology, communication, and management; and it complements the academic studies of organization theory.

Whenever people interact in organizations, many factors come into play. Modern organizational studies attempt to understand and model these factors. There is some controversy over the ethics of controlling workers' behavior, as well as the manner in which workers are treated. As such, organizational behavior has at times been accused of being the scientific tool of the powerful. That accusation, not withstanding, organizational behavior can play a major role in organizational development, enhancing organizational performance, as well as individual and group performance.

How do you motivate the employees?

What factors come to your mind to motivate your employees? Those factors might include higher salary or do they want security, good relationships with co-workers, opportunities for growth and advancement - or something else altogether? This is an important question, because it's at the root of motivation, the art of engaging with members of your team in such a way that they give their very best performance.

Relation with Organizational Behavior

Motivation is the force that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes us to take action, whether to grab a snack to reduce hunger or enroll in college to earn a degree. The forces that lie beneath motivation can be biological, social, emotional or cognitive in nature.

Theories on motivations:

There are a number of different views as to what motivates workers. The most commonly held views or theories are briefly discussed below and have taken more than 100 years to develop. Unfortunately, these theories do not all reach the same conclusions.

* Maslow hierarchy of needs:

* Clayton Adler (ERG)

* Herzberg theory of motivation: Two factor theory:

* Douglas McGregor's - Theory of Motivation

* David McClelland's needs-based motivational model

Maslow hierarchy of needs:

Maslow put forward a theory that there are five levels of human needs which employees need to be fulfilled and achieve motivation at work. All of the needs are structured into a hierarchy (see below) 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.

Related to case study:

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.

Clayton Adler (ERG) Theory

To address some of the limitations of Maslow's hierarchy as a theory of motivation, Clayton Adler proposed the ERG theory, which like Maslow's theory, describes needs as a hierarchy. The letters ERG stand for three levels of needs: Existence, Relatedness, and Growth. The ERG theory is based on the work of Maslow, so it has much in common with it but also differs in some important aspects.

Herzberg theory of motivation: Two factor theory:

It includes two factors in it

* Motivators

* Hygiene factors

Motivators: are