Motivation Theory
Organizations include many different types of people and personalities that in turn create a need for different types of motivational strategies. In organizations we can have three types of setting that we work in: sales, production, and educational. Every individual is molded and shaped by the experiences that life has presented to that individual, and these experiences can impact the manner and attitude by which they perceive motivation. To a degree, motivation is very personal and what may initiate the motivational drive in some people may not do so for others. Motivation processes set the tone of the organizational goals, which is why organizations should develop comprehensive and diverse motivational strategies. The theory that I propose combines Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene theory and the Maslow-based Existence, elatedness, and Growth (EG) theory of motivation. I will call this theory the Motivational Balance Theory. The ultimate goal of this thorough motivational theory is…...
Motivation Theory:
The Implementation of Motivation in the Workplace
Motivation lends a hand to one to achieve goals and can be either intrinsic or extrinsic (TheManager.org, 2001). In multiple theories, motivation is the need to decrease pain or increase one's happiness. Through the study of motivation, a management team will be better able to inspire their employees and the company as a whole. The satisfaction the employees may have the possibility to create internal happiness, a pleasant work environment, and an increase in productivity. This is especially true when one's motivation comes directly from bodily deficits, which then causes them to work towards reversing said deficit (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
Example
A retail or commission-based job often requires a certain amount of products or services to be sold by an employee in a given set of time. In the financial bank setting, it is a common practice for the financial bankers to be issued a…...
Nursing
Leadership, as opposed to management, means that those in leadership positions can engage the willingness of staff to accomplish work. In this way, a leader influences and guides direction, opinion, and course of action. In a nursing situation, I think the best leadership action to take is that of situational leader. The reason for this is that the nursing environment presents with so many different contingencies and eventualities, that it is difficult to apply a single consistent set of leadership ideas or theories. Hence, a leader who can respond effectively to whatever the situation at whatever time will function better in the nursing environment than one who is more attached to a single leadership method across the board.
Such a leader will also best be able to motivate staff members, since situational leadership is inherently as flexible as it needs to be to accomplish this. Since human beings are motivated by…...
Organizational Psychology - Motivation
Landy and Conte (2013) define industrial-organizational psychology as "the application of psychological principles, theory, and research to the work setting" (p. 7). A prominent line of research in industrial-organizational psychology is the study of worker motivation. Over many decades, as management theory has developed, several philosophical and psychological strands have emerged, and are often referred to as: 1) Person as machine; 2) person as scientist, and 3) person as intentional.
Person as Machine
Theory X managers are known to take "the carrot and the stick" approach to supervision since they believe that people work only for the monetary compensation, which means that coercion, threat, and punitive measures must be used to extract efficient workplace effort from employees. Manifestations of Theory X management include high levels of mistrust between employees and employers, and a tendency of management to blame workers for inefficiencies or mistakes rather than looking at other sources…...
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References
Buckingham, M. And Clifton, D.O. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths Hardcover. New York, NY: Free Press (a Simon & Schuster imprint)
Kanfer, R. (2009). Work motivation: Identifying use-inspired research directions. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2(1), 118-127. doi: 10.1111/j.1754
34.2008.01120.x
Landy, F.J., & Conte, J.M. (2013). Work in the 21st century: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
The vertical differentiations are associated with the components of abstraction that permit individuals to determine both their intentions and their behaviors. The horizontal differentiation is associated with different intentions including the completion of the project.
Tubbs and Eckeberg (1991) assert that understanding the intentional model has implications associated with understanding the effects of goal setting. The authors argue that the intentional behavior model explains the cognitive effects of goals which is rarely seen in research pertaining to work motivation. The authors posit that the research is important because it is the first time that research has sought to determine the impact that goals have on people.
Finally Latham and Pinder (2005) discuss Work Motivation Theory and research at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The author point out that interest in motivational theories has not waned since they first begin to surface. According to the authors, work motivation represents a set…...
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References
Klein J.I. (1990) Feasibility Theory: A Resource Munificence Model of Work motivation and Behavior. Academy of Management Review. 15 (4) pgs. 646-645.
Latham G.P., Pinder, C.C. (2005) Work Motivation Theory and Research at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century. Annual Review of Pyschology. 56: 485-516.
Tubbs M.E., Eckeberg S.E. (1991) Academy of Management Review. 15(1) pgs. 180-199.
Both observation and experiment provided the underpinning for Abraham Maslow’s theory of human motivation. Maslow (1943) posits, “man is a perpetually wanting animal,” leading to the constant striving to fulfill goals (p. 370). If and when anything prevents the fulfillment of a goal—whether the obstacle is internal or external—discomfort or psychopathy can occur (Maslow, 1943). Although Maslow’s original research was conducted decades ago, recent research on motivation and human behavior continues to substantiate Maslow’s core claims. Researchers continue to operationalize Maslow’s definitions of needs and motivation, leading to a strengthening of the original theory and expanded applications in the social sciences. Maslow himself wrote extensively to develop and mature a comprehensive theory of human motivation based on the hierarchy of needs model. The original needs hierarchy consists of five fundamental needs: for physiological comfort and fulfillment, for safety and security, for belongingness, for esteem, and for self-actualization. Although definitions of…...
Motivation Systems for Hospitality Organizations: A Case Study of Motel
Generally speaking, the hospitality industry competes on a global basis by providing food and beverages services as well as accommodations for tourists and travelers. For instance, according to Lucas, "The term hospitality industry serves as an overarching label for businesses whose primary purpose is to offer food, beverage and accommodation for sale on a commercial basis" (2003:3). By contrast, hospitality services are associated activities that take place within the hospitality industry which are provided within different segments of the marketplace. Such hospitality activities are primarily involved with providing food and beverage services for a wide range of institutional operations including educational facilities such as colleges and universities, passenger airline carriers, healthcare and long-term care facilities as well as penitentiaries and jails (Lucas 2003). For the purposes of this study, the focus will be on the hospitality industry and hotels in…...
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References
About Motel 6. (2010). Motel 6. [online] available:
Organizational Behavior
How New Practices at Sodexho Align with the Essentials of Performance Management
Performance management, in basic terms, has got to do with an organization's involvement of employees with an aim of enabling them to achieve objectives and, hence, further enhance performance at both the individual and organizational level. Quite a number of changes have taken place at Sodexho since the entry of Ms. ohini Anand, the Senior Vice President and Global Chief Diversity Officer at Sodexho. To what extent do these changes and new practices align with the essentials of performance management?
To begin with, Sodexho has been able to not only define, but also clarify performance expectations. This, as will be indicated below, has been more so the case when it comes to identifying the exact performance expectations of various groups or categories of employees. As Ms. Anand points out, interviewers at Sodexho are trained on cultural competent recruiting. It…...
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References
Sims, R. (2002). Managing Organizational Behavior. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
Workplace Motivation
This paper investigates the issue of motivation as it applies to an organizational setting.
The research regarding motivation in the workplace has been a major area of investigation that is of interest to corporate leaders, managers, organizational psychologists, and educators. The issue that this paper will discuss has to do with the particular factors that managers and leaders can address to increase the motivation of their workers to perform as well as to increase the job satisfaction levels of their employees. However, motivation is only one issue regarding increased productivity or increased job satisfaction; we would certainly think that at a basic level an employee would need a certain level of motivation to perform as well as the ability to actually do the job (as it turns out the research is consistent with this type of common-sense thinking). However, the actual types of interventions/activities that can be used to motivate…...
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References
Argyris, C. 1993, Knowledge for action: a guide to overcoming barriers to organizational change, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Chien, J.C. 2013,'Examining Herzberg's Two Factor Theory in a large Chinese chemical fiber company' World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, vol. 78, no. 248, pp.1433-1438.
Gneezy, U. And Rustichini, A. 2000, 'Pay enough or don't pay at all', Quarterly Journal of Economics vol. 115, no. 3, pp. 791-810.
Hackman, J.R. And Oldham, G.R. 1980, Work redesign. Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Theory-based information can help organizations to ascertain the most appropriate training and development programs for their employees. In fact, theory-based information helps human resources managers to structure training and development for specific groups of people. The most relevant theories include those that are related to learning, and those that are related to social relations and identity construction.
Learning theories can be based on basic behaviorism, including patterns of reward and punishment that can be used to motivate specific behaviors and discourage undesirable behaviors that detract from inter-group harmony (Duggan, n.d.). However, cognitive theories of learning can be even more helpful for structuring effective employee training programs designed to cultivate specific skills or to increase productivity (Duggan, n.d.).
Theories that focus more on employee engagement, group identity construction, and other sociological factors are also highly relevant in the process of employee training and development. Motivation theory not only informs best practices when developing…...
Motivation in Behavior
a) What does Tolman's theory of animal learning tell us about the motivation for human learning?
Unlike John Watson, B.F. Skinner and the other strict behaviorists, or the ussian physiologists like Ivan Pavlov, Edward C. Tolman argued that the behaviorist theory that learning was a matter of stimulus-response (S-) and positive and negative reinforcement was highly simplistic. Although he rejected introspective methods and metaphysics, he increasingly moved away from strict behaviorism into the areas of cognitive psychology. In short, he became a mentalist without actually using that term to describe himself and concluded that all behavior was "purposive" (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 428). All of his experiments with rats moving through mazes at the University of Berkeley proved to his satisfaction that behavior was actually the dependent variable, with the environment as the independent variable, with mental processes as intervening variables. Tolman summarized this basic theory, which he applied to…...
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REFERENCES
Leaf, J.B. et al. (2010). "Comparison of Simultaneous Prompting and No-No Prompting in Two-Choice Discrimination Learning with Children with Autism." Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 215-28.
Lerner, R.M. (2002). Concepts and Theories of Human Development, (3rd ed.) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Lund, S.K. (2009). "Discrete Trial Instruction in Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention" in E.A. Boutot and M. Tincani (eds). Autism Encyclopedia: The Complete Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorders. Prufrock Press, Inc.
Hergenhahn, B.R. (2009). An Introduction to the History of Psychology, (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Motivation is the key to materializing energy and getting things accomplished. Organizational relationships require proper motivation from all sides of the relationships. Leaders must be motivated and workers must be motivated as well in order to succeed at any mission. The purpose of this essay is to design an organizational motivation plan that encourages and maintains a high level of performance from the members of the Woo Widget Company. The essay will first describe the need for the plan before introducing key components of the system that intends to increase the productivity and efficiency of the employees at Woo.
Before designing a motivational plan that will work in this environment, it is necessary to reveal some important facts that contribute to the motivating factors of the employees at this organization. WooWoo designs widgets, but the widget that WooWoo makes is a clone of a nationally known widget. Woo sells their widget…...
Osterloh, M. et al. (2002). The Dynamics of Motivation in New Organizational Forms. International Journal of the Economics of Business, 9,1, 2002; 61-77. Retrieved from http://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/366_02.pdf
Vallerand, R.J. (March 08, 1993). The Academic Motivation Scale: A Measure of Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Amotivation in Education. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 52, 4, 1003-17.
Although his theory is not necessarily incompatible with Maslow and Alderfer's ideas, Herzberg places less emphasis on basic needs, and more upon using higher, internal needs to elicit optimal performance from the individual.
One common objection to theories of human motivation, of course, is that different types of people appear to be motivated by different things. For example, one teacher may choose his or her position because of job security, while another teacher may be more motivated by the idea of changing children's lives. This means that different strategies must be deployed in motivating people within the same organization or within different professions: a salesperson may be motivated by different things than a professor. "According to David McClelland's an individual's specific needs are acquired over time and are shaped by one's life experiences. Most of these needs can be classed as either achievement, affiliation, or power" (McClelland's theory of needs,…...
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References
Herzberg's Two-Factor theory. (2010). Net MBA. Retrieved February 23, 2010.
" (Ibid)
Transformation leadership is 'authentic' leadership which "builds genuine trust between leaders and followers." Furthermore transformational leadership "concentrates on terminal values such as integrity and fairness. They see the responsibility for their organization's development and impact on society." (Ibid)
Homig and MacGregor in the work entitled:" Transformational Leadership" state that the following ten 'tenets' are inclusive in the transformational leader's style of leading:
1. Leaders have high moral and ethical values.
2. Leaders express genuine interest in followers.
3. Leaders have an inspirational vision.
4. Genuine trust exists between leaders and led.
5. Followers share leader's values and vision.
6. Leaders and followers perform beyond self-interest.
7. Participatory decision-making is the rule.
8. Innovative thinking and action is expected.
9. Motivation is to do the right thing.
10. Leaders mentor. (nd)
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
While all of these theories were valid at some time or in relation to some factor of leadership, transformation leadership is the only style of leadership that leads by…...
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Bibliography
Creating Futures (nd) Online available at wfoundation.org/newsletter/June2005/43565Camp NewsletterFI NAL.pdf+Jeffrey+H.+Brotman,+Leadership&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:k13BWFbu_wIJ:u
One example of this is shown when explaining why people eat, aside for being a basic need; people eat as a form of interaction or in some instances for entertainment. People are motivated to eat because they enjoy doing it with the company of friends and family. Individuals are motivated to eat for other reasons that may include health consideration in particular. Motivation in this aspect is largely attributed to be an internally driven. Each individual has a different motivation in pursuing a certain goal. This motivation is manifested in the human will or volition; some writers see it as the human spirit. In times of difficulty that a person encounters, it is this internal motivation that surfaces which provides the person added strength to weather the storm. For instance, when the body encounters substantial physical and mental stress, the body secretes adrenaline resulting to a situation wherein the…...
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References
Beck, Robert. (2000) Motivation: Theories and Principles. New Jersey Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Franken, Robert (1998) Human Motivation. New York: Brooks/Core Publishing Company.
Ford, Martin (1992) Motivating Humans. London: Sage Publications.
Houston, John (1985) Motivation. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
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