Motivation
(Ken Shah & Prof. Param J. Shah)
Nearly all the conscious behavior of human being is motivated. The internal needs and drives lead to
tensions, which in turn result into actions. The need for food results into hunger and hence a person
is motivated to eat.
A manager requires to create and maintain an environment in which individuals work together in
groups towards the accomplishment of common objectives. A manager cannot do a job without
knowing what motivates people. The building of motivating factors into organizational roles, the
staffing of these roles and the entire process of leading people must be built on a knowledge of
motivation. It is necessary to remember that level of motivation varies both between individuals and
within individuals at different times. Today in the increasingly competitive environment maintaining a
highly motivated workforce is the most challenging task. The art of motivation starts by learning how
to influence the behavior of the individual. This understanding helps to achieve both, the individual as
well as organizational objectives.
Motivation is a powerful tool in the hands of leaders. It can persuade convince and propel. People to
act.
WHAT IS MOTIVATION ?
It is a general tendency to believe that motivation is a personal trait. Some people have it and the
others don’t. In practice, some are labeled to be lazy because they do not display an outward sign of
motivation. However, individuals differ in their basic motivational drives. It also depends upon their
areas of interest. The concept of motivation is situational and its level varies between different
individuals and at different times. If you understand what motivates people, you have at your
command the most powerful tool for dealing with them.
DEFINING MOTIVATION
Motivation is to inspire people to work, individually or in groups in the ways such as to produce best
results. It is the will to act. It is the willingness to exert high levels of effort towards organizational
goals, conditioned by the efforts and ability to satisfy some individual need.
Motivation is getting somebody to do something because they want to do it. It was once assumed
that motivation had to be injected from outside, but it is now understood that everyone is
motivated by several differing forces.
Motivation is a general term applied to the entire class of drives, desires, needs, wishes and similar
forces. To say that managers motivate their subordinates is to say that they do those things which
they hope will satisfy these drives and desires and induce the subordinates to act in a desired
manner.
To motivate others is the most important of management tasks. It comprises the abilities to
communicate, to set an example, to challenge, to encourage, to obtain feedback, to involve, to
delegate, to develop and train, to inform, to brief and to provide a just reward.
Theories of Motivation
1. Abraham Maslow’s “Need Hierarchy Theory” :
One of the most widely mentioned theories of motivation is the hierarchy of needs theory put forth
by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow saw human needs in the form of a hierarchy, ascending from
the lowest to the highest, and he concluded that when one set of needs is satisfied, this kind of
need ceases to be a motivator.
As per his theory this needs are :
(i) Physiological needs :
These are important needs for sustaining the human life. Food, water, warmth, shelter, sleep,
medicine and education are the basic physiological needs which fall in the primary list of need
satisfaction. Maslow was of an opinion that until these needs were satisfied to a degree to maintain
life, no other motivating factors can work.
(ii) Security or Safety needs :
These are the needs to be free of physical danger and of the fear of losing a job, property, food or
shelter. It also includes protection against any emotional harm.
(iii) Social needs :
Since people are social beings, they need to belong and be accepted by others. People try to satisfy
their need for affection, acceptance and friendship.
(iv) Esteem needs :
According to Maslow, once people begin to satisfy their need to belong, they tend to want to be
held in esteem both by themselves and by others. This kind of need produces such satisfaction as
power, prestige status and self-confidence. It includes both internal esteem factors like self-respect,
autonomy and achievements and external esteem factors such as states, recognition and attention.
(v) Need for self-actualization :
Maslow regards this as the highest need in his hierarchy. It is the drive to become what one is
capable of becoming, it includes growth, achieving one’s potential and self-fulfillment. It is to
maximize one’s potential and to accomplish something.
As each of these needs are substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant. From the
standpoint of motivation, the theory would say that although no need is ever fully gratified, a
substantially satisfied need no longer motivates. So if you want to motivate someone, you need to
understand what level of the hierarchy that person is on and focus on satisfying those needs or needs
above that level.
Maslow’s need theory has received wide recognition, particularly among practicing managers. This can
be attributed to the theory’s intuitive logic and ease of understanding. However, research does not
validate these theory. Maslow provided no empirical evidence and other several studies that sought to
validate the theory found no support for it.
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2. “Theory X and Theory Y” of Douglas McGregor :
McGregor, in his book “The Human side of Enterprise” states that people inside the organization can
be managed in two ways. The first is basically negative, which falls under the category X and the
other is basically positive, which falls under the category Y. After viewing the way in which the
manager dealt with employees, McGregor concluded that a manager’s view of the nature of human
beings is based on a certain grouping of assumptions and that he or she tends to mold his or her
behavior towards subordinates according to these assumptions.
Under the assumptions of theory X :
Employees inherently do not like work and whenever possible, will attempt to avoid it.
Because employees dislike work, they have to be forced, coerced or threatened with
punishment to achieve goals.
Employees avoid responsibilities and do not work fill formal directions are issued.
Most workers place a greater importance on security over all other factors and display little
ambition.
In contrast under the assumptions of theory Y :
Physical and mental effort at work is as natural as rest or play.
People do exercise self-control and self-direction and if they are committed to those goals.
Average human beings are willing to take responsibility and exercise imagination, ingenuity and
creativity in solving the problems of the organization.
That the way the things are organized, the average human being’s brainpower is only partly
used.
On analysis of the assumptions it can be detected that theory X assumes that lower-order needs
dominate individuals and theory Y assumes that higher-order needs dominate individuals. An
organization that is run on Theory X lines tends to be authoritarian in nature, the word
“authoritarian” suggests such ideas as the “power to enforce obedience” and the “right to
command.” In contrast Theory Y organizations can be described as “participative”, where the aims of
the organization and of the individuals in it are integrated; individuals can achieve their own goals
best by directing their efforts towards the success of the organization.
However, this theory has been criticized widely for generalization of work and human behavior.
3. Frederick Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory :
Frederick has tried to modify Maslow’s need Hierarchy theory. His theory is also known as two-factor
theory or Hygiene theory. He stated that there are certain satisfiers and dissatisfiers for employees
at work. In- trinsic factors are related to job satisfaction, while extrinsic factors are associated with
dissatisfaction. He devised his theory on the question : “What do people want from their jobs ?” He
asked people to describe in detail, such situations when they felt exceptionally good or exceptionally
bad. From the responses that he received, he concluded that opposite of satisfaction is not
dissatisfaction. Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job does not necessarily make the job
satisfying. He states that presence of certain factors in the organization is natural and the presence
of the same does not lead to motivation. However, their nonpresence leads to demotivation. In
similar manner there are certain factors, the absence of which causes no dissatisfaction, but their
presence has motivational impact.
Examples of Hygiene factors are :
Security, status, relationship with subordinates, personal life, salary, work conditions, relationship
with supervisor and company policy and administration.
Examples of Motivational factors are :
Growth prospectus job advancement, responsibility, challenges, recognition and achievements.
People are motivated by more than pay and conditions.
4. Vroom’s Valence x Expectancy theory :
The most widely accepted explanations of motivation has been propounded by Victor Vroom. His
theory is commonly known as expectancy theory. The theory argues that the strength of a tendency
to act in a specific way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a
given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual to make this simple,
expectancy theory says that an employee can be motivated to perform better when their is a belief
that the better performance will lead to good performance appraisal and that this shall result into
realization of personal goal in form of some reward. Therefore an employee is :
Motivation = Valence x Expectancy.
The theory focuses on three things :
Efforts and performance relationship
Performance and reward relationship
Rewards and personal goal relationship
This leads us to a conclusion that :
5. Clayton Alderfer’s ERG Theory :
Alderfer has tried to rebuild the hierarchy of needs of Maslow into another model named ERG i.e.
Existence – Relatedness – Growth. According to him there are 3 groups of core needs as mentioned
above. The existence group is concerned mainly with providing basic material existence. The second
group is the individuals need to maintain interpersonal relationship with other members in the group.
The final group is the intrinsic desire to grow and develop personally. The major conclusions of this
theory are :
1. In an individual, more than one need may be operative at the same time.
2. If a higher need goes unsatisfied than the desire to satisfy a lower need intensifies.
3. It also contains the frustration-regression dimension.
6. Equity Theory :
As per the equity theory of J. Stacey Adams, people are motivated by their beliefs about the
reward structure as being fair or unfair, relative to the inputs. People have a tendency to use
subjective judgment to balance the outcomes and inputs in the relationship for comparisons between
different individuals. Accordingly :
If people feel that they are not equally rewarded they either reduce the quantity or quality of work
or migrate to some other organization. However, if people perceive that they are rewarded higher,
they may be motivated to work harder.
7. Reinforcement Theory :
B.F. Skinner, who propounded the reinforcement theory, holds that by designing the environment
properly, individuals can be motivated. Instead of considering internal factors like impressions, feelings,
attitudes and other cognitive behavior, individuals are directed by what happens in the environment
external to them. Skinner states that work environment should be made suitable to the individuals
and that punishments actually leads to frustration and de-motivation. Hence, the only way to
motivate is to keep on making positive changes in the external environment of the organization.
Sources of Motivation
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation has been studied by social and educational psychologists since the early 1970s.
Research has found that it is usually associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by
students. Intrinsic motivation has been explained by Fritz Heider's attribution theory, Bandura's work
on self-efficacy,[2] and Ryan and Deci's cognitive evaluation theory. Students are likely to be
intrinsically motivated if they:
attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (e.g. the amount
of effort they put in),
believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not
determined by luck),
are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.
See also Intrinsic motivation and the 16 basic desires theory below.
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the performer. Money is the most obvious example, but
coercion and threat of punishment are also common extrinsic motivations.
While competing, the crowd may cheer on the performer, which may motivate him or her to do well.
Trophies are also extrinsic incentives. Competition is in general extrinsic because it encourages the
performer to win and beat others, not to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity.
Social psychological research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to overjustification and a
subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation. In one study demonstrating this effect, children who
expected to be (and were) rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less
time playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who were assigned
to an unexpected reward condition and to children who received no extrinsic reward.
Self-control
The self-control of motivation is increasingly understood as a subset of emotional intelligence; a
person may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition (as measured by many
intelligence tests), yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain tasks. Yale School of
Management professor Victor Vroom's "expectancy theory" provides an account of when people will
decide whether to exert self control to pursue a particular goal.
Drives and desires can be described as a deficiency or need that activates behavior that is aimed at a
goal or an incentive. These are thought to originate within the individual and may not require
external stimuli to encourage the behavior. Basic drives could be sparked by deficiencies such as
hunger, which motivates a person to seek food; whereas more subtle drives might be the desire for
praise and approval, which motivates a person to behave in a manner pleasing to others.
By contrast, the role of extrinsic rewards and stimuli can be seen in the example of training animals
by giving them treats when they perform a trick correctly. The treat motivates the animals to
perform the trick consistently, even later when the treat is removed from the process
