7 - Motivation Concepts

• Motivation as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.
• Intensity describes how hard a person tries. This is the element most of us focus on when we talk about motivation.
• Motivation has a persistence dimension. This measures how long a person can maintain effort.
• The best-known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs . This hypothesized that within every human being, there exists a hierarchy of five needs:


  1. Physiological
  2. Safety
  3. Social
  4. Esteem
  5. Self Actualization
• Douglas McGregor proposed two distinct views of human beings: one basically negative, labeled Theory X, and the other basically positive, labeled Theory Y.
• Theory X , managers believe employees inherently dislike work and must therefore be directed or even coerced into performing it.
• Theory Y states that managers assume employees can view work as being as natural as rest or play, and therefore the average person can learn to accept, and even seek, responsibility.
• Two-Factor Theory relates intrinsic factors to job satisfaction and associates extrinsic factors with dissatisfaction. Also called motivation hygiene theory.
• Hygiene factors are factors such as company policy and administration, supervision, and salary—that, when adequate in a job, placate workers. When these factors are adequate, people will not be dissatisfied.
• McClelland’s theory of needs is a theory that states achievement, power, and affiliation are three important needs that help explain motivation.
• The need for achievement is the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a set of standards, and to strive to succeed.
• The need for power is the need to make others behave in a way in which they would not have behaved otherwise.
• The need for affiliation is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
• The self-determination theory is a theory of motivation that is concerned with the beneficial effects of intrinsic motivation and the harmful effects of extrinsic motivation.
• The cognitive evaluation theory A version of self-determination theory which holds that allocating extrinsic rewards for behavior that had been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of motivation if the rewards are seen as controlling.
• Self-concordance is the degree to which peoples’ reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with their interests and core values.
• Job engagement is the investment of an employee’s physical, cognitive, and emotional energies into job performance.
• The goal-setting theory is a theory that says that specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher performance.
• Management by objectives is a program that encompasses specific goals, participatively set, for an explicit time period, with feedback on goal progress.
• Self-efficacy is the individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.
• The reinforcement theory is a theory that says that behavior is a function of its consequences.
• Behaviorism is a theory that argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively unthinking manner.
• Social-learning theory is the view that we can learn through both observation and direct experience.
• The equity theory is theory that says that individuals compare their job inputs and outcomes with those of others and then respond to eliminate any inequities.
• Distributive justice is the perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards among individuals.
• Organizational justice is the overall perception of what is fair in the workplace, composed of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice.
• Procedural justice is the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards.
• Interactional justice is the perceived degree to which an individual is treated with dignity, concern, and respect.
• The expectancy theory is a theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain 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.
• Effort - performance relationship. The probability perceived by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance.
• Performance – reward relationship is the degree to which the individual believes performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome.
• Rewards – personal goals relationship is the degree to which organizational rewards satisfy an individual’s personal goals or needs and the attractiveness of those potential rewards for the individual.