Wk 4

• Motivation


  The processes that account for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal
• Motivation


  • The level of motivation varies both between individuals and within individuals at different times
• Three key elements of motivation

  • Intensity: concerned with how hard a person tries
  • Direction: the orientation that benefits the organization
  • Persistence: a measure of how long a person can maintain his/her effort
• Maslow's need theory


  • Received wide recognition, particularly among practicing managers
  • Intuitively logical and easy to understand
  • Some research has validated it
  • Most research does not, and it hasn't been frequently researched since the 1960s
• Herzberg's two-factor theory


  • Limited because it relies on self-reports
  • Reliability of methodology is questioned
  • No overall measure of satisfaction was utilized
• Goal-setting theory


  1. Goals direct attention

  2. Goals mobilize effort

  3. Goals encourage persistence

  4. Goals facilitate the development of strategy
• Self-set goals


  • May lead to greater employee enthusiasm
  • Supervisor-set goals may lead to heightened anxiety and perceptions of uncertainty and threat
• Goal-setting theory


  • Specific goals increase performance
  • Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals
• Self-efficacy theory


  An individual's belief that he or she is capable of performing a task
• Increasing self-efficacy


  1. Enactive mastery: Give employees relevant experiences with the task

  2. Vicarious modeling: enable them to watch someone else do the task

  3. Verbal persuasion: reassure the employees, letting them know that they have "what it takes" to do the task

  4. Arousal: tell them to "get psyched up"
• Expectancy theory


  A tendency to act in a certain way depends on an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual
• Three relationships in expectancy theory

  • Effort-performance relationship
  • Performance-reward relationship
  • Rewards-personal goals relationship
• Expectancy theory


  Helps explain why a lot of workers aren't motivated and do only the minimum
• Three questions employees need to answer in the affirmative if their motivation is to be maximized


  • If I give maximum effort, will it be recognized in my performance appraisal?
  • If I get a good performance appraisal, will it lead to organizational rewards?
  • If I'm rewarded, are the rewards attractive to me?
• Equity theory


  • Ratio comparisons between employee and relevant others
  • Perceptions of inequity due to being underrewarded or overrewarded
• Six choices employees can make when perceiving inequity

  • Change inputs
  • Change outcomes
  • Distort perceptions of self
  • Distort perceptions of others
  • Choose a different referent
  • Leave the field
• Organizational justice


  Includes distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, and interactional justice
• All the types of organizational justice have been linked to higher levels of task performance and citizenship
• Third-party, or observer, reactions to injustice can be substantial
• Adopting strong justice guidelines in an attempt to mandate certain managerial behavior isn't likely to be universally effective
• Inputs and outcomes are valued differently in various cultures
• Job engagement


  The investment of an employee's physical, cognitive, and emotional energies into job performance
• Job engagement is positively associated with performance and citizenship behaviors
• What makes people more engaged in their job?


  • The degree to which an employee believes it is meaningful to engage in work
  • A match between the individual's values and the organization's
  • Leadership behaviors that inspire workers to a greater sense of mission
• Highly engaged employees may experience work-family conflict
• Implications for managers


  • Make sure extrinsic rewards for employees are not viewed as coercive, but instead provide information about competence and relatedness
  • Either set or inspire your employees to set specific, difficult goals and provide quality, developmental feedback on their progress toward those goals
  • Try to align or tie in employee goals to the goals of your organization
  • Model the types of behaviors you would like to see performed by your employees
• Expectancy theory offers a powerful explanation of performance variables such as employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover
• When making decisions regarding resources in your organization, make sure to consider how the resources are being distributed (and who's impacted), the fairness of the decision, along with whether your actions demonstrate that you respect those involved