MOTIVATION, FROM CONCEPTS TO APPLICATIONS
WHAT IS MOTIVATION?
In simple words, motivation is to influence or persuade some one to do a favor or a desired thing. “Motivation is defined as the willingness to exert high level of effort to achieve individual or organizational needs or goals.” Another definition is, “motivation is the injection of spirit to accomplish a goal.” Think of situations when people put extra efforts to work. Not sleeping for the whole night is painful but you cheerfully take that pain when you do entertaining activities like enjoying late night parties with friends, attending marriages or Eid festivals. Studying course books may create boredom for you but studying an interesting novel for long hours may not feel difficult. This is motivation. Similarly working hard to complete projects or assignments of an organization within due course of time and achieving financial rewards like bonuses or pay increments can be great motivations.
EARLY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
The decade of 1950 was fruitful in the development of motivation concepts. Some of the major theories are depicted hereunder:
1. HIERARCHY OF NEEDS THEORY: The theory was developed by Abraham Maslow, which is the most well-known theory of motivation. Maslow hypothesized, that within every human being there exists a hierarchy of five needs, as each level of need is satisfied, it progresses to next higher level of need. “There is a hierarchy of five needs (i.e. categories of human needs) including physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs, as each need is sequentially fulfilled, the next need at higher level arises or becomes dominant”.
i. PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS: They include hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, sleep, and other physical needs, without which a person can’t survive.
ii. SAFETY NEEDS: They include safety and protection from physical and emotional harm, like being secure at ones home.
iii. SOCIAL NEEDS: They include affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship, as individuals start socializing or making social relations with others.
iv. ESTEEM NEEDS: They include internal and external esteem; internal esteem includes self-respect, autonomy (of work), and achievement (of other basic needs); and external esteem includes status, recognition, and attention (by others).
v. SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS: They include the drive or desire to reach at the top or achieving all what one is capable of, including growth, prosperity, and self-fulfillment.
2. THEORY X AND THEORY Y:
3. MOTIVATION HYGIENE THEORY: This theory was proposed by the psychologist, Frederick Herzberg. The theory believes that an individual’s attitude toward work determines his/ her success or failure. Herzberg asked people when they felt good or bad at their jobs. The responses of the 12 investigations were tabulated and categorized. Herzberg presented “hygiene factors, the factors such as company policy and administration, supervision, and salary, when these factors are adequate at job, people will not be dissatisfied”. The theory became very popular in mid 1960s.
The extrinsic factors that caused dissatisfaction include company policy and administration, supervision, relations with peers and subordinates, status, security, and personal life (which is indeed an intrinsic factor but that can cause dissatisfaction due to personal problems). The intrinsic factors that can cause great satisfaction include achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth.
4. ERG THEORY: Clayton Alderfer reworked Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory to align it with empirical research. He labeled it as ERG theory. “ERG theory suggests that there are three groups of core needs: existence, relatedness, and growth (ERG)”. The existence needs relate with materials existence requirements, to which Maslow considered as physiological and safety needs. The relatedness needs relate with social needs and the growth needs relate with esteem and self-actualization needs; when individuals wish to achieve growth and promotions, they look for status and quality of life.
5. GOAL SETTING THEORY: “The theory suggests that specific and difficult goals lead to higher performance.” The advanced concepts in goal setting are ‘SMART goals’. The goals should be SMART (specific, measurable in quantity and quality, achievable i.e. reasonably tough but not impossible, realistic, and time bound).
6. REINFORCEMENT THEORY:
7. EQUITY THEORY: “The theory suggests that individuals compare their job inputs (such as efforts) and outcomes (such as rewards) with those of others and then try to eliminate any inequities”. For instance, a fresh MBA, Alic receives a job at a mid-size company at a salary of Rs25000 per month but his collogue Huma is later hired in the same company for Rs30000 salary per month. Alic considers this as injustice, inequality, and discrimination because they both have roughly the same level of professional competencies; both are MBAs with similar levels of prior experience of two years; and with same kind of abilities. The inequality leads to negative attitude, decreased motivation, decrease input of efforts and quality of output, and eventually leaving the job. Similarly, employees compare their professional qualification, skills, experience, and other career developments, and the rewards with those of others in the company or industry, or other industries.
8. EXPECTANCY THEORY: “The theory suggests that the strength to achieve a goal/ action depends on the level of expectation that the goal/ action will lead to a desirable reward or satisfaction.” Furthermore, there is a relationship between effort and performance, performance and reward, and reward and personal goals.
APPLICATIONS OF MOTIVATION
Our discussion will now focus applications of various concepts of motivation.
1. MANAGEMENT OF OBJECTIVES (MBO): An extension of goal-setting theory is management by objectives (MBO). Peter Drucker, a management guru invented MBO program that is installed world wide in various organizations. “MBO is a program that encompasses specific and measurable goals, set with workers’ participation, time bound, and takes feedback on goal progress”. Some examples include: it’s not adequate to merely order to cut cost, improve service, or increase quality. Such orders should be converted into tangible objectives, such as, cut cost by 5%, process all telephonic orders within 24 hours, and ensure improved quality by keeping sales returns to 1% of total sales.
2. EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT: A complete program for employee involvement includes changing organizational culture, fostering individual development through training, establishing awards and incentives, and encouraging team works. Employees are great assets or human capital of an organization but some consider them as liabilities and avoid interacting with them. Employees should be encouraged to meet regularly to discuss and suggest any smaller or larger positive changes or improvements in the workflows or products, identify and solve problems, make complaints, and suggest innovative products and even ideas for inventions. One of the leading cause of success of Japanese companies was their involvement of employees in problem solutions and decision making. Participative management is also a similar concept.
3. PROBLEMS-SOLVING TEAMS/ QUALITY CIRCLES: This very famous technique was invented in Japan in 1920 and became popular worldwide. These teams consists of 5 to 12 people drawn from various areas of a department who meet regularly to identify, analyze, and solve production and quality related problems. The philosophy behind this approach is that the people who are directly responsible for making quality products or providing services will be most able to resolve a problem. The teams are assigned a particular task such as improving assembly line in a computer manufacturing plant or reducing time for credit application processing. Finally, the team (quality circles) passes suggestions to management to reduce cost, defects, wastage and time, and improve quality and productivity.
4. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT/ KAISEN: The Japanese philosophy of management Kaisen became popular world-wide, which seeks to continually find ways to improve operations. The theory suggests that no single day should go without some kind of improvement, whether smaller or larger. It involves identifying benchmarks of quality excellence and instilling a sense of employee ownership of the process. The ultimate goals of kaizen are improving quality and productivity by reducing cost and wastage i.e. accomplishing the goals of efficiency and effectiveness.
5. VARIABLE PAY PROGRAMS: The concept suggests that employees should not only be rewarded a fix pay against some specified work but they should enjoy extra rewards from extra efforts. A profit-sharing plan allows workers to participate in additional profit if the company crosses a pre-established benchmark of profitability, such as one bonus salary for all, if the company makes a 40% profit this year. A gain-sharing plans allows workers to participate in additional profit if the company reduces it cost particularly wastage by some specified percentage.
6. EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP PLANS: These are designed to provide stock/ shares of the company to employees in order to encourage employees and make them feel like owners of the company.
7. SKILL-BASED PAY PLANS: It is rewarding extra to highly skilled people like more qualified, or highly experienced professionals, or intelligent people.
8. FLEXIBLE BENEFIT PLANS: It is empowering employees to pick and choose benefits from a menu of benefits, for example, choosing a bonus check, or paid holiday trip, or availing family health insurance.
9. MOTIVATING TEMPORARY WORKERS: The temporary workers, ad hoc or contractual employees also need to be motivated as their performance benefits the organization in attainment of its objectives.
10. MOTIVATING DIVERSIFIED WORKFORCE: The needs of women, singles, immigrants, senior citizens, and physically disabled people are not the same as of regular employees. They should be motivated too keeping in view their specific needs and attitudes.
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