CHAPTER 15 MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES 1. INTRODUCTION. Managers need to know about motivational concepts and practices in order to encourage their employees to make a maximum effort. This chapter covers the concepts of motivation. 2. WHAT IS MOTIVATION? Motivation is defined as the willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need. A need is an internal state that makes certain outcomes appear attractive. 3. EARLY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION. Three specific theories were formulated during the 1950s. Although these theories have been heavily attacked and questions have been raised about their validity, they still provide some strong explanations for employee motivation. A. Hierarchy of needs theory is a theory developed by Abraham Maslow. It states that there is a hierarchy of five human needs. As each need is substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant. The five needs are: 1. Physiological needs include food, drink, shelter, sexual satisfaction, and other bodily requirements. 2. Safety needs include security and protection from physical and emotional harm. 3. Social needs include affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship. 4. Esteem needs include internal esteem factors and external esteem factors. 5. Self-actualization needs include growth, achieving one's potential, and self-fulfillment. 6. The lower-level needs included the physiological and safety needs. 7. The higher-level needs included social, esteem, and self-actualization needs. B. Theory X and Theory Y were developed by Douglas McGregor and describe two distinct view of human nature. 1. Theory X was the assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, seek to avoid responsibility, and must be coerced to perform. 2. Theory Y was the assumption that employees are creative, seek responsibility, and can exercise self-direction. C. Motivation-hygiene theory is the theory developed by Frederick Herzberg. The theory suggests that intrinsic factors are related to job satisfaction, while extrinsic factors are associated with dissatisfaction. 1. Hygiene factors are factors that eliminated dissatisfaction. 2. Motivators are factors that increased job satisfaction. 3. Herzberg's theory is not without its criticisms, which were associated with the statistical techniques used in his study. 4. Even with the criticisms, Herzberg's theory is widely popular with managers. 4. CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION. The contemporary theories of motivation have a reasonable degree of valid supporting documentation. A. The three-needs theory developed by David McClelland cites the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation as major motives in work. 1. Need for achievement (n Ach) is defined as the drive to excel; to achieve in relation to a set of standards; to strive to succeed. 2. Need for power (n Pow) is defined as the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise. 3. Need for affiliation (n Aff) is defined as the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships. B. Goal-setting theory says that specific goals increase performance and difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than easy goals. C. Reinforcement theory suggests that behavior is a function of its consequences. What controls behavior are reinforcers, which is any consequence immediately following a response that increases the probability of the behavior repeating. D. Since managers are primarily interested in how to motivate individuals on the job, we need to look at ways to design motivating jobs. 1. Job enlargement is the horizontal expansion of a job through increasing job scope the number of different tasks required in a job and the frequency with which those tasks are repeated. 2. Job enrichment is the vertical expansion of a job by adding planning and evaluating responsibilities. 3. The job characteristics model (JCM) provides a framework for analyzing and designing jobs. It identifies five primary job characteristics, their interrelationships, and their impact on employee productivity, motivation, and satisfaction. These five job dimensions include the following. a. Skill variety is the degree to which a job requires a variety of activities so that an employee can use a number of different skills and talents. b. Task identity is the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work. c. Task significance is the degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people. d. Autonomy is the degree to which a job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out. e. Feedback is the degree to which carrying out the work activities required by a job results in the individual's obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance. f. Skill variety, task identity, and task significance combine to create meaningful work. Autonomy leads to an increased sense of responsibility for outcomes of the work. Feedback leads to knowledge of the actual results of the work activities. g. Personal and work outcomes include high internal work motivation, high quality work performance, high satisfaction with the work, and low absenteeism and turnover. E. Equity theory is the theory that an employee compares his or her job's inputs/outcomes ratio to that of relevant others and then corrects any inequity. 1. The referents are the persons, systems, or selves against which individuals compare themselves to assess equity. 2. Equity theory recognizes that individuals are concerned with their absolute rewards as well as the relationship of these rewards to what others receive. 3. The theory establishes four propositions relative to inequitable pay. a. Given payment by time, overrewarded employees will produce more than equitably paid employees. b. Given payment by quantity of production, overrewarded employees will produce fewer, but higher-quality units than equitably paid employees. c. Given payment by time, underrewarded employees will produce less or poorer-quality output. d. Given payment by quantity of production, underrewarded employees will produce a large number of low-quality units in comparison with equitably paid employees. F. Expectancy theory is the theory that an individual tends to act in a certain way based on the expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. Three relationships are important to this theory. 1. Effort-performance linkage, which is the probability perceived by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance. 2. Performance-reward linkage, which is the degree to which the individual believes that performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome. 3. Attractiveness, which is the importance that the individual places on the potential outcome or reward that can be achieved on the job. 4. There are four steps inherent in the theory. a. What perceived outcomes does the job offer the employee? b. How attractive do employees consider these outcomes to be? c. What kind of behavior must the employee exhibit to achieve these outcomes? d. How does the employee view his or her chances of doing what is asked? G. Integrating contemporary theories of motivation. Figure 16.7 presents a model that integrates much of what is known about motivation. 1. The basic foundation is the simplified expectancy model. 2. The model also considers the achievement-need, reinforcement, equity, and JCM theories. 3. Rewards also play an important role in the model. 5. CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN MOTIVATION Understanding and predicting employee motivation continues to be one of the most popular areas in management research. Several significant workplace issues are important to look at in understanding motivation. A. To maximize motivation among today's diversified work force, managers need to think in terms of being flexible. Many of the so-called family-friendly programs and flexible working schedules that organizations have developed are a response to the varied needs of a diverse workforce. 1. A compressed workweek is a workweek comprised of four 10-hour days. 2. Flexible work hours (also known as flextime) describes a scheduling system in which employees are required to work a number of hours a week, but are free, within limits, to vary the hours of work. 3. Job sharing is the practice of having two or more people split a forty-hour-a-week job. 4. Telecommuting allows employees to do their work at home through the linking by computer and modem of the employee and the office. 5. Cultural differences also play a role in motivating a diverse workforce. Managers need to be aware of cultural differences in developing appropriate motivation programs. B. Pay-for-performance programs are compensation plans that pay employees on the basis of some performance measure. C. Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) is a compensation program in which employees become part owners of the organization by receiving stock as a performance incentive. D. Motivating minimum-wage employees is one of the toughest motivation challenges a manager faces. Since money typically can't be used as a reward, managers look for other types of rewards such as employee recognition programs. But managers can also look to job design and expectancy theories of motivation to find some help in motivating these workers. 6. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: SUGGESTIONS FOR MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES. Several suggestions for motivating employees are given and are based upon what is currently known about motivation. A. Recognize individual differences in terms of needs, attitudes, personality, and other important individual factors. B. Match people to jobs by identifying what needs are important to individuals and trying to provide jobs that allow them to fulfill those needs. C. Use goals since the literature on goal-setting suggests that managers should ensure that employees have hard, specific goals and feedback on how well they are doing in pursuit of those goals. D. Ensure that goals are perceived as attainable. Employees who see goals as unattainable will reduce their level of effort. E. Individualize rewards. Because employees have different needs, what is a reward and reinforcer to one may not work for another. F. Link rewards to performance by making rewards contingent on desired levels of performance. G. Check the system for equity. Employees should perceive that the rewards or outcomes are equal to the inputs given. H. Don't ignore money. The allocation of performance-based wage increases, piecework bonuses, and other pay incentives is important in determining employee motivation. ANSWERS TO REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. Briefly describe the concept of motivation, and explain the motivation process. Motivation is the willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need. The motivation process starts with some unsatisfied need, which creates tension, which drives the individual to engage in behavior to satisfy the need and thus reduce the tension. 2. What is the manager's role in influencing motivation? Effective managers want their employees to make a maximum effort on the job, so they need to tailor their motivational practices to satisfy the needs and wants of those employees. 3. How might an individual's age, career stage, geographic location, and organization size affect his or her needs from Maslow's hierarchy? An individual's age, career stage, geographic location, and organization size could affect whether or not a need is substantially satisfied and which needs then come dominant. For instance, younger individuals might find their safety needs easily satisfied because they're typically not worried about job loss or a catastrophic illness, but older individuals may have substantially stronger needs in this area. A person in the early stages of his or her career might find that the social and esteem needs are more important while a person in the latter stages of his or her career might find that they are looking for self-actualization in their work. The other two factors (geographic location and organization size) could be looked at in much the same way. 4. If you accept Theory Y assumptions, how would you be likely to motivate employees? A manager who accepted Theory Y assumptions would likely motivate employees through participation in decision making, responsible and challenging jobs, and good group relations. 5. Describe the three needs in the three-needs theory. David McClelland's three-needs theory proposed the following: need for achievement which is the drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, to strive to succeed; need for power which is the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise; and need for affiliation which is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships. 6. Identify as many types of rewards as possible that managers can use for motivating employees. In deciding which to use, how could you use three-needs theory, goal theory, reinforcement theory, the Job Characteristics Model (JCM), equity theory, and expectancy theory? Student responses to this question will vary. Encourage them to think about how each of the theories of motivation approaches motivation and how this would translate into appropriate rewards. 7. What role does perception play in (a) expectancy theory, (b) equity theory, and (c) reinforcement theory? Expectancy theory - the strength of a tendency to act in a certain manner depends on the strength of the perceived outcome. Equity theory - perception determines equity or inequity between inputs and outcome. Reinforcement theory - this does not depend on perception, but on the actual reward for a certain behavior. 8. Explain the motivation implications of expectancy theory for management practice. The key to expectancy theory is understanding an individual's goal, the linkage between effort and performance, between performance and rewards, and between rewards and individual goal satisfaction. The expectancy theory recognizes that there is no universal principle for explaining everyone's motivation. 9. What impact does workforce diversity have on motivational techniques used by a manager? Could managers use any of the motivation theories to encourage and support workforce diversity efforts? How? To maximize motivation in today's increasingly diverse workforce, managers need to be flexible. Employees have different personal needs and goals that they're trying to satisfy through their job. Offering various types of rewards to meet these diverse needs can be highly motivating for employees. Yes, managers could use goal-setting theory to encourage and support diversity efforts by establishing goals to do just that. Managers could use JCM to design jobs that emphasized the skills and abilities of diverse employees and that recognized the unique needs of diverse employees (such as compressed workweek, flexible work hours, job sharing, and others). 10. What are some advantages to using pay-for-performance and ESOPs to motivate employee performance? What are some drawbacks? Some advantages to using pay-for-performance and ESOPs to motivate employee performance is that these programs focus on using rewards based on performance. Employees will be motivated to put forth effort directed at job performance. The drawbacks could be that employees might be tempted to use unethical means to reach job performance levels. Also, focusing on performance might mean that employees are less willing to help each other out in completing important tasks.