Motivation at Work

Motivation at work becomes a very important topic for human resources since there are always new developments in technology, and depending on the resulting changes, new generations adapt themselves to them very quickly. At this point, organizations need to understand the roots of these behaviors in order to motivate their employees and accomplish their goals with them . 

According to Mitchell (1982), motivation refers to “psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed”. 

Motivation is a continuous activity which starts with a need and then the individual is stimulated for the action. After that, behavior follows that stimulus and finally satisfaction results from achieving the goal. Therefore, the cycle of motivation can be summarised as following:

Need => Stimulation => Behaviour => Satisfaction (Goal)

"Work motivation is a psychological process that influences how personal effort and resources are allocated to actions pertaining to work, including the direction, intensity, and persistence of these actions."

The word need indicates a lacking state in an individual. Murray (1938) was the first one to investigate needs and suggested that they are psychogenic in origin and have an important role in defining personality. 

Maslow suggested that needs could be put into five groups of basic human needs that all healthy adults try to satisfy. He arranged these needs in a hierarchy, suggesting that individuals have a complex set of exceptionally strong needs. 

Everything starts with physiological needs, which are the simple survival needs such as hunger, thirst, oxygen, shelter, rest. These needs must be met before any other need. When they are satisfied, the individual starts to be motivated by the safety needs, which are about security, stability, absence of pain and danger. When safety needs are met, concerns about being social arise. Affiliation with others, friendship, love, belonging to a group or someone motivate you in your actions. A sense of belonging pushes up the individual to the esteem level in the pyramid. A person desires for recognition, status, power. While searching for respect from others, self-respect and self-worth become important at this level. Once you reach the top of the pyramid, the peak welcomes you with self-actualization, which is about self-fulfillment, realization of one’s full potential and becoming all that they can become.

Alderfer's ERG Theory consists of three basic needs; existence, relatedness and growth. Existential needs correspond to physiological and safety needs, relatedness matches with social needs, growth needs represent the esteem needs and self-actualization. 

According to the Learned Needs Model by David McClellan, people with a high need for power:

• perform powerful actions,
• control, influence, or persuade people,
• impress people inside or outside the company.

According to the Learned Needs Model by David McClellan, people with socialised power:

• coach and teach,
• are democratic and involve others,
• are highly supportive.

Fredrick Herzberg’s two factor theory is like a transition between the needs theory of motivation and cognitive theories of motivation. It is also known as the motivator-hygiene theory or the dual factor theory. 

According to Herzberg's Two Factor Theory;

• dissatisfied factors are called the Hygiene needs which include security, status, relationships with subordinates and superiors, personal life, salary, working conditions, supervision, and company policies. 
• satisfier factors like growth, advancement, responsibility, work itself, recognition and achievement are called the motivator factors. 

Lower order needs are social, safety and physiological needs in Hierarchy of Needs; relatedness and existence in ERG; hygiene factors in Two Factor and affiliation in Learned Needs.

Unlike the content-need theories which are concerned with factors, cognitive theories are concerned with the process. 

Victor Vroom (1964) developed the expectancy theory. Four important factors in his theory should be explained in order to understand it clearly: outcomes, expectancy, valance, and instrumentality. 

Expectancy is the subjective possibility that a given amount of effort will cause a specific level of performance.

According to some researchers, there are three types of equity sensitivity: equity sensitives, benevolents, and entitleds.

Equity sensitives react to felt inequity as described by equity theory. 

Benevolents accept less outcomes for their inputs than other people. 

Entitleds have high inequity thresholds and accept positive inequity with no guilt. 

Different schedules of reinforcement might affect the motivation of an individual (Gerrig, 2013, p.164) : 

Fixed-Ratio Schedule: The reinforcer comes after a fixed number of responses. Most of the salespersons earn after a certain amount of sales with this schedule. 

Variable-Ratio Schedule: The reinforcer comes with the response made after a variable number of responses whose average is predetermined. It motivates you to keep going till you are rewarded. 

Fixed-Interval Schedule: The reinforcer is delivered for the first response made after a fixed period of time. 

Variable-Interval Schedule: The reinforcer is delivered for the first response made after a variable period of time whose average is predetermined. 

Punishment: This is the exact opposite of reinforcement. These consequences make the target behavior less likely to occur in the future.

Goal-setting theory suggests that goals should be clear, specific, reachable, and measurable in order to motivate individuals. 

These are some questions for organizations to answer in order to implement the goal setting theory in practice:

Goal difficulty: Should it be easy, moderately difficult, or hard to achieve? 

Goal specificity: How specific should the goal be? 

Goal commitment: How can we make employees commit to goals? 

Participation in setting goals: How should we involve employees in the goal-setting process? 

Feedback: How should we inform the employees about their progress as they work to achieve the performance goals? 

Ability: How should we employ individuals with the ability to accomplish organizational goals? 

Rewards: How should we understand individual preferences of employees and set the rewards for the specific goals?