Understanding Employee Motivation Theories for Organizational Success

Motivation in OB Managing a group of people with different personalities is not easy, but if you know what motivates them, you can get more work from them and subsequently increases the productivity of organization. It is observed that in organizations, money alone is not the only motivator to sustain high level of employee s efforts. Other factors may include:

Continued Structured/predictable job Challenging tasks to do Opportunities of learning Recognition Status Good working environment

What is motivation? o Intensity o Direction o Persistence Of efforts towards attaining organizational goals. Intensity means how hard a person tries to attain these goals and objectives. However, intensity is unlikely to get any favourable outcome unless efforts are channelled in the right direction that benefits the organization. And persistence means for how long a person maintains the rhythm of his efforts. Motivation is the process that accounts for an individual s

Misconception: This is a misconception that motivation is an individual attribute, some people have it and some people don t have it. As a result, inexperienced managers often label employees who lack in motivation as lazy and incompetent. Right concept is that motivation is the result of an interaction between individual and a situation. That is why motivation level of same individual can be different in different situations and also different individuals have different motivation levels in same situation. (reading an interesting and un-interesting book, attending classes of different subjects)

Basic Motivation Theories: Following theories are widely discussed in literature as one of the best in terms of explaining employee motivation. Thus, it is important to understand these motivational theories for motivating employees in organizations.

Maslows Need Theory: It is also called Abraham Maslow s (1908- 1970, American Psychologist) hierarchy of needs. He researched that in every human being, there exists five levels of needs, which can become a source of motivation for him one after another

Physiological needs:They include hunger, thirst and shelter. Safety needs: They include security and protection from physical and emotional harm. Social needs: They include affection, acceptance, friendships and relationships. Esteem: esteem factors like status and recognition. They include internal esteem factors: like self-respect, achievement and external Self-actualization: It includes achieving one s potential, self-fulfilment; it means to become what one is capable of becoming. If you want to motivate someone, you need to understand his current level of hierarchy and focus on satisfying his needs at or above that level. Physiological and safety needs are described a lower order needs and satisfied externally. Social, Esteem and self-actualization are higher order needs and satisfied internally within the person.

Theory X and Theory Y: Douglas McGregor (1906-1964, American Professor at MIT, did his BE in Mechanical in 1932 and completed his PhD from Harvard in 1955) proposed that dealing of managers with its people depends upon manager s view about nature of human beings. His views are generally based upon two types of assumptions called theory X and theory Y.

Theory X: Under theory X, four assumptions held by managers are: Employees inherently dislike work and whenever possible, they will try to dislike work. They will try to avoid responsibilities. They will be little ambitious towards work. Since, employees dislike work, they must be controlled and motivated with threats & punishment to achieve goals.

Theory Y: Under theory Y, four positive assumptions held by managers are: Employees view work as natural as rest or play. Employees observe self-control and self-direction if the goals and objectives are clear. They are ready to learn and responsible. They express innovativeness in their decision making. McGregor believes Theory Y more valid than Theory X and recommends the following motivating ideas to maximize employees job performance:

ERG theory: The founder of this theory is Clayton Alderfer (1940-todate, An American Psychologist). He argued that there are three groups of core needs; existence, relatedness and growth

The existence group is concerned with providing our basic requirements for existence. (They are comparable to Maslow s physiological and safety needs) The relatedness group is concerned with maintaining important interpersonal relationships. (Maslow s social needs and external component of self-esteem) The growth group is concerned with personal development. (Maslow s internal component of self esteem and self- actualization) Besides replacing three needs with five, he discovered that more than one need may be operative at the same time. It is not necessary to substantially satisfy lower level need before moving on to next level of need. And frustration in attempting to satisfy a higher level need can result more inclination to a lower level need.