Chapter 5

Foundations of employee motivation

Motivation
The forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary behaviour
Essential driver of individual behaviour and performance

Employee engagement
• An individual’s emotional and cognitive (logical) motivation, particularly a focused, intense,
persistent and purposive effort towards work-related goals
• Employee engagement also refer to a high level of absorption in the work – the experience of
focusing intensely on the task, with limited awareness of events beyond the work
• High self-efficacy: believe you have the ability, role clarity and resources to get the job done

Eg: higher employee engagement provides significantly higher quality customer service, lower
employee turnover and produce higher profit margin growth than lower employee engagement.
Highly engaged teams have much more loyal customers compared with moderately engaged teams.

Drives, needs and behaviour

To build a more engaged and motivated workforce, need to understand where motivation begins,
that is, the motivational “forces” or prime movers of employee behaviour.

• Drives (primary needs):

– hardwired brain characteristics (neural states) that energise individuals to maintain
balance by correcting deficiencies
– prime movers of behaviour by activating emotion

• Needs:
– goal-directed forces that people experience
– drive-generated emotions directed towards goals
– goals formed by self-concept, social norms and experience

Four-drive theory of motivation

Social norms, personal values and experience transform drive-based emotions into goal-directed
choice and effort
How drives influence motivation and behaviour

• Four drives determine which emotions are automatically tagged to incoming information
• Drives generate independent and often competing emotions that demand our attention
• Mental skill set relies on social norms, personal values and experience to transform drive-based
emotions into goal-directed choice and effort

Practical implications of four-drive theory 

• Create and maintain work content and contexts that help employees to fulfil all drives:
meaningful work, sufficient rewards, social interaction
• Avoid too much or too little opportunity to fulfil each drive

Maslow’s needs hierarchy

• Motivation theory of needs arranged in a hierarchy, whereby people are motivated to fulfil a
higher need as a lower one becomes gratified
• Seven categories—five in a hierarchy—capture most needs
• Lowest unmet need is strongest. When satisfied, next higher need becomes primary motivator
• Self-actualisation: a growth need because people desire more rather than less of it when
satisfied

Limitations of needs hierarchy models

• Maslow’s theory lacks empirical support:
– people have different hierarchies
– needs change more rapidly than Maslow stated
• Hierarchy models wrongly assume that everyone has the same (universal) needs hierarchy
• Instead, needs hierarchies are shaped by a person’s own values and self-concept
Maslow’s contribution to motivation theories
• Holistic perspective:
– integrative view of needs
• Humanistic perspective:
– influence of social dynamics, not just instinct
• Positive perspective:
– pay attention to strengths (growth needs), not just deficiencies

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation 

• Intrinsic motivation occurs when people seek need fulfilment from doing the activity itself, not
as a means to some other outcome. They enjoy applying their talents towards a meaningful task
and experiencing progress or success in that task. Eg: motivated by autonomy and personal
growth
• Behaviour is intrinsically motivated when it is anchored in the innate drives for competence and
autonomy. People feel competent when applying their skills and observing positive, meaningful
outcomes form those talents. They feel autonomous when their motivation is self-initiated
rather than controlled from an external source.
• Intrinsic motivation contrasts with extrinsic motivation occurs when people are motivated to
receive something that is beyond their personal control for instrumental reasons. (they direct
their effort towards a reward controlled by others that indirectly fulfils a need.
• Extrinsic sources of motivation exits, such as pay incentives, recognition rewards. The
recognition reward is a mean to satisfy status needs, for example.
• Extrinsic motivation also occurs when employees create their own internal pressure to act in
association with external factors. For example, we are motivated to complete our part of a team
project partly due to concern about how team member will react if we submit it late or with
inferior quality.
• Extrinsic motivators may reduce existing intrinsic motivation, but the effect is minimal

Learned needs theory

• Needs are amplified or suppressed through self-concept, social norms and past experience
• Therefore, needs can be ‘learned’:
– strengthened through reinforcement, learning and social conditions
• Weakened when conditions are absent

Three learned needs

• Need for achievement (nAch):
– need to reach goals, take responsibility
– want reasonably challenging goals
• Need for affiliation (nAff):
– desire to seek approval, conform to others’ wishes, avoid conflict
– effective executives have lower need for social approval
• Need for power (nPow):
– desire to control one’s environment
– personalised vs socialised power
Expectancy theory of motivation
A motivation theory based on the idea that work effort is directed towards behaviours that people
believe will lead to desired outcomes. Goal-directed behaviours employees are more likely to direct
their effort.
Individual’s effort level depends on three factors: Effort-to-performance (E-to-P) expectancy,
performance-to-outcome (P-to-O) expectancy and outcome valences. Employee motivation is
influenced by all three components of the expectancy theory model. If component weakens,
motivation weakens.

Applying expectancy theory

- provides clear guidelines for increasing motivation:

• Increasing E-to-P expectancies:

– develop employee competencies
– match employee competencies to jobs
– provide role clarity and sufficient resources
– provide behavioural modelling

• Increasing P-to-O expectancies:

– measure performance accurately
– increase rewards with desired outcomes
– explain how rewards are linked to performance

Increasing outcome valences

• Anticipated satisfaction or dissatisfaction that an individual feel towards an outcome
• Ensure that rewards are valued
• Individualise rewards
• Minimise countervalent outcomes
Practical application of expectancy theory

Organisational behaviour modification 

• A theory that explains employee behaviour in terms of the antecedent conditions and
consequences of that behaviour
• The old paradigm about managing individual behaviour was behaviourism: a good theory should
rely exclusively on behaviour and ignore non-observable cognitions and emotions

A-B-Cs of behaviour modification

Contingencies and schedules of reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement: consequence that, when introduced, increases/maintains the target
behaviour
• Punishment: consequence that decreases the target behaviour
• Extinction: no consequence occurs, resulting in less of the target behaviour
• Negative reinforcement: consequence that, when removed, increases/maintains target
behaviour

Social cognitive theory

• Learning behaviour consequences:
– observing consequences that others experience
– anticipating consequences in other situations
• Behaviour modelling:
– observing and modelling behaviour of others
• Self-regulation:
– intentional, purposive action: develop goals, achievement standards, action plans
– form expectancies (anticipate consequences) from others, not just from own
experiences
– reinforce own behaviour (self-reinforcement)

Goal setting and feedback

• The process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing
performance objectives
• Amplifies the intensity and persistence of effort
• Provides clearer role perceptions leading to improved work performance

Goal-setting characteristics
Specific: what, how, where, when and with whom the task needs to be accomplished
Measurable: how much, how well, at what cost
Achievable: challenging, yet accepted (E-to-P)
Relevant: within employee’s control
Time-framed: due date and when assessed
Exciting: employee commitment, not just compliance
Reviewed: feedback and recognition on goal progress and accomplishment

Characteristics of effective feedback

1. Specific: connected to goal details
2. Relevant: relates to person’s behaviour
3. Timely: to improve link from behaviour to outcomes
4. Credible: from trustworthy source
5. Sufficiently frequent: according to job cycle

Sources of feedback
• Non-social or social sources
 Non-social: impersonal sources i.e. corporate intranets
 Social: face-to-face
• Multisource (360-degree) feedback
– information about an employee’s performance collected from a full circle of people,
including subordinates, peers, supervisors and customers 
Evaluating goal setting and feedback
• Goal setting:
– focuses employees on narrow subset of performance indicators
– sets easy goals for financial rewards
– interferes with learning process in new complex jobs

Organisational justice
• Distributive justice:
– perceived fairness in outcomes we receive compared with our contributions and the
outcomes and contributions of others
• Procedural justice:
– perceived fairness of the procedures used to decide the distribution of resources:
  the equality principle – everyone in the group should receive the same
outcomes, such as when everyone gets subsidised meals in the company
cafeteria.
 the need principle – is applied when those with the greatest need receive more
outcomes than others with less need.
 the equity principle – proposes that people should be paid in proportion to their
contribution.

Equity theory
• Based on organisational justice
• Explains how people develop perceptions of fairness in the distribution and exchange
of resources
• We compare our outcome/input ratio with that of a comparison other

Elements of equity theory

• Outcome/input ratio:
– inputs: what employee contributes (e.g. skill)
– outcomes: what employee receives (e.g. pay)
• Equity sensitivity
• Individual differences = equity sensitivity:
– how strongly people feel about outcome/input ratios with regard to others
– not easily identifiable
• Equity evaluation:
– compare outcome or input ratio with the comparison other

Equity theory model

Inequity and employee motivation

Correcting inequity tension

Procedural justice
• refers to fairness of the procedures used to decide the distribution of resources
• There are several ways to improve procedural justice, greater procedural fairness when:
– employee given ‘voice’, whereby they can present their perceptions and preferences
relating to an exchange-related decision
– decision maker perceived to be unbiased,
– decision based on all information
– existing policies applied consistently
– decision maker has listened to all sides
– those who complain are treated respectfully
– those who complain are given full explanation