Human Behavior in the Organization

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CHAPTER 3: Motivation

Learning Objectives:
 Define motivation.
 Explain need hierarchy theory and how it applies in
organizations.
 Describe equity theory's approach to motivation in the
workplace.
 Outline the basic assumptions of expectancy theory and
its implications in organizations.
 Explain how goals can be set to motivate high levels of
job performance.
 Describe ways in which jobs can be designed so as to
enhance motivation.
 Understand the implications of the social information
processing model.

WHAT IS MOTIVATION? A DEFINITION

- Scientists have defined motivation as the process of arousing, directing, and
maintaining behavior toward a goal. As this definition suggests, motivation
involves three components. The first component, arousal, has to do with the
drive, or energy behind our actions. For example, when we are hungry, we
are driven to seek food. The direction component involves the choice of
behavior made. A hungry person may make many different choices--eat an
apple, have a pizza delivered, go out for a burger, and so on. The third
component, maintenance, is concerned with people's persistence, their
willingness to continue to exert effort until a goal is met. The longer you would
continue to search for food when hungry, the more persistent you would be.
- Putting it all together, it may help to think of motivation by using the analogy
of driving a car. In this manner, arousal may be likened to the energy
generated by the car's engine and fuel system. The direction it takes is
dictated by the driver's manipulation of the steering wheel. And finally,
maintenance may be thought of as the driver's determination to stay on
course until the final destination is reached.

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MOTIVATING BY MEETING BASIC HUMAN NEEDS

o As our definition suggests, people are motivated to fulfil their needs—
whether it is a need for food, as in our example, or other needs, such
as the need for social approval. Companies that help their employees
in this quest are certain to reap the benefits. Organizational
behaviourists claim that companies that strive to meet the needs of
their employees attract the best people and motivate them to do
excellent work.
1.) Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory
o Some insight into how to achieve this is provided by Abraham
Maslow's need hierarchy theory. Maslow's basic idea was simple:
People will not be healthy and well-adjusted unless they have all of
their basic needs met.
o Maslow's original focus, or a productive employee of an organization, a
later application of his work. Specifically, Maslow identified five
different types of needs which, he claimed, are activated in a hierarchy,
beginning at the lowest, most basic needs, and working upward to the
next level.
o Furthermore, these needs are not aroused all at once or in random
fashion. Rather, each need is triggered step by step, only after the one
beneath it in the hierarchy has been satisfied.
A.) Physiological Needs - The lowest-order is defined by physiological needs,
those that satisfy fundamental biological drives, such as the need for air, food,
water, and shelter. These are understandably primary to humans, as even
new-born babies express these basic needs.
B.) Safety Needs - After physiological needs have been satisfied, the next level
of needs is triggered--safety needs. These are concerned with the need to
operate in an environment that is physically and psychologically safe and
secure, one free from threats of harm.
C.) Social Needs- Once physiological and safety needs have been satisfied, the
social needs are activated. These refer to the need to be liked and accepted

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by others. As social animals, we want to be with others and to have them
approve of us.
D.) Esteem Needs - Not only do we need to be liked by others socially, but we
also need to gain their respect and approval. In other words, we have a need
for self-esteem—that is, to achieve success and have others recognize our
accomplishments.
E.) Self-Actualization Needs - What happens after all an employee's lower-
order needs are met? According to Maslow, people will strive for self-
actualization—that is, they will work to become all they are capable of being.
When people are self-actualized they perform at their maximum level of
creativity and become extremely valuable assets to their organizations. For
this reason, companies are interested in paving the way for their employees
to self-actualize by meeting their lower-order needs.

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2.) Alderfer’s ERG Theory
o Clayton Alderfer’s existence-relatedness-growth (ERG) theory builds
on some of Maslow’s thinking but reduces the number of universal
needs from five to three—growth needs, relatedness needs, and
existence needs—and is more flexible on movement between levels.
Alderfer lifts the restriction imposed by Maslow in which lower-order
needs must be addressed before a higher level need becomes a
motivator. Alderfer breaks with Maslow on the consequence of need
frustration. Needs at more than one level can be motivators at any
time. Alderfer proposes that when an individual is motivated to satisfy a
higher-level need but has difficulty doing so, the person’s motivation to
satisfy lower-level needs will increase.
3.) Equity Theory: The Importance of Being Fair
o There can be little doubt about the importance of money as a motivator
on the job. However, it would be overly simplistic and misleading to say
that people only want to earn as much money as possible. Even the
highest-paid executives, sports figures, and celebrities sometimes
complain about their pay despite their multi-million-dollar salaries. Are
they being greedy? Not necessarily. Often, the issue is not the actual
amount of pay received, but rather, pay fairness, or equity.
A.) Balancing Outcomes and Inputs - Equity theory proposes that people are
motivated to maintain fair, or equitable, relationships between themselves and
others, and to avoid those relationships that are unfair, or inequitable. To
make judgments of equity, people compare themselves to others by focusing
on two variables:
outcomes—what we get out of our jobs (e.g., pay, fringe benefits, prestige,
etc.)—and inputs—the contributions made (e.g., time worked, effort exerted,
units produced).
B.) Responding to Inequities on the Job - There is a great deal of evidence to
suggest that people are motivated to redress inequities at work, and that they
respond much as equity theory suggests. Consider two examples from the

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world of sports. Research has shown that professional basketball players who
are underpaid (i.e., ones who are paid less than others who perform as well
or better) score fewer points than those who are equitably paid.
4.) Expectancy Theory: Believing You Can Get What You Want
o Beyond seeking fair treatment on the job, people are also motivated by
the expectation that they will achieve certain desired rewards by
working hard. If you've ever put in long hours studying in the hopes of
receiving an "A" in one of your classes, then you understand
expectancy theory. This is one of the basic ideas behind the popularity
of pay systems known as merit pay plans, or payfor-performance
plans, which formally establish links between job performance and
rewards.
A.) Three Components of Motivation- Expectancy theory claims that
people will be motivated to exert effort on the job when they believe
that doing so will help them achieve the things they want. It assumes
that people are rational beings who think about what they have to do to
be rewarded and how much the reward means to them before they
perform their jobs.
1.) Expectancy - Sometimes people believe that putting forth a great
deal of effort will help them get a lot accomplished. However, in
other cases, people do not expect that their efforts will have much
effect on how well they do.
2.) Instrumentality - Even if an employee performs at a high level, his
or her motivation may suffer if that performance is not appropriately
rewarded – that is, if the performance is not perceived as
instrumental in bringing about the rewards.
3.) Valence- Thus far, we have been assuming something that needs
to be made explicit—namely, that the rewards the organization
offers in exchange for desired performance are, in fact, desirable.
In other words, using terminology from expectancy theory, they
should have a positive valence.

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B.) The Role of Motivation in Performance - Suppose that you are a
word processing operator. You are performing quite well, but your boss
believes that you can do even better. She asks you to try to enter 70
words per minute (wpm) from now on instead of the 60 wpm you've
been working at.
5.) Procedural Justice Theory
o Procedural justice theory is concerned with the perceived fairness of
the procedures used to make decisions about inputs, performance,
and the distribution of outcomes. How managers treat their
subordinates and the extent to which they provide explanations for
their decisions influence employees’ perceptions of procedural justice.
When procedural justice is perceived to be low, motivation suffers
because employees are not sure that their inputs and performance
levels will be accurately assessed or that outcomes will be distributed
in a fair manner.

GOAL SETTING: TAKING AIM AT PERFORMANCE TARGETS

1.) Assign Specific Goals - we know that people perform at higher levels when
asked to meet specific high-performance goals than when they are directed
simply to "do your best," or when no goal at all is assigned. People tend to find
specific goals quite challenging, and are motivated to try to meet them – not only
to fulfil management's expectations, but also to convince themselves that they
have performed well.
2.) Assign Difficult, But Achievable, Performance Goals - The goal set should be
difficult to attain, but achievable. Obviously, a goal that is too easy to attain will
not bring about the desired increments in performance.
3.) Provide Feedback Concerning Goal Attainment - The final condition for
setting effective goals would seem quite obvious, however, it is not followed in
practice as often as you might expect: provide feedback about the extent to
which goals have been met. Just as golfers can improve their games when they
learn where their balls have landed, so too do workers benefit by feedback about

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how closely they are approaching their performance goals. Extending our golf
analogy, when it comes to setting work goals effectively, "hooks" and "slices"
need to be corrected.

DESIGNING JOBS THAT MOTIVATE

1.) Job Enlargement: Doing More of the Same Kind of Work - Job enlargement
is increasing the number of tasks an employee performs but keeping all of the
tasks at the same level of difficulty and responsibility. It is also called horizontal
job loading because the content of a job is expanded but the difficulty remains
constant. Proponents of this approach thought that job enlargement might
increase intrinsic motivation.
2.) Job Enrichment: Increasing Required Skills and Responsibilities - As an
alternative, consider another approach taken to redesign jobs—job enrichment.
Job
enrichment is the designing of jobs to provide opportunities for employee growth
by giving employees more responsibility and control over their work. It is often
referred to as vertical job loading because employees are given some of the
responsibilities that used to belong to their supervisors. Herzberg’s motivator –
hygiene theory – was a driving force in the movement to enrich jobs. Job
enrichment is aimed at increasing intrinsic motivation.

THE JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL

1.) Basic Elements of the Job Characteristics - This approach assumes that jobs
can be designed so as to help people get enjoyment out of their jobs and care
about the work they do. The model identifies how jobs can be designed to help
people feel that they are doing meaningful and valuable work. In particular, it
specifies that enriching certain elements of jobs alters people's psychological
states in a manner that enhances their work effectiveness.
1.1. Skills Variety - is the extent to which a job requires using several different
skills and talents that an employee has. For example, a restaurant
manager with high skill variety will perform many different tasks (e.g.,

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maintaining sales records, handling customer complaints, scheduling staff,
supervising repair work, and the like).
1.2. Task Identity - is the degree to which a job requires doing a whole task
from beginning to end. For example, tailors will have high task identity if
they do everything associated with making an entire suit (e.g., measuring
the client, selecting the fabric, cutting and sewing it, and altering it to fit).
1.3. Task Significance - is the amount of impact a job is believed to have on
others. For example, medical researchers working on a cure for a deadly
disease surely recognize the importance of their work to the world at large.
Even more modest contributions to the company can be recognized as
being significant to the extent that employee understand the role of their
jobs in the overall mission of the organization.
1.4. Anatomy is the extent to which employees have the freedom and
discretion to plan, schedule, and carry out their jobs as desired. For
example, in 1991 a team of Procter & Gamble employees was put in
charge of making all the arrangements necessary for the building of a new
$5 million facility for making concentrated Downy.
1.5. Feedback - is the extent to which the job allows people to have
information about the effectiveness of their performance. For example,
telemarketing representatives regularly receive information about how
many calls they make per day and the monetary values of the sales made.
2.) Assessing the Motivating Potential of Jobs - Based on the proposed
relationship between the core job dimensions and their associated psychological
reactions, the model claims that job motivation will be highest when the jobs
performed rate high on the various dimensions.
3.) Suggestions for Enhancing the Motivating Potential of Jobs - The job
characteristics model specifies several ways in which jobs can be designed to
enhance their motivating potential. For example, instead of using several
workers, each of whom performs a separate part of a whole job, it would be
better to have each person perform the entire job. Doing so helps provide greater
skill variety and task identity.

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4.) The Motivating Potential Score - To measure employees’ perceptions of their
jobs on each of the core dimensions, the Job Diagnostic Survey is used. Once an
employee completes each of these scales for his or her job, it is possible to
compute the job’s motivating potential score. The motivating potential score
(MPS) is a measure of the overall potential of a job to foster intrinsic motivation.

JOB DESIGN: THE SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL

o The social information processing model was developed in 1978 by
Salancik and Pfeffer. According to the social information processing
model, factors other than the core dimensions influences how
employees respond to the design of their jobs. Salancik and Pfeffer
propose that the way employees perceive and respond to the design of
their jobs is influenced by social information (information from other
people) and by employees’ own past behaviors.
o The model proposes that the social environment provides employees
with information regarding which aspects of their job design and work
outcome they should pay attention to and which they should ignore.
Social environment refers to the other individuals with whom
employees come into contact with at work. The model suggests that
the social environment provides employees with information about how
they should evaluate their jobs and work outcomes. The increasing
reliance of organizations on contingent employees has some
interesting implications for social environments at work.

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REFERENCES:

Jones, G.R. and Gorge, J.M. Understanding and Managing

Organizational Behavior, https://g.co/kgs/3u5fqv

Andres, Tomas D.,Enhancing Organizational Performance and

Productivity, New Day Publishers Quezon , City 2001

Newstrom, John W., Organizational Behavior, Human Behavior at Work;

wMcGraw Hill Companies Inc., 2011.

LINKS
TOPICS LINKS FOR VIDEO
What is Motivation? A Definition https://youtu.be/BWOhi4BCGWY

Motivating By Meeting Basic Needs https://youtu.be/-xlqqpZHIHQ

Goal Setting Taking Aim at Performance https://youtu.be/M2OPEUjBYdw

Targets
Designing Jobs That Motivate https://youtu.be/Z-WwFehPEEo

The Job Characteristics Model https://youtu.be/lnxf6u2_9rU

Job Design: The Social Information https://youtu.be/jqi3uPR4fTM

Processing Model

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