Work Motivation: Motivation at Norsk Petroleum

Work Motivation: Motivation at Norsk Petroleum

Introduction

Managing people at work entails an important function of management process. To understand and recognize the vital importance of people in the organization is to identify that the organization and the human element are synonymous. A well managed organization takes its average worker and employees as the root source of productivity and quality gains. Motivation is a fundamental psychological process that takes place in every human being. Many previous researches on the subject of motivation and performance concluded that the competitiveness problems that the firms often face are mostly motivational in nature. Along with learning, attitudes, personality and perception, motivation constitutes a very significant element of behavior. But motivation cannot be categorized as the only factor for explaining behavior because it acts and interacts with in conjunction with other elements of cognitive behavior. According to Luthans (1998) motivating is that feature of management process that influences behavior based on the understanding of what makes people tick.

Many scholars made a common conclusion about motivation when they stated that it is a method which directs, energizes, arouses and sustains performance and behavior. It can also be described as a way to stimulate people in the organization to action so that they can achieve a desired task. There are many ways to motivate workers. One method of stimulating people is to use effective motivation which aims at making the workers more committed and satisfied with their jobs. Many organizations make the mistake of taking monetary incentives as the only motivator but there are other incentives too that can motivate employees. Evans stated that that many theories of organizational behavior and motivation find it important to re-emphasize behavior. Literature also provides variety of definitions for motivation and all these definitions have common characteristic in them because they contain the words like 'incentives', 'needs', 'goals', 'aims', 'wishes', 'want' and 'desire'. Luthan described motivation as a method that starts with the physiological need or insufficiency which then activates a drive or a behavior that is that is targeted at a goal or incentive (Tella et al., 2007, pp. 1-3).

Discussion

The case study relates to the two employees of Norsk Petroleum who have recently been offered jobs at other small petroleum companies and so they have resigned from their positions at the Norsk Petroleum. The Human Resource Director for Norsk Petroleum, Lisa Bohm, tires her best to retain the two employees but in the end her efforts are not rewarded and the two employees of Nosrk Petroleum tender their resignation.

Elisabeth Perdersen's and Ola Rennemo's Work Motivation

There are present several motivation theories which specifically spell out the various features and characteristics or stages that can be used to describe what motivates a person. The Maslow Hierarchy of Needs thus is an important model that can be used to understand the human motivation (anonymous, n.d, p.1). Let us consider the Hierarchy for Elisabeth Pedersen. The Hierarchy has several stages and when the needs on one stage ...