ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS

Motivation Theories

Motivation Theories

Introduction

The ability to 'motivate people' is considered to be a prime task of management. Managers, increasingly, have to act as coaches and guides in order to align the strategic goals of the organisation with the demands and needs of individual employees. At the core of this aligning process is the manager's skill to understand what does 'motivate' an individual to reliably and consistently commit their energy and talent to the organisational goal. Motivation theories are routinely drawn on to understand what makes people 'tick' and to then be able to successfully manage and control individual behaviour. This paper discusses the value of the study of different theories of motivation for understanding the behaviour of people in organisations.

Discussion

Motivation is formally defined as forces within an individual that account for the level, direction, and persistence of effort. (Maslow 1943, 37-96) Within each of us, as human beings there are factors that influence the decisions we make about how we react to things we experience. We decide how to react based on our own personal analysis of how our needs or expectations were or were not met by that particular experience. Motivation is talked about as being made up of three types of theories. They are the reinforcement, content, and process theories.

Reinforcement theories emphasize the linkage between individual behavior and some specific outcomes to show how managers can alter the direction, level, or persistence of individual actions. These theories concentrate more on the motivational techniques of managers to control their subordinates' motivation in the work environment.

Content theories deal directly with what motivates individuals to perform more effectively within their organizations. It deals with the idea of what the needs are for the employees within their work environment that will motivate them to perform more effectively and efficiently. Content theories focus primarily on the individual needs-the physiological or psychological deficiencies that we feel a compulsion to reduce or eliminate. Process theories focus on the thought or cognitive processes that take place within the minds of people and that influence their behaviors. These are the kind of theories that deal with the motivation within the individual minds of the employees. Their motivation within themselves directly affects their performance in the personal lives as well as their professional lives.

In the textbook, Organizational Behavior, there were four content theories that they talked about. A man named Abraham Maslow founded the first theory. His theory was that there was a pyramid of needs within every person (Maslow 1943, 37-96). There were the top order of needs that he said were self-actualization and esteem. Then there were the lower order of needs of social, safety, and physiological at the bottom of the hierarchy. He assumed that some needs are more important than others and must be satisfied before the other needs can serve as motivators. His theory also talked bout how, when people move up the ladder of success, their lower order needs become less important than their higher ...