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Chapter 5 Motivation Chapter Overview The chapter explains and describes the underlying dynamics of the motivation process. First, a model of motivation is presented. The model depicts the role of needs in the motivational process. Next, a comprehensive description and discussion of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is presented, which is followed by a discussion of Herzberg’s two factor theory and Alderfer’s E-R-G model. The final part provides a description of the basic principles of behavior modification, types of reinforcement schedules, and goal setting. Chapter Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, students should understand: 1. The motivational process 2. Motivational drives 3. Need category systems 4. Behavior modification and reinforcement 5. Goal setting and its effects 6. The expectancy model of motivation 7. Equity comparisons Discussion and Project Ideas 1. 2. The following exercises should help deliver the concepts discussed in this chapter to the students. • Describe a person sitting in a local restaurant eating a large steak. Ask the class what need this person is fulfilling. Most will say hunger. Needs for status, affiliation, and power, however, are also possible. Use this example to lead a discussion on the difficulty of inferring needs from behavior and the complex interaction of needs which determine behavior. • Have students bring to class one-half page descriptions of behaviors they would like to change in an individual or a group. Form groups of four or five. Have the students trade their descriptions and select one person’s problem to work on as a group. Ask the groups to go through the following four-step process and present its problems and strategies for behavior change to the class: o Pinpoint the behavior they wish to change. o Identify environmental consequences presently reinforcing and/or punishing the behavior. o Suggest additional reinforcers or punishment which might influence the frequency of the behavior. o Design a strategy to change behavior by adding additional reinforcers to desirable behavior and eliminating anything which is punishing the desired behavior. Also suggest strategies for eliminating anything which may be reinforcing undesired behavior. • Divide the class in two and conduct a debate with one side taking the position that proper management of behavioral contingencies would lead to an optimally positive and productive environment. The other side should take the position that behavior modification denies free will, infringes on people’s basic rights, and is untenable as a strategy for motivating complex organisms. • Negotiate a trade with a professor from the social sciences who specializes in behavior modification applications. The arrangement would be that you would explain behavior modification applications in the business area of his or her class if he or she will go over some of the finer points of developing, structuring, and implementing a behavior modification intervention with your class. • Have the class bring in pictures of status symbols in an organization. How many symbols are representing executive, managerial, and staff positions? 3. Lecture Outline Introduction 4. • Motivation takes place within a culture, reflects an organizational behavior model, and requires excellent communication skills. • The four major indicators of employee motivation that are commonly monitored by employers are: o Engagement—degree of enthusiasm, initiative, and effort put forth by employees o Commitment—degree to which employees bond with the organization and exhibit acts of organizational citizenship o Satisfaction—reflection of the fulfillment of the psychological contract, the experience of meaningful tasks, and met expectations at work o Turnover—loss of valued employees that can be reduced by empowering employees • Work Motivation is the result of a set of internal and external forces that cause an employee to choose an appropriate course of action and engage in certain behaviors. • Work motivation is a complex combination of psychological forces within each person, and employers are vitally interest in three elements of it: o Direction and focus of the behavior o Level of the effort o Persistence of the behavior • Motivation requires discovering and understanding employee drives and needs, since it originated within an individual. o Positive acts performed for the organization need to be reinforced. o Employees will be more motivated when they have clear goals to achieve. • It is equally important to uncover the factors at work that act to demotivate employees and diminish their enthusiasm for high performance. • Common managerial behaviors that detract from motivation include: o Tolerating poor performance by incompetent or lazy coworkers o Leveling undue criticism at employees o Failing to provide clear expectations o Making false promises of incentives available o Unfair distribution of rewards (favoritism) o Hours spent in unproductive meetings A Model of Motivation • • Although a few spontaneous human activities occur without motivation, nearly all conscious behavior is motivated or caused. • The role of motivation in performance is summarized in Figure 5.1. • • • • Internal needs and drives create tensions that are affected by one’s environment. • Potential performance (PP) is a product of ability (A) and motivation (M). o Results occur when motivated employees have the opportunity to perform and the resources to do so. o The presence of goals and the awareness of incentives to satisfy one’s needs are also powerful motivational factors leading to the release of effort (motivation). o The amount of effort that employees expend is also directly affected by whether they are energized or fatigued. o High-energy workers are alert, spirited, and enthusiastic; they feel vitalized and are eager to act. o Fatigued workers act tired, sluggish, and feel emotionally depleted. • Personal strategies for energy management fall into three categories: o Learning (acquiring new information or skills; setting new goals; identifying sources of joy at work). o Relationship development (helping colleagues; demonstrating gratitude to others; seeking and acting on feedback) o Finding meaning at work (reflecting on one’s significance and impact at work) • When an employee is productive and the organization takes note of it, rewards will be distributed. o If those rewards are appropriate in nature, timing, and distribution, the employee’s original needs and drives are satisfied. Motivational Drives • • People tend to develop certain motivational drives (strong desires for something) as a product of the cultural environment in which they live. o These acquired drives affect how people view their jobs and approach their lives. o Much of the interest in these patterns of motivation was generated by David C. McClelland of Harvard University. • McClelland’s research focused on the drives for achievement, affiliation, and power. • In most nations, one or two of the motivational patterns tend to be strong among workers because they have grown up with similar backgrounds. Achievement Motivation • Achievement motivation is a drive some people have to pursue and attain challenging goals. o Accomplishment is seen as important primarily for its own sake, not just the rewards that accompany it. • Achievement-oriented employees work harder when: o They perceive that they will receive personal credit for effort o The risk of failure is only moderate o They receive specific feedback about past performance • People with a high drive for achievement: o Take responsibility for their actions and results o Desire to control their destiny o Seek regular feedback o Enjoy being part of a winning achievement through individual or collective effort • Achievement-oriented managers tend to expect that their employees will also be oriented toward achievement. o These high expectations sometimes make it difficult for achievement-oriented managers to delegate effectively and for ‘average’ employees to satisfy manager’s high demands. Affiliation Motivation • Affiliation motivation is a drive to relate to people on a social basis—to work with compatible people and experience a sense of community. • People with affiliation motives: o Work better when they are complimented for their favorable attitudes and cooperation o Tend to surround themselves with friends and likable people • Managers with strong needs for affiliation may have difficulty being effective managers. o Although a high concern for positive social relationships usually results in a cooperative work environment where employees genuinely enjoy working together, managerial overemphasis on the social dimension may interfere with the vital process of getting things done. o Affiliation-oriented managers may have difficulty assigning challenging tasks, directing work activities, and monitoring work effectiveness. Power Motivation • Power motivation is a drive to influence people, take control, and change situations. • Power-motivated people wish to create an impact on their organizations and are willing to take risks to do so. o Once the power is obtained, it may be used either constructively or destructively. • Power-motivated people make excellent managers if their drives are for institutional power instead of personal power. • Institutional power is the need to influence others’ behavior for the good of the whole organization. o However, if an employee’s drives are toward personal power, that person tends to lose the trust and respect of employees and colleagues and be an unsuccessful organizational leader. Managerial Application of the Drives • Knowledge of the differences among the three motivational drives requires managers to think contingently and understand the unique work attitudes of each employee. o They can deal with employees differently based on the strongest motivational drive that they identify in each employee. Human Needs • • Like a machine, an employee who malfunctions does so because of definite causes that may be related to needs o If managers treated workers as well as they do expensive machines, they would have more productive, and hence more satisfied workers. Types of Needs • Needs may be classified in various ways. A simple classification is: o Basic physical needs called primary needs. The physical needs include food, water, sex, sleep, air, etc. These needs arise from the basic requirements of life and are important for survival of the human race. o Social and psychological needs called secondary needs. These needs are more vague because they represent needs of the mind and spirit. Many of these needs are acquired and developed as people mature. Examples are needs that pertain to self-esteem, sense of duty, competitiveness, giving and receiving affection, self-assertion, etc. • The secondary needs are those that complicate the motivational efforts of managers. o Managerial planning should consider the effect of proposed actions on secondary needs of employees. • The following are the key conclusions about secondary needs: o They are strongly conditioned by experience. o They vary in type and intensity. o They are subject to change across time within any individual. o They cannot usually be isolated, but rather work in combination and influence one another. o They are often hidden from conscious recognition. o They are vague feelings as opposed to specific physical needs. o They influence behavior in powerful ways. • The theories of Maslow, Herzberg, and Alderfer build on the distinction between primary and secondary needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs • According to A. H. Maslow, human needs are not of equal strength, and they emerge in a predictable but rather fluid sequence. • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs identifies and focuses attention on five levels (Figure 5.3). • Lower-Order Needs o First-level needs involve basic survival and include physiological needs for food, air, water, and sleep. o The second need level that tends to dominate is bodily safety and economic security. o These two need levels together are typically called lower-order needs, and they are similar to the primary needs. • Higher-Order Needs o Three levels of higher-order needs exist: The third level concerns love, belonging, and social involvement at work. The needs at the fourth level encompass those for esteem and status, including one’s feelings of self-worth and competence. The fifth level need is self-actualization, which is an ongoing process of becoming all that one is capable of becoming, using one’s skills to the fullest, having a rich combination of values and purpose, and stretching talents to the maximum. • Interpreting the Hierarchy of Needs o Maslow’s need-hierarchy essentially says that people have a variety of needs they wish to satisfy, multiple needs operate simultaneously, all need levels are often partially satisfied, and that gratified needs are not as strongly motivating as unmet needs. o Employees are more enthusiastically motivated by what they are currently seeking than by receiving more of what they already have. o Today’s managers need to: Identify and accept employee needs Recognize that needs differ among employees Offer satisfaction for the particular needs currently unmet Realize that giving more of the same reward may have diminishing impact on motivation • The Maslow model also has many limitations, and it has been sharply criticized. o As a philosophical framework, it has been difficult to study and has not been fully verified. o From a practical perspective, it is not easy to provide opportunities for self-actualization to all employees. o Research has not supported the presence of all five need levels as unique, nor has the five-step progression from lowest to highest need levels been established. • There is some evidence that unless the two lower-order needs (physiological and security) are basically satisfied, employees will not be greatly concerned with higher-order needs. Herzberg’s Two-Factor Model • On the basis of research with a group of engineers and accountants, Frederick Herzberg developed a two-factor model of motivation. o He asked the group members to think of a time when they felt especially good about their jobs and a time when they felt especially bad about their jobs. • Herzberg found that employees named different types of conditions that produced good and bad feelings. o If a feeling of achievement led to a good feeling, the lack of achievement was rarely given as cause for bad feelings. o Instead, some other factor, such as company policy, was the more frequently given cause for bad feelings • Maintenance and Motivational Factors o Herzberg concluded that two separate sets of factors influenced motivation. Prior to that time, people had assumed that motivation and lack of motivation were merely opposites of one factor on a continuum. o Herzberg upset the traditional view by stating that certain job factors dissatisfy employees primarily when the conditions are absent. However, the presence of these factors generally brings employees only to a neutral state. These potent dissatisfiers are called hygiene factors, or maintenance factors, because they must not be ignored. o Other job conditions operate primarily to build this motivation, but their absence rarely is strongly dissatisfying. These conditions are known as motivational factors, motivators, or satisfiers. • Job Content and Context o Motivational factors, such as achievement and responsibility, are related, for the most part, directly to the job itself, the employee’s performance, and the personal recognition and growth that the employee experiences. o Motivators mostly are job-centered, and relate to job content. o Maintenance factors are mainly related to job context; because they are more related to the environment surrounding the job. o The difference between job content and job context is a significant one. It shows that employees are motivated primarily by what they do for themselves. When employees take responsibility or gain recognition through their own behavior, they are strongly motivated. • Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators o Intrinsic motivators are internal rewards that a person feels when performing a job, so there is a direct and often immediate connection between work and rewards. An employee in this situation is self-motivated. o Extrinsic motivators are external rewards that occur apart from the nature of work, providing no direct satisfaction at the time the work is performed. Examples are retirement plans, health insurance, and vacations. Although employees value these items, they are not effective motivators. • Interpreting the Two-Factor Model o Herzberg’s model provides a useful distinction between maintenance factors, which are necessary but not sufficient, and motivational factors, which have greater potential for improving employee effort. It broadened managers’ perspectives by showing the potentially powerful role of intrinsic rewards that evolve from the work itself. This conclusion ties in with a number of other important behavioral developments, such as job enrichment, empowerment, self-leadership, and quality of work life. o Managers cannot neglect a wide range of maintenance factors that create at least a neutral work environment. Unless these hygiene factors are reasonably well addressed, their absence will serve as significant distractions to workers. o The Herzberg model has been widely examined and criticized, as well as defended. It is not universally applicable, because it was based on and applies best to managerial, professional, and upper white-collar employees. The model also appears to reduce the motivational importance of pay, status, and relations with others since these are maintenance factors. This aspect of the model is counterintuitive to many managers and difficult for them to accept. Since there is no absolute and clear distinction between the effects of the two major factors, the model outlines only general tendencies; maintenance factors may be motivators to some people, and motivators may be maintenance factors to others. The model also seems to be method-bound, meaning that only Herzberg’s approach produces the two-factor model. Alderfer’s E-R-G Model • Building upon earlier need models (primarily Maslow’s) and seeking to overcome some of their weaknesses, Clayton Alderfer proposed a modified need hierarchy—the E-R-G model—with just three levels. o Existence needs—combine physiological and security factors. Pay, physical working conditions, job security, and fringe benefits can all address these needs. o Relatedness needs—these social factors involve being understood and accepted by people above, below, and around the employee at work and away from it. o Growth needs—involve the desire for both self-esteem and self-actualization. • In addition to condensing Maslow’s five need levels into three that are more consistent with research, the E-R-G model differs in other ways. o For example, the E-R-G model does not assume a distinct progression from level to level. o It accepts the likelihood that all three levels might be active at any time— or even that just one of the higher levels might be active. o It suggests that a person frustrated at either of the two higher levels may return to concentrate on a lower level and then progress again. o Whereas the first two levels are somewhat limited in their requirements for satisfaction, the growth needs not only are unlimited but are actually further awakened each time some satisfaction is attained. Comparison of the Maslow, Herzberg, and Alderfer Models • The similarities among the three models of human needs are shown in Figure 5.3, but there are important contrasts, too. o Maslow and Alderfer focus on the internal needs of the employee, whereas Herzberg also identifies and differentiates the conditions (job content or job context) that could be provided for need satisfaction. o Popular interpretations of the Maslow and Herzberg models suggest that in modern societies many workers have already satisfied their lower-order and maintenance needs, so they are now motivated mainly by higher-order needs and motivators. o Alderfer suggests that the failure to satisfy relatedness or growth needs will cause renewed interest in existence needs. • All three models indicate that before a manager tries to administer a reward, he or she would find it useful to discover which need or needs dominate a particular employee at the time. Behavior Modification • • The models of motivation that have been discussed up to this point are known as content theories of motivation because they focus on the content (nature) of items that may motivate a person. o They relate to the person’s inner self and how that person’s internal state of needs determines behavior. • The major difficulty with content models of motivation is that the needs people have are subject to observation by managers or to precise measurement for monitoring purposes. o As a result, there has been considerable interest in motivational models that rely more heavily on intended results, careful measurement, and systematic application of incentives. • Organizational behavior modification, or OB Mod is the application in organizations of the principles of behavior modification, which evolved from the work of B. F. Skinner. o OB Mod and the next several models are process theories of motivation, since they provide perspectives on the dynamics by which employees can be motivated. Law of Effect • OB Mod relies heavily on the law of effect, which states that a person tends to repeat behavior that is accompanied by favorable consequences (reinforcement) and tends not to repeat behavior that is accompanied by unfavorable (or lack of) consequences. • Two conditions are required for successful application of OB Mod: o The manager must be able to identify some powerful consequences (as perceived by the employee). o The manager must be able to control or administer them in such a way that the employee will see the connection between the behavior to be affected and the consequences. • The law of effect comes from learning theory, which suggests that we learn best under pleasant surroundings. o Whereas content theories argue that internal needs lead to behavior, OB Mod states that external consequences tend to determine behavior. • The advantage of OB Mod is that it places a greater degree of control, and responsibility, in the hands of the manager. • A special type of learning theory is social learning, also known as vicarious learning. o This suggests that employees do not always have to learn directly from their own experiences. o Instead, they may—and even are likely to—learn by observing the actions of others, understanding the consequences that others are experiencing, and using that new information to modify their own behavior. • Employees who acquire the skills of social learning can often become much more effective in less time than they would have if they had to experience everything independently. Alternative Consequences • OB Mod places great emphasis on the use of rewards and alternative consequences to sustain behavior. o Before using OB Mod, managers must decide whether they wish to increase the probability of a person’s continued behavior or to decrease it. • Once managers have decided on their objective, they have two further choices to make which determine the type of consequence to be applied: o Should they use a positive or a negative consequence? o Should they apply it or withhold it? • The answers to these two questions result in four unique alternative consequences (Figure 5.5)—positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction. • Positive reinforcement provides a favorable consequence that encourages repetition of a behavior. o The reinforcement always should be contingent on the employee’s correct behavior—not randomly administered. o Favorable consequences should be personalized, timely, specific, high-impact, and as spontaneous as possible. o Managers should provide useful feedback about performance, celebrate publicly the value of a contribution, and build a sense of ownership and commitment within employees. o Shaping is a systematic and progressive application of positive reinforcement. It occurs when more frequent, or more powerful, reinforcements are successively given as the employee comes closer to the desired behavior. It is especially useful for teaching complex tasks. • Negative reinforcement occurs when behavior is accompanied by removal of an unfavorable consequence; therefore it is not the same as punishment, which normally adds something unfavorable. o Consistent with the law of effect, behavior responsible for the removal of something unfavorable is repeated when that unfavorable state is again encountered. • Punishment is the administration of an unfavorable consequence that discourages a certain behavior. o Although punishment may be necessary occasionally to discourage an undesirable behavior, it needs to be used with caution because it has certain limitations. It does not directly encourage any kind of desirable behavior unless the person receiving it is clearly aware of the alternative path to follow. It may cause managers acting like punishers to become disliked for their disciplinary actions. It could happen that people who are punished may be unclear about what specific part of their behavior is being punished. • Extinction is the withholding of significant positive consequences that were previously provided for a desirable behavior. o If no reinforcement by the manager, the employee, or anyone else occurs, the behavior tends to diminish through lack of reinforcement. Schedules of Reinforcement • The frequency of a behavior creates a baseline, or standard, against which improvements can be compared. o Then, the manager can select a reinforcement schedule, which is the frequency with which the selected consequence accompanies a desired behavior. • Reinforcement may be either continuous or partial. o Continuous reinforcement occurs when reinforcement accompanies each correct behavior by an employee. An example of continuous reinforcement is payment of employees for each acceptable item they produce. o Partial reinforcement occurs when only some of the correct behaviors are reinforced—either after a certain time or after a number of correct responses. • Learning is slower with partial reinforcement than with continuous reinforcement. o However, learning tends to be retained longer when it is secured under conditions of partial reinforcement. Interpreting Behavior Modification • The major benefit of behavior modification is that it makes managers become more conscious motivators. o It often encourages effective supervisors to devote more time to monitoring employee behaviors. o When specific behaviors can be identified and desired reinforcements are properly applied, behavior modification can lead to substantial improvements in specific areas, such as absences, tardiness, and error rates. • Behavior modification has been criticized on several grounds, including its philosophy, methods, and practicality. o It could manipulate people, and be inconsistent with humanistic assumptions that people want to be autonomous and self-actualizing. o Some critics also fear that behavior modification gives too much power to the managers, without appropriate controls. Goal Setting • • Goals are targets and objective for future performance. o Goals appear in the model of motivation before employee performance, which accents their role as a cue to acceptable behavior. • Goals are also useful after the desired behavior, as managers compare employee results with their aims and explore reasons for any differences. • Goal setting works as a motivational process because it creates a discrepancy between current and expected performance. o This results in a feeling of tension, which the employee can diminish through future goal attainment. • Meeting goals also helps satisfy a person’s achievement drive, contributes to feelings of competence and self-esteem, and further stimulates personal growth needs. o Individuals who successfully achieve goals tend to set even higher goals in the future. • A major factor in the success of goal setting is self-efficacy. o This is an internal belief regarding one’s job-related capabilities and competencies. • Self-efficacy can be judged either on a specific task or across a variety of performance duties. o If employees have high self-efficacies, they will tend to set higher personal goals under the belief that they are attainable. • The first key to successful goal setting is to build and reinforce employee self-efficacy (Figure 5.7). Elements of Goal Setting • Goal setting, as a motivational tool, is most effective when all its major elements—goal acceptance, specificity, challenge, and performance monitoring and feedback—are present. • Goal Acceptance o Effective goals need to be not only understood but also actively accepted. o Supervisors need to explain the purpose behind goals and the necessity for them. • Specificity o Goals need to be as specific, clear, and measurable as possible so employees will know when a goal is reached. o Specific goals (often quantified) let employees know what to reach for and allow them to measure their own progress. • Challenge o Most employees work harder and achieve more when they have difficult goals to accomplish rather than easy ones. o Hard goals present a challenge that appeals to the achievement drive within many employees. • Performance Monitoring and Feedback o Even after employees have participated in setting well-defined and challenging goals, two other closely related steps are important to complete the process. Performance monitoring—observing behavior, inspecting output, or studying performance indicators—provides at least subtle cues to employees that their tasks are important, their effort is needed, and their contributions are valued. Without performance feedback—the timely provision of data or judgment regarding task-related results—employees will be working in the dark and have no true idea how successful they are. The Expectancy Model • • A widely accepted approach to motivation is the expectancy model, also known as expectancy theory, developed by Victor H. Vroom and expanded and refined by Porter, Lawler, and others. • Vroom explains that motivation is a product of three factors: o How much one wants a reward (valence) o One’s estimate of the probability that effort will result in successful performance (expectancy) o One’s estimate that performance will result in receiving the reward (instrumentality). o The relationship is stated as Valence × Expectancy × Instrumentality = Motivation. The Three Factors • Valence o Valence refers to the strength of a person’s preference for receiving a reward. o Valence for a reward is unique to each employee and thus is a reflection of the concept of individual differences. o Valence for reward is conditioned by experience, and it may vary substantially over a period of time as old needs become satisfied and new ones emerge. o It is important to understand the difference between the implications of need-based models of motivation and the idea of valence in the expectancy model. In the need-based models, broad generalizations are used to predict where a group of employees may have the strongest drives or the greatest unsatisfied needs. In the expectancy model, managers need to gather specific information about an individual employee’s preferences among a set of rewards and then continue to monitor changes in those preferences. o Since people may have positive or negative preferences for an outcome valence may be positive or negative. When a person prefers not attaining an outcome, as compared with attaining it, valence is a negative figure. If a person is indifferent to an outcome, the valence is 0. The total range is from -1 to +1. • Expectancy o Expectancy is the strength of belief that one’s work-related effort will result in completion of a task. o Since expectancy is the probability of a connection between effort and performance, its value may range from 0 to 1. o One of the forces contributing to effort-performance expectancies is the individual’s self-efficacy. • Instrumentality o Instrumentality represents the employee’s belief that a reward will be received once the task is accomplished. o The employee makes another subjective judgment about the probability that the organization values the employee’s performance and will administer rewards on a contingent basis. o The value of instrumentality effectively ranges from 0 to 1. How the Model Works • The multiplicative product of valence (V), expectancy (E), and instrumentality (I) is motivation (V × E × I = Motivation). o It is defined as the strength of the drive toward an action. • The three factors in the expectancy model may exist in numerous combinations. • When valence is negative, employees will prefer to avoid the disliked outcome. o For example, some employees would prefer not to be promoted into management because of the stress, loss of overtime pay, or additional responsibilities they would bear. • Employees perform a type of cost-benefit analysis, often implicit, for their own behavior at work. • The Impact of Uncertainty o The expectancy model depends on the employee’s perception of the relationship between effort, performance, and rewards. The connection between effort and ultimate reward is often uncertain. Each situation entails so many causes and effects that rarely can an employee be sure that a desired reward will follow a given action. o Managers can address this uncertainty in two ways as they apply the expectancy model. They can work to strengthen both the actual value of the rewards offered and the formal connections between effort and performance and between performance and rewards. They can recognize and accept the legitimacy of an employee’s perception of the rewards. o In order to make the expectancy model work, the manager must clarify employee perceptions. Interpreting the Expectancy Model • Advantages o The expectancy model is a valuable tool for helping managers think about the mental processes through which motivation occurs. In this model, employees do not act simply because of strong internal drives. Instead, they are thinking individuals whose beliefs, perceptions, and probability estimates influence their behavior. o The model reflects Theory Y assumptions about people as capable individuals and in this way values human dignity. o The model also encourages managers to design a motivational climate that will stimulate appropriate employee behavior. o Managers need to communicate with employees. • Limitations o The model’s multiplicative combination of the three elements needs further substantiation. o Both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards need to be considered. o Reliable measures of valence, expectancy, and instrumentality need to be developed. o There is a special need to develop measures that managers can use in actual work settings. The Equity Model • • Employees interact with one another on tasks and on social occasions. o They observe one another, judge one another, and make comparisons. • Most employees are concerned about more than just having their needs satisfied; they also want their reward system to be fair. o This issue of fairness applies to all types of rewards—psychological, social, and economic—and it makes the managerial job of motivation much more complex. • J. Stacy Adam’s equity theory states that employees tend to judge fairness by comparing the outcomes (rewards) they receive with their relevant inputs (contributions) and also by comparing this ratio with the ratios of other people (Figure 5.9). • • Inputs include all the rich and diverse elements employees believe they bring, or contribute, to the job—their education, seniority, prior work experiences, loyalty and commitment, time and effort, creativity, and job performance. • Outcomes are the rewards employee perceive they get from their jobs and employers; these outcomes include direct pay and bonuses, fringe benefits, job security, social rewards, and psychological rewards. • Three combinations can occur from social comparisons: o Equity—employees will be motivated to continue to contribute at about the same level. o Over-rewarded—employees will feel an imbalance in their relationship with their employer and seek to restore that balance. They might work harder, they might discount the value of the rewards received, they could try to convince other employees to ask for more rewards, or they might simply choose someone else for comparison purposes. o Under-rewarded—employees seek to reduce their feelings of inequity through the same types of strategies, but some of their specific actions are now reversed. They might lower the quantity or quality of their productivity, they could inflate the perceived value of the rewards received, or they could bargain for more actual rewards. They could find someone else to compare themselves (more favorably) with, or they might simply quit. Interpreting the Equity Model • An understanding of equity should remind managers that employees work within several social systems. o Employees may actually select a number of reference groups both inside and outside the organization. o Employees are also inclined to shift the basis for their comparisons to the standard that is most favorable to them. o Many employees have strong egos and even inflated opinions of themselves. • The idea of equity sensitivity suggests that individuals have different preferences for equity. o Some people seem to prefer over reward, some conform to the traditional equity model, and others prefer to be under rewarded. • The elements of effort (inputs) and rewards (outcomes) can be seen when comparing the equity and expectancy models. o In both approaches, perception plays a key role, again suggesting how valuable it is for a manager to gather information from employees instead of trying to impose one’s own perceptions onto them. • The major challenges for a manager using the equity model lie in measuring employee assessments of their inputs and outcomes, identifying their choice of references, and evaluating employee perceptions of inputs and outcomes. • Fairness, from an employee’s equity perspective, applies not only to the actual size of rewards and their relation to inputs provided, but also to the process by which they are administered. o This is the essence of the procedural justice approach to motivation, which focuses on two elements: Interpersonal treatment—encompasses both managerial respect for employee inputs and managerial behavior that exhibits clear levels of respect, esteem, consideration, and courtesy. Clarity of explanations—is enhanced by managers making the reward process more transparent, so that employees can discover and understand how their inputs were assessed and how the reward system is administered. • Procedural justice is especially important when organizational resources are tight and lesser levels of valued outcomes are provided to employees. • Interpreting Motivational Models • All the motivational models have strengths and weaknesses, advocates and critics. o No model is perfect, but all of them add something to our understanding of the motivational process. o Other models are being developed, and attempts are being made to integrate existing approaches. • The cognitive (process) models are likely to continue dominating organizational practices for some time. o They are most consistent with a supportive and comprehensive view of people as thinking individuals who make somewhat conscious decisions about their behavior. o Behavior modification also has some usefulness, especially in stable situations with minimum complexity, where there appears to be a direct connection between behavior and consequences. o In more complex, dynamic situations, cognitive models will be used more often. o The motivational model used must be carefully chosen, adapted as needed, and blended with other models. • As the world of business becomes increasingly global, it becomes important to consider the relevance of motivational models to countries outside the United States, whose culture reflects individualism. o By contrast, in collective cultures such as Japan, feelings of belonging may be more important to employees than esteem needs. Instructor Manual for Organizational Behavior: Human Behavior at Work John W. Newstrom 9780078112829, 9781259254420
