American's Motivation to Work Essay

WORK – it have to do with both its quantity and its quality and are not limited to the travails of any one group. Those problems include the low wages in most sectors of the economy; the unemployment, underemployment, and precarious employment suffered by many workers; and the overwork that often characterizes even the most privileged forms of employment after all, even the best job is a problem when it monopolizes so much of life.

Defining what really is to be an American does not sound as easy as it seem. It will always be complex process. As immigration continues to fuel the growth of the population of our nation, racial and ethnic gap increase and evolve along with it. Racial and ethnic identities become more and more convoluted and difficult to understand. Race and ethnicity continue to intermingle and push a cultural shift in the US– a shift that plays a significant role in redefining America in a day-to-day basis.

Over the last two decades, American workers have been clocking more and more hours on the job, and they now work more hours than workers in any other industrialized country. Annual work hours are 4% higher than they were in 1980, amounting to an extra 1 hour and 30 minutes at work per week, on average (ILO 1999). Workers are also clocking more overtime hours. Almost one-third of the workforce regularly works more than the standard 40-hour week; one-fifth work more than 50 hours. The growth in overtime work, while helping to drive the healthy growth in output in the U.S., has unhealthy social costs. It is taking its toll not only on workers, but on their families, communities, and, ultimately in many cases, patients, customers, and

Being an American “For the land of the free”, do these words sound familiar? Of course they do they are the lyrics from the United States of America’s national anthem. Now earth has countries that stretch from coast to coast. But few of the countries have the freedom that the United States of America. Being born American is an honor to many of the citizens, because this country has plenty of things to be proud of.

What does it mean to be American?Well it all depends on who you ask, because everyone has their own opinions. Being an American mean has and had many definitions for many centuries. During WW1 being an American was helping server the war or help the war. In WW2 it was the exact same thing. Women in this age thought being American was having the same rights as men.

To many people being an American means different things. To some it means being able to watch football on Sundays and eat hamburgers. To others it means having the choice of what to wear or how to act, but for me being an American means so much more. In my opinion being American is about having freedom and the opportunity to be yourself. Americans are a diverse community of people who are part of the democracy created by our founding fathers.

Today i will give a brief explanation on why i agree with Brigid Schulte on the reasons why americans work to hard in todays society. After reading his article i have developde my own reason as of why Americans shouldn't work to hard. Some of the reasons are we become sick from work, We get stressed most of the time, we are stupid, and disengaged by our jobs.

Being an American cannot simply be defined by skin color, culture, or religion. This nation cannot be defined in a simplistic manner like many other nations. For instance, other countries define themselves by their accent or by the types of food they consume. According to Sarah Song, “To be or to become an American, a person did not have to be any particular national, linguistic, religious, or ethnic background. All he had to do was to commit himself to the political ideology centered on the abstract ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism” (31). Therefore, being American simply means having the same views about equality, liberty and republicanism as our American ancestors.

The modern day American society hosts a broad spectrum of industries with various occupations and professions to engage today’s workforce. America, much like most first world countries is a service economy based on the exchange of knowledge and expertise rather than materials and products. People have a long history of work and work evolution that has ultimately brought America to a service economy producing both strengths and weaknesses within the society and its economy. As America has moved to a service economy, much of the manufacturing and production jobs have moved oversees to third world countries creating a reliance on other economies. This globalization of the workforce as well as unionization, and the

Motivation is the force that makes us do things, whether accomplishing personal goals or completing tasks at work. Most people are motivated as a result of their individual needs being satisfied, which gives them the inspiration to perform specific behaviors for which they receive rewards (Kinicki & Williams, 2011). These needs vary from person to person, as everybody has specific needs to be satisfied. When we consider factors that determine the motivation of employees, many of us think of a high salary. This answer is correct for the reason that some employees will be motivated by money, but mostly wrong for the reason that it does not satisfy other needs to a lasting degree (Bizhelp24, 2010). This supports the idea that human

Here in the USA people live to work when in other countries they work to live. I would like to be able to enjoy every single day of my life and not only certain hours of the days. Working a 9-5 job with promises that are never fulfilled by people who really don’t care is the life of most Americans. According to the Washington Post only 18% of Americans work less than 35 hours a week. That means that 82

To understand the problem of worker motivation we must understand Capitalism. Capitalism involves conflicts of interests between management and workers. According to Knights and Willmott (2012) Marxism is when workers are described as a ‘social animal rather than a self-seeking individual’. They further state that production is motivated by the ‘pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital’. This shows that managers are more interested in profit than workers needs. Similarly Taylor states that motivation comes from money and profit for management, whereas workers would want higher wages, thus suggests a conflict in capitalist society (Knights and Willmott, 2012). This conveys the importance of capitalism in regards to motivation in society and how workers are not seen as humans. Though in a modern society, Taylorism is viewed out-dated because workers are no longer motivated by just financial incentives, they are after

There are very many factors that motivate employees to do outstanding work in their jobs. Though most of them are non-monetary factors like participative decision making, work teams, challenging jobs, goals in life or in the company, power and other factors. Most of the employees that emerge in their workplace, either in a small cubicle or a mega office have got some drive that enable them to perform in their work, but the key question is, is money is the key motivation in their workplace? In this essay both sides will be argued in order to find the answer to this (Robbins, Odendaal & Roodt, 2003).

There are several reasons why a person goes to work. These reasons can be better explained as "work motivation". Work motivation can be defined as the inner forces that make us work and want to work harder to achieve personal or organizational goals (George & Jones, 2005). There are two different types of motivation; intrinsic and extrinsic.

Motivation at work stimulates the interest of a person in an activity. Motivation at works is very complex because there are multiple motives operating at the same time. Goals motivate and guide workers' behaviors. Specific goals are better than general goals and little difficulty is better than easy goals. The degree of expectancy determines how much effort is put forth, people will work hard if they expect the effort will pay off. Increased job enrichment which includes more control at work and a high number of tasks to perform leads to high motivation. Stress on the job reduces motivation and productivity. The specific needs to achieve and