Fundamentals of Organizational Communication Essay

Motivation is having a reason or reasons to act/behave in a particular way. It creates “drive” in people whether it is in pursuit of a goal, or the need to complete an activity. It produces enthusiasm and a willingness to achieve in both a work environment and in your personal life. Motivation can be increased and decreased in line with the incentives on offer.

With these few thoughts in mind Abraham Maslow made up a hierarchy of needs. (Boeree, Page 2) The hierarchy of needs has five levels: the bottom one is Physiological Needs, the next one up is Safety needs, the next one is Belonging needs, the next one is Esteem Needs and finally the last one is Self-actualization needs. As Maslow thought he “saw human beings needs arranged like a ladder”, the most basic needs at the bottom and at the top the need to fulfill yourself. (pbs.org, Page 1) Below is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Without going into the fine details and depth of all the motivational theory, we will use

Motivation can be defined as the internal state of individual’s mind that enable individual and directs the behaviour of the individuals. Motivation makes the individual to do something. It is defined as the individual’s willingness to intensity efforts to achieve the goals.

What is motivation? As manager’s, motivation is one of the most vital and crucial assets to possess in managing a business. This drive is a critical tool to use in the work place and determine the success or failure of an organization. Motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behavior. In other words, motivation is an internal energy that drives an individual to do something in order to achieve a certain goal. Therefore, creating a motivating environment in the workplace will lead to happy employees. Creating a work environment like this, managers can expect low staff turnovers, improved productivity, happy customers, and better financial performance. Therefore, the input of motivation use towards employees determines the output efficiency of the company. However, everyone involved in an organization is motivated differently. Everybody has their own individual needs in regards to motivation. Depending on how motivated a person is, determines the effort that individual puts into the work and therefore, how productive they are.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, esteem presents the normal human desire to be accepted and valued by others. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one.

Motivation is the “why” behind our behaviors. Behavior that is usually goal-oriented. The forces that lie beneath motivation can be biological, social, emotional or cognitive in nature. There are, indeed, a plethora of inducements that cause us to act the way we act and do the things we do. They include things like quenching our thirst, reading to gain knowledge, studying to ace an exam, surpassing quotas and meeting deadlines for a promotion, etc. According to Kendra Cherry’s article on “WHAT IS MOTIVATION”, there are three components of motivation: activation, persistence and intensity. Activation is the decision to initiate a behavior. Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though obstacles may exist. Intensity is the

Communication is an important skill for people to have in an organisation. Through the interpersonal communication (communication between two or more people) process, people can exchange information, create motivation, express feelings or apply penalties for inappropriate behavior, all within the workplace (Robbins, et al, 2009). According to Eunson (2008) people who lack communication skills in the organisation should be trained to deal with different situation that involve communicating effectively (p. 554). In response to Eunson (2008), this essay aims to prove why interpersonal communication is an important skill to have and how organisation can train employees and managers to use these skills within the workplace. Additionally, the

So, the office staffs are motivated and Herzberg said that Herzberg’s motivation theory involves what people actually do on the job and should be engineered into the job employees do in other to develop intrinsic motivation with the workforce such as feedback and recognition. Both these approaches such as

Motivation defined as the psychological processes that arouse and activate the goal-directed behavior. It consists of two factors which are internal and external factors. These factors prompt the desire and energy in people to encourage them continually attracted and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal.

“Motivation is the internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal."

Peter Drucker the famous 20th century management consultant may have described motivation best saying, “We know nothing about motivation – all we can do is write books about it”. Motivation is a commonly used buzzword thrown around in daily conversations without much meaning behind it. Motivation defined by Jason Colquitt and company in Organizational Behavior is as follows “a set of energetic forces that originates both within and outside an employee, initiates work-related effort, and determines its direction, intensity, and persistence” (Colquitt, LePine and Wesson ).

What is motivation? Motivation is defined as “an individual’s willingness to respond to the organization’s requirements in short run.” (P.71 Dixon, 1998) For the purposes of this research paper, I find the most fitting definition of motivation is to define it as “the force that Energizes, Directs, and Sustains behavior.” (uri.com, 2014) Motivation is imperative to productivity. A highly motivated staff often leads to high productivity from the workforce.

According to Herzberg, the factors leading to job satisfaction are distinctly different from those that lead to job-dissatisfaction. Therefore, the managers who seek to eliminate factors that create job-dissatisfaction can bring about peace at the workplace but cannot motivate the employees. These factors are termed as hygiene factors comprising administration, supervision, working conditions, salary and wages etc. While absence of hygiene factors will lead to dissatisfaction, mere presence of these factors will not satisfy (i.e. motivate) the employees. In order to motivate the employees, managers must resort to ‘motivators’ (those factors that motivate the employees towards better performance) such as recognition, challenging assignment, responsibility, opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment etc.

He placed the most basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid and the most advanced needs at the top of the pyramid. According to Maslow , when people satisfy one level of need, they then move up to the next level. In his theory, the most basic need is the survive – to have enough money to buy food, shelter and necessary clothes. When they have satisfied the need for survival, they then need to feel safe and secure – perhaps from unemployment. So that second level of need is the security. After that, people need to belong to a group and to have friends – these are their social needs. They then move on the needing status. At this stage they need to be respected in the community, to be esteemed, and to be given recognition for what they do. When all these needs have been satisfied, people finally have self-actualization needs. This is ambition to achieve as much as they possibly can – perhaps to be promoted to high-level position with more responsibility. (Jane, 1999) 4