Literature Review: Leading an Organization

Employee motivation is, or at least must be, one of the key issues for directors, managers and personnel managers. The leader must be able to find the sensitive strings of his subordinates, which can be motivated by influencing them to achieve high performance. The correct use of motivation encourages staff to make more efficient use of their knowledge, skills, and talents. In today's turbulent, often chaotic environment, commercial success depends on the employee's talent and effort. Despite the many existing theories and practices, some of the motivation of leaders today remains a mystical term. This is partly due to the fact that people are motivated by different things and techniques.

Motivation is derived from an internal force that provides an individual the opportunity to achieve their needs or goals. People are motivated by a variety of things and often have different motivating factors. Employers should be mindful of individual motivating factors when attempting to motivate staff to increase performance. While some people may be motivated by money, many are motivated by things like: recognition, promotion, and increased responsibility. Once an employer has identified motivating factors they are able to analyze a variety of motivational theories to design and implement a program that will motivate employees to go above and beyond what is expected of them.

According to researcher Lindner (1998), motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces to aid in the survival of organizations. Not only is it important to meet the needs of the consumer, it is equally important that to make sure that associates are taken care of and remain motivated. For this reason, Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly and Konopaske (2012) “states much of management’s time is spent addressing the motivation of their employees” (p. 125). According to the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2007), employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity employees bring to their jobs; the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Lindner, 1988). Despite its obvious importance, employee motivation can be an elusive quest for managers due to the multiplicity of incentives that can influence employees to do their best work. The reality is that every employee has different ways to become motivated and the knowledge of how to motivate them is key to organizational success. It is imperative that employers get to know the personal needs and wants of their employees in order to establish tactics in which to motivate each of them. Once achieved, “managers are in a better position to encourage and reward employees to behave in effective ways” (Gibson et al, 2012, p.

There are as many different methods of motivating employees today as there are companies operating in the global business environment. Still, some strategies are prevalent across all organizations striving to improve employee motivation. The best employee motivation efforts will focus on what the employees deem to be important. It may be that employees within the same department of the same organization will have different motivators. Many organizations today find that flexibility in job design and reward systems has resulted in employees ' increased longevity with the company, improved productivity, and better morale.

Clearly defined goals as they relate to the organization can motivate employees through goal setting. Goals challenge to employees to make them want to explore new technology, ideas, and gain insight from a diverse workplace. Additionally, giving employees more responsibility will make them believe they have contributed with a sense of higher importance. Without motivation in the workplace, a business will suffer from the lack of efficiency from employees. Perhaps the most significant of increased employee motivation is that of increased productivity (staff@incentives.com, 2010). Therefore, it is important that employers give their employees an opportunity to work hard for their reward to obtain a high level of performance, which is an essential to the success of any business.

This consists of things such as achievement of higher market share and profit maximisation consequently due to an individual’s performance. Processes that are used to motivate employees will affect employee’s willingness to remain with an organisation. Performance management is vital within most organisations and is seen as a crucial ingredient in motivating employees and can be explained by various motivational theories.

According to the expectancy theory of motivation, in the workplace an employee’s willingness to work is dependent upon the end result of working and how important the end result is to the employee. An employee will be more compelled to put forth more effort if it is believed that the consequence of doing so will be a positive performance evaluation. The employee must believe that by achieving a positive performance evaluation, an incentive will be achieved. The incentive, whether it is monetary or advancement, must benefit the employee (Robbins, 2012).

The relationship between motivation and performance management is important as they work simultaneously with each other. Motivation is the key to an individual's degree of willingness to exert and maintain their efforts towards the organisational goals. Motivation levels are likely to have an effect on performance. If an individual has high motivation, it is likely to increase their performance. However this may not always be the case. Motivation is about the factors, which links into how organisation uses performance management to get better results from their staff by strategically encouraging the performance within its business. If employees are highly motivated they will perform better, and will co-operate collectively to improve the standards which would lead to a sense of achievement creating greater motivation.

The success of any business depends on the productivity and satisfaction of its employees. Employees need to be motivated to work. Motivation can be defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. For an individual to be motivated in a work situation there must be a need, which the individual would have to perceive a possibility of satisfying through some reward. Intrinsic motivation stems from motivations that are inherent and arise from performing the task of the job itself, which the individual gets a feeling of either positive or negative motivation as a result of

Whilst a lot of employees are motivated develop and perform better, there are some employees who are not. These employees tend to do just enough to keep anyone from noticing them. This is the area where performance management falls down and it is up to the manager to find ways to motivate

The issue of employee motivation is extremely important to management .It is one of the most puzzling issues in management. There are plenty of employees that just ‘punch the clock’ i.e.  They go to work just for the sake of paycheck and nothing else. They have no self pride in their work and do the bare minimum for managerial satisfaction. These employees not only hurt themselves but also the company as well.

Performers are motivated: Motivation influences performance to a large extent. The receipt of either a financial or non-financial reward will encourage the staff in achieving a great deal for the organisation. A demotivated employee on the other hand will be slow, prone to error and not likely to achieve.

are very important part of the company, because thanks to them it can perform properly

Motivation in the workplace is one of the major concerns that managers face when trying to encourage their employees to work harder and do what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis. According to Organizational Behavior by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn the definition of motivation is "the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person's effort expended at work." They go on to say that "motivation is a key concern in firms across the globe." Through the years there have been several theories as to what motivates employees to do their best at work. In order to better understand these theories we will apply them to a fictitious organization that has the following

The Theory of Expectancy is based on perceptions. This means that even if an employer provides all that is required for motivation and it works with the majority in the organization, some employees will still feel