Motivation Theories And Motivation Of Employee Motivation Essay

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.

In any workplace, workers are no doubt the essential mainstay that holds any business or corporation together. Employees achieve important tasks to help the company’s long term vision and goals to be successful and efficient. A business can’t be successful without a proper management that is why it is important for employees to enjoy going to work and they also have maintain a positive attitude while being productive and completing tasks. Motivation is what gives a person the purpose to perform or behave in a certain way with the desire or willingness to gain something. There are two types of motivations, motivation that comes from a person and motivation that comes from materially goals. It is very necessary that employers keep their employees motivated and encourage them to perform above expectations.

Employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that an organization’s workers apply to their jobs. The needs, perspectives, and viewpoints of employees are instrumental.

Over the last several years, the issue of employee motivation inside the workplace has been increasingly brought to the forefront. The reason why is because, globalization has been having an effect on the ability of firms to compete (which is placing more pressure on them). To deal with these challenges, most organizations are relying on their employees. The results are that those employers who are able to use this resource will be able to make adjustments quickly. This is when the firm will be able to maintain their dominance in the marketplace.

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

Rensis Likerthas called motivation as the core of management. Motivation is an effective instrument in the hands of the management in inspiring the work force .It is the major task of every manager to motivate his subordinate or to create the will to work among the subordinates. It should also be remembered that the worker may be immensely capable of doing some work, nothing can be achieved if he is not willing to work .creation of a will to work is motivation in simple but true sense of term.

This topic was chosen as my research because I believe a company is nothing without its’ employees. In choosing this topic, it better helps me to understand motivation and how it is used to push employees, helping in the success in the business.

Motivation is the desire or willingness of someone to do something. Craig C. Pinder (1998) defined work motivation as a “set of internal and external forces that initiate work related behaviour and determine its form, direction, intensity and duration.” Motivation plays an important role in a business environment, as employee motivation is believed to improved work performance.

Motivation is often something intuitively understood but not always easy to precisely define. One early definition of motivation was formulated by Vroom (1964, cited in Van Eerde and Thierry, p. 576) in which he defined it as a psychological process controlling choices made by people that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed. However, a more applicable definition of motivation to the workplace describes it as “the degree to which an individual wants and tries hard to do well at a particular task or job” (Mitchell, 1982, p. 82). A more general and recent definition was put forth by Waddell et al (2008) in which they sum up motivation as the

Q2. Drawing on examples from the service sector to illustrate your arguments, critically compare and explore the strength and weaknesses of at least two theories of motivation.

Over the years, motivation has been defined by many people, in many different ways. Hence, what is motivation? According to McShane & Glinow, motivation is defined as “the forces within a person that effect the direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior” (McShane & Glinow, 2011). The author’s further explained, “motivated employees will exert a certain level of effort (intensity), for a certain amount of time (persistence), to obtain a particular goal (direction)” or in other words, employees are essentially “goal-directed” (McShane & Glinow, 2011). Although goals play an important part of employee motivation in the workplace it doesn’t necessarily mean that their only goals are professional in nature. Employees can also be motivated to achieve personal goals within themselves, which could include receiving an educational degree or obtaining additional knowledge, skills and abilities for self-improvement.

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.

Over the past few decades, managers have realized that the motivational capacity of most organizations has a significant impact on the productivity and on the profitability of a firm. Much of the old paradigms regarding management theories have focused extensively on a single way of developing worker productivity and motivation in the firm through the

Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology is devoted to the study of employee behavior in the workplace and understanding the issues facing organizations and employees in today’s complex and ever changing environment. Motivation refers to the set of forces that influence people to choose various behaviors among several alternatives available to them. An organization depends on the ability of management to provide a positive, fostering and motivating environment for its employees in order to increase profits, productivity and lower turnover rates of its employees. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and compare six academic journal articles and explore the behavior, job, and need based theories of motivation that can aid management in motivating and understanding their employees. Finding that delicate balance to can sometimes be elusive so effectively learning how to motivate by understanding, controlling and influencing factors to manipulate behavior and choices that are available to employees can produce the desired outcome.

Motivation is an important aspect in many organizations. In our organization motivation is a key to the success. When evaluating administrative staff, sales people, and production workers, each department works well utilizing different theories. One theory could not work adequately for all three; therefore, three theories were used. Production workers utilize the Two-factor theory; sales people use Vroom's expectancy theory and the Equity theory works for the administrative staff. Combining all three theories into one organization helps the organization run smoothly, while gaining successful motivation on all levels.