The Importance Of Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation

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.

Of the many mini theories developed, intrinsic motivation plays a role in workplace situations I have personally experienced. Factors that encourage intrinsic motivation include challenge, curiosity, control, fantasy, competition, cooperation, and recognition. Intrinsic motivation challenges the way we learn, our purpose, interests, and meaning. Intrinsic motivation occurs when there is a generalized interest in a goal and it benefits us when the behavior to achieve the goal is self-imposed (Reeve, 2009).

When a person plans or wants to do something, he or she has a motivation for that specific thing. In other words, when a person does something, that person has a reason why he or she should do that thing. Not always there is a reason to do something, but sometimes may be many reasons that are backing a person to take those actions to do it. This happens not only to humans, or living organisms, but also in nonliving organisms. An example is when a rock which had bounced after it hit the floor while falling down. Scientists may tell some of the reasons why the rock does that kind of action, but they cannot tell all of the reasons that back the rock’s actions. A similar thing, as the scientists, was Alfie Kohn trying to do in his essay, “Why

Motivation can be defined as the desire or inspiration to carry out specific tasks or to do something. Motivation is required when goals are being set and more so in their execution. In a work setting, motivation can be defined as a process through which individuals choose between alternative forms of behavior with the aim of achieving personal objectives. The goals sought by individuals can be extrinsic or relatively tangible such as monetary rewards and promotion, or intrinsic or intangible such as self esteem or job satisfaction (Armstrong, 2006). In learning, the desire to attain good grades is what motivates a student to study hard everyday as they prepare for the exam. On the other hand, for a teacher to put his best foot forward, he

According to Bateman & Snell (2009), Motivators to employee job performance are centered on extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are characteristics of the workplace that attract and retain people. They revolve around organization and management policies, working conditions, pay, benefits, and other so-called “hygiene” factors. Intrinsic rewards are motivators that provide employees personal satisfaction in the performance of their jobs such as opportunities for personal and career growth, recognition and the feeling of achievement in the successful completion of a task. (p. 486). Herzberg’s two-factor theory suggests

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

In “Understanding Management”, there is a chapter on motivation that covers both extrinsic and intrinsic reward. The material does highlight the increasing trend of motivating people through appealing to those intrinsic needs and how it

In this set of materials, the reading passage mentioned two classification of motivation and the lecture presented story about the term mentioned in it.

Let’s take a closer look at how motivation ties in with these intrinsic and extrinsic theories for motivation. It is clear that motivation is one of the most prominent driving forces by which humans pursue and ultimately achieve their goals. Motivation, quite simply, is rooted in the human instinct to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. The characteristics of such a basic theory would usually be about as clear cut as they come. However, motivation relies heavily on one’s personal psychology as well as specific situations. As noted before in the survey, it also has two very distinct and different sides to it, those being intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.

Young children are compelled to learn because of their natural curiosity in life. Older children seem to need a push in the direction to learn. This describes the two types of motivation. Intrinsic motivation describes the young child. It is motivation from within and the desire someone feels to complete a task, including natural curiosity. Intrinsic motivation is anything we do to motivate ourselves without rewards from an outside source. “In relation to learning, one is compelled to learn by a motive to understand, originating from their own curiosity” (Rehmke-Ribary, 2003 p.intrinsic).

Managers are usually aware to some extent of the ways in which both intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation affect performance and work satisfaction, but there are many complexities in how these different types of motivations and their relevant rewards affect behaviour. One of the most subtle and demanding complexities has been found to occur when extrinsic rewards are given for performance in a task which would otherwise have been undertaken purely out of interest (http://www.beswick.info/psychres/management.htm). But effects of the interaction are not simple and have been a subject of extensive debate in recent years. How extrinsic rewards affect intrinsic motivation obviously has many implications for the management of incentives for work and study where both extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation are very often found together.

There are several different ways an employer can motivate their employee's: job design & goals, performance appraisal, pay, and career development.

Striving to create an atmosphere at work that facilitates the use of motivation takes intentional effort from all employees. However, the greatest burden rests upon the management sector, as they should lead the charge for employee satisfaction. Consequently, the management team must fully understand the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Christine Young (2017) defines intrinsic as, “the motivation to be involved in an activity for its own sake” and extrinsic as the “motivation to engage in an activity as a means

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.

Something really struck me was the Motivation factor amongst employees which could play play a pivotal role in organization that helps in reaching goals set. A real instance that comes to my mind is ‘New United Motor Manufacturing Inc’(NUMMI), a joint venture initiative between General Motors and Toyota located in Freemont, California. In 1981, NUMMI was initiated for operation and was shiut down in an year. Toyota on the other hand was looking to built a facility in USA. Toyota was interested in General Motors Freemont facility. GM sensed the opportunity to learn Toyota’s practces of making good quality vehicles with wise utilization of resources. GM shut down its Freemont operation because of its worst workforce where labours were behaving terribly bad. After, Toyota took over the Management, it rerecruited the same workforce that was laid off by GM. It was interesting to see that the once tagged worst workforce, was working at their best and the quality achieved was at high class. It was really surprising how Toyota could manage to motivate the worst workforce to build better quality products. The answers which I got for that question was that Toyota listened to oits workforce and considers them as precious asset. It didn’t really made sense to me then. How could an assembly floor worker who was behaving bad and didn’t comply to GM had undergone a drastic shift to become best worker? It was evident from reading this article that