8

WORK MOTIVATION

 

What is Motivation?

Motivation is a term that is familiar to everyone in virtually all spheres of life, such as, business, education, economics, religion, military, and politics. The term motivation is derived from ‘movere’, a Latin word meaning movement. Webster dictionary defines it as something (as a need or desire) that causes a person to act.¹ Motivation can be best understood as something that ‘drives behaviour’.

 

Motivation means ‘causation of behaviour’

 

There are many definitions for the term motivation. For instance,

• Atkinson defines motivation as ‘the contemporary (immediate) influence on direction, vigour, and persistence of action’.²
• Victor Vroom defines it as ‘a process of governing choices among alternative forms of voluntary activities controlled by the individual’.³
• Campbell and Pritchard define it as ‘a set of independent/dependent variable relationships that explain the direction, amplitude, and persistence of an individual’s behaviour’.⁴
• Broussard and Garrison define it as the ‘attitude that moves us to do or not to do something’.⁵
• Guay et al. defines it as ‘the reason underlying behaviour’.⁶

 

Workplace motivation can be defined as a force that generates voluntary and relatively sustainable action or inaction in a particular direction.

 

There are hundreds of other definitions of motivation, but all of them include two key aspects of motivation: first, it is a force or an energizer of action, and second, the force gives some direction for the action. This statement implies that the action should be voluntary. Coerced actions are not in the ambit of motivation. From the perspective of organisational performance, the action and the direction should be sustainable. However, it also covers deliberate inaction/omission; for instance, the workforce may be motivated to slow productivity to achieve some results. Keeping these in mind, we can redefine workplace motivation as a ‘force that normally generates voluntary and sustainable action in a particular direction’. The terms ‘normally’ and ‘sustainable’ have been used deliberately to exclude actions resulting from some emergency, due to physical demand, actions confined to a single episode or for a short period of time such as running away when there is a fire, falling asleep at the desk due to exhaustion, saving a guest in a hotel during fire outbreak, joining a rescue operation, and so on. While these are laudable actions, workplace motivation, as discussed in this chapter, is related to sustained productivity.

Importance of Workforce Motivation

Importance of workforce motivation is indeed boundless, and some of them are as follows:

• It enhances the efficiency of the organisation by creating focus on productivity.
• It increases workplace suggestions and process improvements.
• It has a direct impact on quality.
• It creates favourable customer orientation and impacts workforce behaviour towards the customers.
• It reduces absenteeism and increases turnover, and it lies at the core of employee engagement.
• It impacts group/team work, which is vital in modern organisations.
• It encourages employees to share knowledge and create learning organisations.
• It improves the self-efficacy, thereby leading to increased individual contribution.
• It creates focus on goals and saves supervisor resources.
• It reduces disruptive/deviant behaviours such as theft or destruction of assets in workplace.
• It conserves resources of the organisation, for example, using appropriate quantity of material, avoiding wastages, or switching off power when unnecessary.
• It builds friendly workplace relationship, cooperation, and group cohesion.
• It reduces resistance to change and thus enables proactive and rapid change.
• It enables faster integration of workforce during mergers.
• It creates labour flexibility making it easier for retraining and restructuring the workplace during a downturn, and reduces layoffs.

Let us recall the initiating case (Kiagen) and reflect for a while why the workforce which was happy and productive, is resisting change? Could it be that the company has not motivated them appropriately?

Characteristics of Motivation?

Important characteristics of motivation are as follows:

Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Motivation is a concept discussed under various disciplines such as economics (e.g., motivations for a purchase or economic decision), psychology (e.g., motivation for a behaviour), decision science (e.g., motivation for a decision), politics (e.g., motivation for supporting or opposing a political issue), medicine (e.g., motivation for meeting a doctor or planning a treatment strategy), sociology (e.g., motivation for creating or abolishing the caste or clan system), and education (e.g., motivation for learning), to a name a few. It is also interdisciplinary. For instance, motivation for an investment is the result of a mix of motivations, such as, risk taking behaviour (psychology), maximisation of return (economics), social pressure (sociology), and so on. While making this statement, we must accept that a truly interdisciplinary understanding of motivation has not yet emerged.⁷ Researchers are just beginning to address this.⁸

 

Characteristics of Motivation

• Is multidisciplinary.
• Is interdisciplinary.
• Is a force with direction and valence.
• Has action at its core.
• Is individualistic.
• Varies over time, situation and stages of life.
• Is amenable to change with appropriate intervention.

Force and Valence Motivation is a force, and therefore has a direction. Its origin can be internal (e.g., a feeling to achieve something) or external (e.g., incentives on achieving the goal) to the individual. As it is a force, it can have either positive valence (attractiveness) or negative valence (averseness).

Action Concept of action or behaviour is basic in motivation. At the least, motivation should indicate intention for a behaviour or action. For example, a person with intention to buy some stocks may not actually do so because of lack of money. As the person had the intention, we can say motivation exists.

Individuality Motivation is an individual concept and what motivates one may not motivate another. If we go through the article mentioned in the Sunday Anchor (see Box 8.1), it is easy to see how motivation differs from person to person.

Variability over Time, Situation, and Stages of Life The story of Puja mentioned in the Sunday Anchor shows that over a period of time, her motivation varied and the positive valence of a well-paid job began to have negative valence when compared to the valence for happiness.

Changeability This means that we can change the motivation of people. The concept of ‘changeability’ is of great importance in workplace motivation. It implies that motivation for productivity and organisational effectiveness can be created and enhanced by appropriate interventions. For example, at least some of the employees of Kiagen can be motivated to take up higher challenges.

Types of Motivation

Motivation can be classified in many ways. First is primary and secondary motivation.

• Primary motivation are unlearnt motivation. They are quite natural to people and animals. For example, hunger, thirst, sex, avoidance of pain, fear, aggression to protect oneself, and so on are primary motivators. They are very powerful. Primary motivation usually drive all people to take some actions. That is the reason why a hungry person may steal, a person driven by sexual motivation may commit rape, and a person who is being tortured may commit to having done a crime that, he/she may have never done. In Maslow’s hierarchy of motivation and several other theories, which we will learn in Section II, primary motivation finds a place.
• Secondary motivation are learnt motivation. For example, that you should come first in the class is achievement motivation and that you should stand for elections and win is driven by power and achievement motivation. Such motivations are usually seen in only some people unlike primary motivation. Secondary motivation may not drive all people. For example, one may strive to become first in the class, whereas another may not strive for it. Similarly, many people may not even think of getting elected to become powerful.

Motivation can also be classified into ‘pushes’ and ‘pulls’. Push motivation leads to internal changes. For example, you may feel hungry if your blood sugar or stored fat depletes. Pull motivation leads to achieving external goals. For example, even if you are not hungry, some type of food may attract you and you may eat it. Usually pull and push motivation work together. You feel hungry because of some internal changes and you prefer to eat some food either immediately or you may plan to reach home before you have your food.

In organisation context, the primary way to classify motivation is by the source of motivation. In organisations, usually motivation is classified into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation means that the sources of motivation reside in the person and are intangible. For instance, a person may be highly open minded or extroverted (see chapter on personality for introversion and extraversion), and therefore may be motivated to try out new ideas and make friends in the organisation because it is her/his preferred behaviour. Similarly, a person may work systematically because s/he may be highly conscientious, another may seek challenging goals because the person may have high achievement drive, and a third may volunteer for corporate social responsibility without any benefit, merely because of high empathy. These are all examples of internal drive or intrinsic motivation.

 

Some Intrinsic Motivators

• Healthy relationship
• Opportunity to develop and grow
• Challenge
• Meaningful work
• Feeling of effective participation
• Feeling of freedom to innovate

Extrinsic motivation implies that the sources of motivation are external to the individual. They are usually tangible. A person may try out new ideas because s/he may get an incentive, may make friends because it can help in increasing his/her performance, or seek challenges because this can lead to promotions.

Some Extrinsic Motivators

• Money – pay, bonus, stocks
• Benefits – insurance, house, medical
• Flexible work
• Promotions
• Number of people under you
• Job responsibility
• Status – large office, secretary
• Praise/feedback
• Good boss
• Leadership
• Organisational culture

From the above examples, it is evident that though two people may act similarly with same energy and in the same direction, the driving force behind them might be different. The concept of intrinsic motivation is important because it conserves supervisory energy as the employee will be self-driven. The concept of extrinsic motivation is also important because it enables the managers to create effective interventions to change the behaviour of a person by using an external force. As motivation of a person changes over time, extrinsic motivation tools remain more important to maintain the right valence and direction of motivation for sustained productivity. For example, achievement drive, which creates intrinsic motivation for workplace productivity, may shift direction for achievement in other areas, which would affect productivity.

Introduction to Motivational Theories

The importance of motivation and multi- and interdisciplinary natures of motivation gave rise to a number of theories. In fact, a truly interdisciplinary and all-encompassing theory is yet to emerge. In this chapter, we will discuss content theories, process theories, and other theories (motivational language theory and new model of motivation). One often hears of terms such as ‘need theory’ and ‘goal theory’. These are included within the ambit of the content/process theories. For example, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is included in the content theory, whereas goal theory is included within process theory. Theorisation of motivation commenced with content theories.

Content Theories

Precursor to Content Theories Causation of behaviour has attracted man for centuries. Initially, it was studied under the discipline of philosophy. Greek philosophers conceived the idea of ‘hedonism’ or the desire to increase pleasure and reduce pain as the basic driver of human behaviour. John Locke,¹⁰ Jeremy Bentham,¹¹ Claude Adrien Helvitius,¹² and other philosophers of seventeenth century refined the concept of hedonism. By the end of nineteenth century, causation of behaviour got a clear psychological orientation and ‘instinct’ was attributed to it. Thoughts of Sigmund Freud on id, ego, and superego and that of William James on locomotion, fear, jealousy, and socialisation¹³ suggested that behaviour is caused by instincts or genetic disposition. At the same time, thinkers such as Thorndike and Skinner considered reinforcement as the causation of behaviour (refer chapter on Learning).

While the theoretical development of causation of behaviour in the discipline of psychology was in progress, ‘management science’ also began to look at motivation. Taylor believed that work design and incentives based on performance led to behavioural changes in the workplace and he implemented these ideas, though its inappropriate replication led to increase in wages and unionisation in the 1930s.¹⁴ Around the same period, Elton Mayo and the famous Hawthorne experiments indicated how participation and group dynamics played a vital role in motivating people to behave appropriately in workplace. See the chapter on fundamentals of OB.

What is Content Theories? By 1950s, two significant developments took place. One was acceptance of the term ‘motivation’ in literature and another was emergence of several theories related to motivation. They all looked at what constitutes motivation. In other words, these theories assumed that if dimensions (or contents) of motivation could be identified, then it would be possible to increase these dimensions and achieve appropriate motivation. Theories that focused on the content are collectively called ‘content theories’. Let us now have a brief look at a few of them namely.

 

Content theories focus on the constituent components of motivation

 

• Maslow’s theory of need hierarchy.
• ERG (Existence, Relatedness and Growth) theory.
• McClelland’s need theories.
• Herzberg’s theory of hygiene and motivation (also called dual factor theory).
• McGregor’s X & Y theory.

Maslow’s Theory of Need Hierarchy

Abraham Maslow, by far the most well-known name in motivation, postulated that human needs can be hierarchically ordered into five levels as follows (See Figure 8.1):

 

1. Physiological need: It includes needs such as food, water, and sexual gratification, which are primary and basic.
2. Safety need: It includes needs such as a safe place to live, work, safety for the family, and job security.
3. Love and belongingness need: It includes needs such as friendship and wanting to be part of a family or organisation.
4. Esteem need: It includes needs such as respect, fairness, ego needs, and reasonable freedom.
5. Self-actualisation: It includes needs such as altruism and finding a purpose and meaning of life and work. In later years, Maslow critiqued his own concept of self-actualisation and sought newer direction of research.¹⁵
6. Self-transcendence: Maslow attempted to add self-transcendence or the force that connects one to spirituality and oneness with the universe as a motivator in later years. However, he is best known for his five-level hierarchy, that is, physiological to self-actualisation.

The theory suggests that these are hierarchically ordered and that when one level is satisfied, a person automatically seeks to satisfy the next higher level of need.

You might like to reflect whether the employees really move from one hierarchy to the other when the lower level is satisfied. If yes, why were the employees of Kiagen (initiating case) not moving up that way?

Although elegantly simple, the theory had many lacunas. For instance, how could one say that a hungry person will first seek food rather than safety? Do all people sacrifice their self-esteem and beg for food rather than starve? Extensive review of the theory failed to substantiate the existence of a hierarchy, though the needs themselves did not come under question.¹⁶ Furthermore, Hofstede substantiated that some of the higher order needs are culture specific, which further diluted the theoretical value of this theory.¹⁷ Despite the criticisms, the idea of ‘needs’ became foundational in many future theorisation of motivation. The ground reality is that if you talk of motivation to any student of management, she/he would readily speak of Maslow’s theory rather than any other—so simple, elegant, and all-encompassing is this theory.

Alderfer’s ERG (Existence, Relatedness, and Growth) Theory

Furthering or clarifying the work of Maslow, Clayton Alderfer postulated that there are only three levels of needs, namely existential needs that roughly comprise the physiological and safety needs, relatedness needs, which is a combination of belongingness and self-esteem, and growth needs, which is a combination of self-actualisation and some components of self-esteem, not specifically covered in Maslow’s theory.¹⁸ He also proposed a regression concept, that is, if the needs of a higher order such as growth is not satisfied, then people tend to enhance the effort to fulfil their lower order needs such as relatedness or existential needs. From the managerial perspective, this is an important insight. Most of us would be willing to sacrifice a little salary for the sake of better work environment/challenge. Hence, if an organisation fails to focus on higher order needs through participation and empowerment, then its employees regress to lower order needs, which usually money can buy. This would make the organisation less competitive. For example, Microsoft, in its inception stage, focused on the idea that the employees are there to ‘change the world’ (higher order need). As a result of this, many brilliant software coders put in unbelievable effort, even though the company was not a great pay master. In later years, it is seen that despite increasing their pay structure, they found it challenging to hold on to their employees.

 

Existential need means physiological and safety needs

 

Relatedness need means belongingness and self-esteem needs

 

Growth need means self-actualisation needs

 

 

Could it be that the Kiagen (initiating case) did not focus on the higher order needs, and therefore, the employees regressed to a lower order need? Could this make them less competitive? Did the organisation ignore the growth needs?

McClelland’s Need Theory

McClelland moved away from the hierarchy concept and postulated that most human needs can be divided into need for power (nPow), achievement (nAch), and affiliation (nAff) and postulated that every person has one of these as his/her predominant drive. He used ‘thematic appreciation test’ to identify a person’s preferred need(s). Table 8.1 indicates the preferred behaviour of people with these needs.

 

Need power, achievement and affiliation are basic drivers of human beings

 

Reflect and make an intelligent guess as to which of the above categories would the employees of Kiagen (initiating case) belong. Can we train them to change their needs so that the situation can be rectified?

 

Herzberg’s Theory of Hygiene and Motivation (also called Dual Factor Theory)

While the earlier theories focused on individual variables, Herzberg sought to find out how the nature and characteristics of the job influenced motivation. He postulated that there are ‘job satisfiers’ and ‘job dissatisfiers’, which work independently. Job dissatisfiers are those factors, absence of which, will make a person dissatisfied with the job; however, presence of which do not create satisfaction.¹⁹ For example, external factors such as pay, work condition, insurance, vacations, and job security (factors covered under the lower needs mentioned by Maslow or existence needs mentioned in ERG theory) do not motivate, but can demotivate. These factors are external to the job. Job motivators, on the other hand, are challenging work, recognition, responsibility, meaningful job, involvement, and a sense of importance in an organisation. These roughly correspond to the higher order needs of Maslow and the relatedness and growth needs of ERG theory.

Using high/low motivators and hygiene factors, we can create four scenarios (see Figure 8.2).

Herzberg’s theory needs special mention for four reasons: One, it shifted focus from person to job content; two, it bettered understanding of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; three, it was developed using scientific methods²⁰ and four, it led to the focus on job design and job enrichment as tools for motivation. The two-factor theory has major implications for the moden workplace. While competitive pay is important, knowledge workers thrive on the motivators and not on hygiene factors. Contemporary literature on millennial workforce suggest that the Millennials are continuous learners, team players, collaborators, diverse, optimistic, achievement-oriented, socially conscious, and highly educated.²¹ This implies that companies have to focus on motivators, rather than following a ‘paycheck’ approach.

What are the lessons that Kiagen can learn from this theory?

McGregor’s X & Y Theory

While Herzberg focused on the work content, McGregor focused on the attitude towards work. He postulated that work is perceived in two different ways/frameworks, namely ‘X’ and ‘Y’ (‘X’ and ‘Y’ are mere abstractions and you need not wonder what they mean). Motivation depends on the framework used by managers or leaders. In the ‘X’ framework, work is considered as repulsive and non-enjoyable, and hence, it is best avoided. People not only fail to take up work naturally, but also avoid any creative way of doing work. This indicates a negative framework. As opposed to this, ‘Y’ framework is one where work is considered natural and enjoyable, creative and self-motivating, and so, people become natural contributors.

 

X framework leads to close supervision, work with narrow scape and carrot and stick policy. Y framework leads to freedom, enriching work and growth

• In the ‘X’ framework, close supervision, control, and enticing compensation are necessary, whereas in the ‘Y’ framework, minimal control and self-determination would be the hallmarks.
• ‘X’ framework leads to specialised and narrow work, which is repetitive, whereas ‘Y’ framework would lead to more enriching work with suggestions and participations.
• ‘X’ framework would normally lead to a ‘carrot and stick’ policy, whereas ‘Y’ framework would lead to feedback, self-development, growth, and promotions.

Both frameworks are used to motivate employees. However, the benefit of the ‘Y’ framework, which has close resemblance to motivators proposed by McGregor, needs no emphasis. We know that effective motivation and higher performance are possible through appropriate work design²² (e.g., self- managed teams and team-based rewards) and task design²³ (e.g., designing with relative importance and priority, catering for task difficulty, and explaining the task importance). It implies that some of the modern organisations such as call centres where the work is often narrow in scope and repetitive in nature, could look at work itself and create greater ‘Y’ orientation.

Process Theories of Motivation

Process theories refer to a series of theories that look at the ‘cognitive process of motivation’ and the dynamism and causation of human behaviour over time and events in the workplace. They differ from the content theories which look at the factors that lead to motivation. Most process theories were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Let us now look at a few of them namely:

• Vroom’s expectancy theory.
• Porter and Lawler’s theory of individual differences.
• Adam’s equity theory.
• Goal theory.
• Bandura’s social cognition and self-efficacy theory.

Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

The basic idea behind expectancy theory is that people will be motivated because they believe that their decision to behave in a particular way will lead to the outcome they desire.²⁴ Desirability of outcome from some action will vary from person to person. For example, if we had a choice between promotion and incentives, some of us would prefer promotion and others would prefer incentives. The strength of the theory is that it explains this mental process. It was first proposed by Victor Vroom.²⁵ The same in illustrated in Figure 8.3.

Three components of expectancy theory are expectancy (E), instrumentality (I), and valence (V). Expectancy is the belief or assessment of the effort required to achieve a performance standard, whereas instrumentality is the expected outcome or performance from the effort and valence is strength of the desirability or attractiveness of the reward. For example, a student believes that 200 hours of work in a course (E), say portfolio management, will lead to A or B+ grading (I), which will get her/him the job of a portfolio manager that s/he highly values (V).

 

 

Three components of expectancy theory are expectancy (E), instrumentality (I), and valence (V).

 

Vroom expressed motivation (M) as:

 

 

The multiplier effect is significant. In addition, if any of the factors is zero, then there will be no motivation. Vroom believed that each of these can be measured and expressed from ‘−1’ to ‘+1’ with ‘0’ in between. Instrumentality is usually called first order outcome and valence as second order outcome since the former is instrumental for the latter. In other words, ‘I’ leads to ‘V’. The theory provides three clear ways to look at workplace motivation, namely:

• The value of the second order or final outcome is important and varies from person to person. For one, it may be money and for another it may be growth or promotion, and this underscores the need to customise reward.
• The person must believe that achieving a level of first order outcome would lead to second order outcome. For instance, if seniority rather than high performance leads to promotion in an organisation, then the person will not be motivated to put in the effort. This highlights the importance of laying down performance standards and performance-based rewards.
• A person must believe in his/her capability to produce the first order outcome, and hence, training and development to enhance the self- efficacy to achieve the performance standard is inescapable for motivation.

Do you think that Kiagen can incorporate a performance-based incentive system to align the people to the emerging business goal of expansion?

Porter and Lawler’s Theory of Individual Differences

This theory is built on Vroom’s expectancy theory. According to this theory, effort leads to performance, and performance, in turn, leads to reward, which may be intrinsic or/and extrinsic, and satisfaction. Quantity and quality of reward determine valence or the final outcome. Satisfaction from the reward is not only based on its quantity, and quality, but also on its fairness and equity or justice (see later discussion on justice in this chapter). Hence, even though rewards may be high, it can still be dissatisfying if fairness and equity principles are not followed. Reward, together with satisfaction, creates valence or final outcome. In other words, quantity and quality of the reward given with justice create valence. Valence also acts as a feedback for greater effort. The feedback concept is important because it explains why a reward leads to greater motivation to behave in the desired way. The model is illustrated in Figure 8.4.

 

Adam’s Equity Theory

This theory postulates that people prefer input and output to be equal. This is called ‘norm of equity’.²⁶ If an imbalance exists between these, then there is some discomfort or dissonance and the person will decrease or increase his/her efforts to achieve the balance. This explains how our mental process works to decrease or increase the effort.

However, people are more sophisticated than that, and individual differences exist in dissonance. Hence, dissonance is influenced by (1) contribution rule, that is, those who have given more effort should be rewarded more, (2) need rule where reward is based on the legitimate need, and (3) equality rule, that is, others receive equal outcome irrespective of their effort.²⁷

 

Applying Equity Theory to Pay

Pay people in proportion to their contributions.

Be transparent and just about pay.

Identify external and internal pay competitors and match the pay.

Ensure consistency in pay.

 

This theory gives us the following insights:

1. The effort and reward (compensation and other rewards) must match. If not, there will be dissonance. If the reward is higher than the effort, a person is likely to increase his effort and vice versa. It is possible to pay less than the industry average, provided other intrinsic rewards exist.
2. The ‘contribution rule’ suggests the need for performance-based reward.
3. The ‘need rule’ suggests the requirement for having a minimum reward (e.g., fixed pay).
4. The ‘equality rule’ implies that same reward should be given for similar jobs. This is the reason why job categories are used for compensation planning.

Goal Theory

Most of us have been told that to be successful, we should set clear goals and work towards it. We have heard it right from our school days. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham are the well-known scholars in goal theory. Their work incorporates over 400 studies across different geographical areas, time zones, individuals, groups, and organisations.²⁸ A goal can be defined as ‘what an individual consistently tries to do’²⁹ (see Figure 8.5). The model indicates the cognitive process behind motivation to act. Values combined with emotions and desires lead to goals. The goals help us to focus our attention, plan our effort, and persist in the effort till we achieve our goals. This, in turn, leads to behaviour. Behaviour leads to performance, and performance, in turn, gives us outcomes that further reinforce our values and desires. Goal theory may appear similar to the expectancy theory, but this theory suggests that goals have valence or power to generate actions,³⁰ whereas expectancy theory suggests that rewards have valence. This does not negate the role of reward as ‘desire’ is one of the antecedents of goal and the desire can be for rewards. However, the theory suggests that mere desire for reward does not create the valance, but converting that desire into goal creates the valence. So pervasive is the power of this theory that most modern organisations use goal setting or MBO (Management by Objectives) as a part of their performance management.

 

Values combined with emotions and desires lead to goals.

 

 

Research has found many interesting insights about goal setting, and some of them are as follows:

• Difficult goals rather than easy goals motivate provided the goals are not too difficult to achieve.³¹
• Self-efficacy is a major factor in achieving goals.³²
• Goals must be accepted by the person who is to execute the goals; but even if it is not accepted, but imposed on a person, a person with high self-efficacy is still likely to execute it.³³
• Feedback is an essential part of good goal setting, as it helps people to adjust the attention and effort.³⁴
• Goals are more effective when linked to performance management. This is because performance management links goals to rewards.³⁵
• Deadlines improve achieving goals.³⁶
• People can have two types of goal orientation such as learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation. Those with learning goal orientation tend to accept higher goals.³⁷ Learning goals are more useful for a proactive, problem solving and creative environment required in today’s workplace.³⁸
• Group goal setting is effective and it motivates both the individual and the group.³⁹
• The flip side of goal setting is that when it is combined with reward, the individual and the group tends to set lower goals and negotiate with the supervisor for lower goals.⁴⁰
• Goal setting focuses on measurable goals and tends to ignore more important goals that are difficult to measure.⁴¹
• Performance goal setting may be counterproductive when organisation’s members are learning new or complex jobs.⁴²

Going back on the initiating case, it appears as if a vision statement and individual goals aligned to the vision can perhaps invigorate the employees. However, it could also lead to exit. The other side of the story is that since there are not many VLSI companies in India, the employees may not have opportunities to seek other jobs. Moreover, they are not keen to leave the little town in which they work. Will this eventually lead to motivation or frustration?

Bandura’s Social Cognition and Self-efficacy Theory

The basic premise of social cognitive theory is that our cognition or mind, behaviour, personal factors, and environment are not independent of each other, but interact and influence each other to create motivation for an action. It is a general theory with application in learning, motivation, and other areas. The theory posits that we are driven to act in a particular way because we observe or hear of actions by others in the society, for example, actions of our parents, teachers, workplace colleagues, leaders, and celebrities. Social cognition has tremendous power to initiate action. For instance, we see/hear of volunteers undertaking a Swatchh Bharat (clean India) campaign and we too begin to clean up and avoid littering. Similarly, employees also follow the best practices after seeing/hearing of them. We imitate a good worker/manager, and we increase/decrease absenteeism and increase/decrease effort after seeing/hearing about it. We often do social activities without promise of any reward. This is what social cognition theory of motivation explains. Revisit Hawthorne experiments given in the chapter on fundamentals of OB.

 

We are driven to act in a particular way because we observe or hear of actions by others in the society.

 

Social cognition is seriously moderated by self-efficacy, which means an individual’s belief in his or her ability to achieve results in a given scenario. For example, if we see a member of our team undertake a difficult task, we follow suit, because we are either driven by social pressure or a feeling that ‘if she/he can do, we too can’. In other words, self-efficacy makes a person attempt more difficult goals. Empirical studies have shown a strong correlation between self-efficacy and performance.⁴³ The concept has been extended to group efficacy, which is a group’s belief that it can achieve a given task/project. Group efficacy enhances group motivation to achieve a task.

Other Contemporary Theories

Under this section, two important theories are discussed. One is motivational language theory that focuses on a leader’s language as driver of action/motivation. The second is a new model of motivation, often called the four-factor theory, which is based on basic drives drawn from evolutionary psychology.

Motivational Language Theory

We observe in everyday life that the language of a leader can motivate. Motivational language theory proposes that ‘leaders motivate using language, and this language has some structure that creates the motivation’. Sullivan proposed that motivational language has three structural components: (1) direction setting, (2) empathy creating, and (3) meaning making.⁴⁴

 

Language that sets direction, is empathetic and makes meaning leads to motivation

 

1. Direction setting implies language that clarifies tasks and reduces ambiguity related to the task such as conveying specific goals, expectations, and feedback. It is related to goal theory. In fact, it is about the use of language that creates effective goals. For example, setting goal for sales.
2. Empathetic language creates relationship and interpersonal bonds. It can be linked to the relational needs discussed in the ERG theory, belongingness needs discussed under Maslow’s theory, and need affiliation of McClelland’s theory. Empathetic language manifests in simple things like wishing an employee on his/her birthday or enquiring the welfare of the employee. It may also be more complex like finding out the reasons for underperformance and offering to coach the person.
3. The term ‘meaning making language’ refers to the content that transmits the culture of the organisation. For example, statements such as ‘we started innovating in the garage’ or ‘we would rather compromise our revenue than our values’ are powerful statements related to the culture of the organisation. These enhance the self-esteem of an employee. It gives a meaning and purpose for working in the organisation. When the employees find a connection to the culture, they get motivated.

New Model of Employee Motivation (ABCD/Four Factor/Nitin Nohria Model)

In 2008, Harvard professor Nitin Nohria and his colleagues published a paper in Harvard Business Review describing a new model of motivation based on evidence from evolutionary psychology. Their framework had four drives, namely the drive to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend (ABCD model).⁴⁵

Acquire All of us tend to acquire things—goods, services, and experiences such as travel, entertainment, or charity. This drive is relative because we compare what we have acquired with what others have. As a result of this comparison, it is a never ending need. Money is the generic tool with which we can acquire things we want. Hence, though money itself may not motivate, it becomes an effective tool for motivating, as it has the power to acquire various things. For example, using money one can buy physiological needs such as food and drinks or a luxury car (to fulfil the ego needs). It can also be used for philantropic purposes to achieve self-esteem.

Bond The need to bond and create relationship is seen among all living beings; however, this is a human specialty. We create cohorts, work groups, organisations such as rotary club, and social service groups to fulfil this basic need. Human need to bond is so high that employees, when working in groups, often sacrifice productivity to make it similar to that of others. Hawthorne effect about which we learnt in the chapter on fundamentals of OB, is a case in point.

 

Our need to acquire, bond, comprehend and defend drives us into action

 

Comprehend Most of us want to make a difference to the world. We want to know the purpose of our work, understand theories and concepts, and get an opportunity to be creative and change things. This is because of the human need to comprehend the purpose of their actions. The idea of comprehending aligns with the self-esteem and self-actualisation needs mentioned in Maslow’s theory.

Defend We all defend our children, homes, and country. This psychological need is deep rooted in us, and so, we create justice systems, police force, and the military to defend us. In the organisational context, this need manifests as the need to represent our point of view, defend our actions, and seek justice. When organisations provide this opportunity through open door policy and grievance redressal system, employees are motivated.

Motivational Strategies

In the previous section, we have seen several theories. Let us now have a look at the motivational strategies that an organisation can follow.

Extrinsic Motivation Strategy Organisations have the option to take a pure transactional view towards motivation and provide high salary/wages and performance incentives. Such organisations would have to pay salaries in the fourth quartile. The pay structure of an organisation in this category would be better than at least 75 per cent of similar organisations for most job profiles. Organisations with high revenue, profit margin, and cash flow may adopt this method. The basic tool they use is salary and incentives. They may additionally provide benefits such as vehicle, house, insurance, promotion, job titles, status symbols, such as, office space, praise/feedback, and may encourage the superiors to be friendly with the employees. Elements of organisational culture such as openness and effective leadership may also find a place in this strategy.

 

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are two broad strategies to motivation

 

Intrinsic Motivation Strategy Organisations, which adopt this strategy depend on the nature of the job and challenges in it rather than on salary and benefits. Science laboratories, non-profit organisations, and start-up businesses tend to adopt this strategy. These organisations tend to be highly innovative, less structured, and provide flexibility and opportunity to take initiative. The tools they use are to create a culture of healthy workplace relationship, providing opportunities to grow, making work meaningful, creating a feeling of effective participation, and providing freedom to innovate. For example, in the initial years, Microsoft was not the best paymaster in the industry, yet it attracted the best talent which worked tirelessly and relentlessly merely because the employees felt they were changing the world by helping to bring a PC on every table. Even fresh employees were provided with work cubicles, so that, they could focus on their work. Microsoft also provided subsidised food and drinks on the campus to make everyone feel they are a part of the organisation, so that, many employees would spend several nights and even weekends in the workplace trying to solve complex problems related to the software. The focus in this strategy is the work, and the assumption is that work itself, is a motivator.

Using Structure as a Strategy Organisations may drive workplace motivation by creating appropriate structure. For instance, a flat structure tends to create less hierarchy and a sense of freedom. A networked structure creates a feeling of oneness and smoothness in workflow. A matrix structure creates a feeling of contribution by working and contributing to several projects simultaneously. These motivate the employees in different ways.

Using Culture as a Strategy Most organisations have a culture of their own. Culture means the way things are done in an organisation. It consists of symbols, practices, and ethos that an organisation follows. Celebrating birthdays, addressing everyone by name, everyone using the same canteen, adhering to a queue for boarding the elevator or for food, wearing uniform, using the term ‘we’ whenever a reference is made to a success and ‘I’ whenever a reference is made to a failure, and celebrating honest attempts that fail are components of a culture that motivates.

Using Growth as a Strategy Organisations may depend predominantly on growth to motivate their employees. They articulate their vision and growth strategy and show how the employees could leverage growth. Such organisations tend to provide long-term benefits such as stock options.

Self-motivation as a Strategy Many organisations focus on self-motivation of the employees. Such a strategy works on the self-efficacy and self-image of its employees. They employ performance management system with a focus on challenging goals and encourage intrapreneurial behaviour (behaving like an entrepreneur within an organisation). These organisations support individual goals and work preferences and give importance to individual values, which act as powerful motivator. Many consulting companies follow this strategy.

Team Motivation as a Strategy Organisations may focus on team motivation, in which case the tools they employ will be team goals, team cohesion, inter-team competition, team rewards, team innovation, and creation of team sub-culture. Toyota is known for its team motivation through quality circles and kaizen.

Combination Strategy In reality, no organisation follows a single motivating strategy. It is usually a combination that works the best because individual drivers differ, and so, a combination has higher probability of motivating a larger number of employees. However, every organisation has a ‘motivation signature’ of its own, for example, the signature of Google or 3M is innovation, and that of Southwest airlines is the value of customer focus and fun at workplace.

Tools for Motivating

There are dozens of motivating tools. Here, we discuss a few important ones with a focus on how to design them.

Vision Every person wants to be a part of an organisation to fulfil his personal goals, but accepts the idea that this implies fulfilling the organisational goals also. Hence, most people want to know what their organisation stands for, where it is moving to, and how fast it is doing so. A vision statement answers many of these questions and is an effective motivation tool. For a more detailed discourse of how to design this tool, please refer the chapter on fundamentals of an organisation.

Goals and Support to Achieve Goals If we integrate various process theories, it is easy to see that challenging goals and rewards is the key to motivation. A well-designed goal should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART). To get rewards, a person has to achieve goals and this needs organisational support. A well-designed workplace, which can support employees’ performance would provide (1) adequate resources, (2) a work culture which is open with free flow of information, and (3) a learning environment.

 

Tools to motivate

• Vision
• Goals
• Feedback
• Rewards
• Performance management
• Job design
• Participation
• Culture
• Just practices

Feedback The role of feedback has been highlighted in Porter and Lawler’s theory of motivation and in the need Achievement (McClelland’s theory of needs) theory. Feedback enables a person to adjust his/her effort, muster resources and increase effort, and enhance focus where it matters. This is done by giving up some goals temporarily or permanently. Feedback influences persistence, disengagement, and change in pursuit of goals.

A feedback can be positive, negative, or abusive. A positive feedback increases motivation because it helps people to infer that they have ability to pursue a goal. A negative feedback increases motivation through a ‘discrepancy or dissonance-reduction mechanism’.⁴⁶ In other words, it shows the way to reduce the discrepancy created by not achieving the goal by taking correctional actions in time. In addition to this, there is a category of feedback, which is ‘abusive’ in nature. Examples are statements such as ‘you seem to be brainless and your performance has not improved despite warning you so many times’, ‘I don’t think you are capable of doing this job’, or ‘you have achieved the task only because I did all the work and bailed you out’. The first two are examples of negative feedback given in an abusive way and the last is a case of a positive feedback given in an abusive manner. All of them demotivate because such feedbacks reduce ‘perceived ability’ to do a job on one’s own. Hence, the design of a feedback must be carefully thought out.

Customisation of Rewards Rewards can be intrinsic and extrinsic. However, these must be customised to make it as valuable as possible. Rewards, goals, and support system should be aligned. For example, performance-based pay with appropriate goals can motivate a person with self-efficacy and skills to achieve the goals. However, it will not motivate a person without the self-efficacy and competency to achieve the goals. Rewards, particularly performance-linked rewards, must take into account the competencies of the person. While designing a customised reward system, one should remember that motivators vary from person to person.

Money In the chapter on ‘learning’, we learnt that money is a generic reinforcer as it can be used to acquire what one wants. Hence, money is an important motivator. However, once money is given as a reward, it can seldom be reduced without creating demotivation. It is preferable to divide the money into a fixed reward that creates a sense of security and contingent reward or performance-based reward, which, in turn, creates satisfaction from performance. Use of money should follow the rules of reinforcement suggested in the chapter on ‘learning’. While designing money as a motivator, one should remember that though man’s need for money is perhaps never ending, it is a ‘hygiene factor’ and not a motivator as discussed earlier under ‘Herzberg’s Theory of Hygiene and Motivation. Money is often used as an effective tool for lower level employees, but for senior managers, monetary reward should be coupled with opportunity to be creative, taking up challenges, and participate.

Performance Management One of the most powerful motivation tools is a well-designed performance management system. Performance management combines several motivating tools and can be considered as an overarching motivating tool that an organisation can use. An effective design should consider creating a challenge through stretch goals (a little more than what the employee believes s/he can achieve), evidence-based evaluation of goals achieved, interim reviews, and feedbacks. It should also measure potential to do a higher level job and need for learning and development to do such jobs. Finally, a well-designed performance management tool should be linked to rewards.

Job Design Job design is an excellent tool to create challenge. It should be so designed that it is a little above the competency of a person so that the person feels the challenge, yet does not feel overwhelmed. Job designs that have wider spans of control, scope for use of creativity, and enhance self-esteem tend to create higher motivation. See chapter on structure also.

Participation Participation enhances self-esteem. There are five levels of participation that an organisation can design to motivate people. These, in order of ascending degree of participation, are (1) providing information about the job and the organisation, (2) consulting the person about the job and organisational matters, (3) taking decisions together, (4) delegating the job, and (5) empowering the person to take independent decisions.

Organisational Culture Organisational culture comprises values, norms, beliefs, attitudes, principles, and assumptions that are unique to an organisation. Culture is an umbrella term, and many of its components help to fulfil the need of ‘belonging and self-esteem’. From a motivational perspective, organisational culture should be designed to promote openness, sharing information, transparency, participation, mutual trust, learning, supporting one another, and innovation.

Justice Justice is an important tool to motivate people because it creates equity. There are four types of justice on which an organisation should focus while designing a motivation tool. First is distributive justice or fairness in what people receive—whether money or attention. This type of justice is often referred to as ‘fair share’ or ‘economic justice’, though money is not the only aspect covered under the term ‘economic’. Second is procedural justice or fair play in the process of administering the motivation tools, for example, the process of deciding the reward for a work. Third is restorative or corrective justice, which refers to rectifying the damage caused to a person through wrong actions. This may be a simple apology, but could include compensation for the damage, reinstating, and so on. Fourth is retributive justice or punishing a wrong done with appropriate severity. All four types of justice should be built into a motivational tool. If justice is not built into the design of a motivational tool, then most motivational systems come under criticism and become less effective.

Barriers to Motivation

Motivation is the most important challenge that an organisation faces. Some of the barriers to motivation are as follows:

 

Main barriers to motivation are: not meeting the hygiene conditions, attitude towards employees, lack of a effective performance management system, lack of leadership, injustice in organisations and lack of expertise

 

Not Meeting the Hygiene Conditions Organisations often fail to meet the ‘hygiene condition’ of motivation. For example, they pay salary that is below the industry average. This will demotivate talented people and the organisation may not attract competent employees. Employees recruited under these circumstances can seldom be motivated. This situation happens when a company is not able to pay because of the cash crunch. It happens also when a company shifts from labour-intensive to technology-intensive mode of production. The employees required for the latter mode need higher and more complex competencies, but in order to balance the salary of the employees from the labour-intensive era, the company deliberately limits the salary of the category of employees required for the technology-intensive mode they have adopted. Therefore, the need to limit the salary structure is a barrier that many Indian family businesses face today. Similarly, safe working conditions and fear of layoffs are other conditions that may act as barriers to motivation. For example, construction business and textile industry in India face many challenges related to safe working conditions and job security.

Attitude towards Employees Some employers treat the employees as a cog in the wheel and do not consider them as a part of the organisation. This acts as a barrier to giving the employees their due. More than salary, attitude related to challenging goals and participative management act as barrier to motivation.

Lack of an Effective Performance Management System While goals motivate, many organisations are unable to develop SMART goals for their employees because they do not have a scientific performance management system in place. Consequently, they are unable to provide matching support such as feedback and additional resources to achieve the goals.

Leadership Leaders are those who motivate employees to achieve uncertain, but attractive goals. Although it is well established that leadership is learned, leadership development is seldom a focus area of organisations. As a result, many organisations suffer from leadership vacuum at different levels.

Injustice The four principles of justice discussed earlier are often violated by organisations. As a result, even organisations that provide their employees with high compensation and reward find it difficult to achieve high motivation of its employees.

Lack of Expertise Motivation is a complex process. It needs careful integration of the individual motivational factors with the organisational realities. Managers and leaders may not have the expertise to calibrate the individual motivational factors and align them with other parameters of a well-designed motivation system.

Motivating in the Knowledge Era

The purpose of this section is to highlight the peculiarities of motivation in the knowledge era. Individualism and self-motivation are the hallmarks of the knowledge worker. Self-motivation is often influenced by emotions and hence the relevance of understanding the role of emotions in motivation. Although individualism is the hallmark of the knowledge worker, the workplace of the knowledge era is dominated by teams and groups that collaborate, and hence the importance of understanding team motivation and the concept of morale, which explains the force behind group actions. In addition, an understanding what motivates the millennials is important because they constitute a significant subset of the knowledge workers. In this section, we will have a glimpse of these issues so that it sets the direction for a detailed study of this important challenge. Motivating in the knowledge era with fast changes and uncertainties is a major managerial challenge. Changes in ownership, technology, methods of production, shutting down products and services, and starting new ones lead to job losses and militate against safety needs. In a world of turnover, layoffs, and closing down of businesses, bonding is a difficult task. At the same time, groups and cohorts need to develop bonding, because the nature of work in the knowledge era demands that. These cohorts often tend to leave the organisation as a cohort to join a competitor or another business. This is the environment in which we have to understand how to motivate the knowledge worker.

First, let us look at some data. I had the privilege of training several batches of Assistant Branch Managers of a well-known, technology-driven private bank in India on the subject of motivation. They were all knowledge workers between the ages 22 and 28. I had asked each one of them to list their primary motivator or what motivates them the most. The summary of it is given in Table 8.2.

The terms or words they used to articulate their dominant motivator are reported verbatim in the table so that we can get an insight into how the knowledge workers, who also represent the Millennials, use the terms related to motivation. For example, they use terms such as family, dreams, freedom, and power to denote motivators. Terms in Column 1 were used more often than the terms in other columns. The term money was mentioned by 11 per cent of the students, the term appreciation by 8 per cent, and each of the other terms (environment, challenge, family, and recognition) were mentioned by 5 per cent of the participants. Each term in Columns 2 and 3 was reported by 3 per cent and 2 per cent of the participants, respectively.

The participants were then encouraged to reflect on the list. The insight they generated were (1) the sheer variety of dominant motivators makes it almost impossible to apply a standard parameter for motivating, and so, motivation has to be customised to each person, (2) managers should have a variety of tools to motivate their employees and should be adept in designing and applying them, (3) many of them admitted that they thought what motivates them motivates others too, (4) most admitted that as the pay and incentives are controlled centrally, what they really have in their hands to motivate employees are appreciation, creating work environment, creating challenge, and recognising effort, (5) they agreed that all these together formed the largest share of dominant motivators in their bank, and (6) they felt that they had tremendous control on motivating their employees as factors other than money were far more, or in other words, managers do have control on several important motivators.

 

How can they use these to motivate their employees? First, list five of your own motivators in order of priority. This will give you better self-awareness of yourself. Then, discuss with your subordinates what motivates them and generate a list for each of your subordinates. Once this list is ready, prepare an individual motivation plan based on the guidelines discussed in Section III of this chapter and implement the plan.

Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But wait a minute! See the U-tube video at http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc. You might be surprised to find that some of what you might have included in the motivation plan may not be as sound as you thought. Research finds that when the job has low cognitive complexity, the carrot and stick policy works. However, when the cognitive complexity required to do a job is high, what matters is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Self-motivation

Self-managed team is the hallmark of the knowledge era. This makes it imperative to understand self-motivation and team motivation. Most personal successes and high achievements can be traced to self-motivation. In self-managed teams, self-motivation holds the key to success. It is best understood through the process theories of motivation. An individual with a goal and high self-efficacy will be drawn to sustained action with direction and focus. The basic steps that help to create self-motivation are as follows:

Establish One’s Vision This is done on the basis of what we are good at and what our passion is. If our vision is aligned towards our passion, then we tend to be more self-motivated. It is best done through a written personal vision statement. Refer chapter on fundamentals of an organisation and management.

Vision to Goals Convert the vision into goals and smaller objectives that can be achieved in a practical time frame. The goals must be fairly difficult to achieve and aligned to one’s self-efficacy. Where efficacy is inadequate to achieve a goal, it should be possible to develop these in a practical time frame. If not, create interim goals to achieve, rather than stick to a long-term goal and feel that it is impossible to achieve it. Identify people who can support you with resources such as material resources, opportunity, coaching, and feedback. Enlist their support and stick to a review and feedback schedule.

Intrinsic Motivation The goals must create intrinsic motivation (refer the discussion in Sections II and III). Define performance standards clearly to know that the goals are being achieved.

Managers should teach their subordinates about self-motivation and how to achieve it.

Team Motivation

We just discussed how to handle self-motivation as self-managed teams are the hallmark of the knowledge era. A natural corollary of it is the team motivation. Many high-performing organisations emphasise on teamwork. While most factors related to individual motivation find a place in team motivation, there are four additional factors that we should consider:⁴⁷

 

Some Myths about Motivating Teams

• What motivates me motivates others.
• Money and nothing else motivates.
• A formal award to the best employee motivates everyone.
• Good slogans can replace mentoring.
• Well-selected teams are self-motivating.
• Treating everyone equally in the team motivates.
• Structure and processes are too cumbersome and demotivates.

Expertise First, members of the team should collectively have all the expertise required to achieve the goals. If anyone lacks expertise, then it is important that such people are quickly coached, as any deficiency in expertise, would affect team motivation and success.

Collaboration The team members have to deliver different aspect of the goal and integrate them to achieve the goals. This demands a high degree of collaboration. Team cohesion and frequent meetings, exchanges of ideas and information are helpful tools, but eventually, only a collaborative mindset of the team members would decide how motivated the team is.

Trust Mutual trust is an important and a basic factor that influences team motivation.

Social Loafing Some team members tend not to contribute. This can be due to laziness, having negative attitude towards the team, or feeling that their contribution does not make a difference. This lowers team motivation. Peer evaluation and evaluating the individual performance could mitigate this problem partially.

Emotions and Motivation

Emotions are closely linked to self-motivation and team motivation. Consider what happens when you fail to get a seat in the Indian Institute of Technology. You might feel angry, sad, frustrated, or jealous of others, who got the admission, but these emotions could also redouble your determination to procure a seat in the subsequent year. You may also go for more coaching and make additional effort. Of course, you may also give up. This is the link between emotion and self-motivation. When we see renewed energy immediately after a failure, the underlying force is usually emotions. Emotions are also responsible for several spontaneous actions such as hitting or killing someone or withdrawing due to sadness or depression in the workplace. It is equally responsible for super performance. In other words, emotions also have power to motivate people into action—often extraordinary action.

 

If you or your team fail in a game, you tend to do all you can to reverse/avenge that. That in the power of emotion.

 

Emotions such as feeling of pride and anger are often used in the military to energise people to offset a failure. Collective emotions influence team performance. You can see that in the cricket ground. It is important that managers understand the power of emotions, both at the individual and group context, and use it to increase group performance.

Morale and Motivation

We just examined team motivation and emotion. You might also have observed that the term ‘morale’ is often used in team or organisational context. For example, when our cricket team wins/loses, we say that the morale of our cricket team was high or low. It is apt to understand this term a little more because the term is used in a team context and has an emotional component.

 

Morale has 3 components

• Affective
• Goal
• Interpersonal

The term ‘morale’ perhaps had its origin in war. Napoleon states that ‘In war, morale is to physical forces as three is to one’.⁴⁸ Most books and articles tend to use the terms ‘morale’ and ‘motivation’ interchangeably.

Hardy, an eminent scholar on the subject, defines morale as ‘The mental or emotional state (with regard to confidence, hope, enthusiasm, etc.) of a person or group engaged in some activity; degree of contentment with one’s lot or situation’.⁴⁹ Guba, another scholar, defines it as ‘a predisposition on the part of persons engaged in an enterprise to put forth extra effort in the achievement of group goals or objectives’.⁵⁰ Peterson defines it as ‘a cognitive, emotional, and motivational stance toward the goals and tasks of a group. It consists of confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and loyalty and a sense of common purpose’.⁵¹

The goal setting theory of motivation and the definition of morale have the close resemblance. For instance, goal and self-efficacy are common to both. However, in addition to these, morale refers to enthusiasm and loyalty, or in other words, it has an ‘affect’ component. Besides, although morale can be individual, the term is more linked to a group, and hence, there is an interpersonal component. As per recent research, key components of morale are (1) affective components such as appreciation, trust and autonomy, feeling successful, interesting work, praise, and leadership, (2) goal component such as vision clarity, sense of purpose, challenge, and feeling successful, and (3) interpersonal component such as good atmosphere, team work, pride, contribution, and helping others.⁵²

Today many of us work in a high-performance work system, which is based on team/group work. Hence, there is a need to focus on morale that leads to extra effort to achieve group goals. Managers should, therefore, understand the value of morale, learn to design various components of morale mentioned above, and create methods to measure morale.

Motivation the Millennial Workforce

Those born between 1979/1980 and 2000 are considered millennials. They will constitute 50 per cent of the Indian workforce and 25 per cent of the US workforce by 2020.⁵³ Hence, it is important that we know what motivates the millennial workforce. There are several studies related to this subject. A summary of them is given in Table 8.3.

 

Summary

Motivation is one of the thoroughly studied topics in organisational behaviour because of its link to performance. Workplace motivation can be defined as a force that normally generates voluntary and sustainable action in a particular direction. This definition highlights that performance, which is the outcome of coercion or a spontaneous/sudden action resulting from a unique situation such as a fire/danger, cannot be typically included in the workplace motivation.

There are many benefits of a motivated workforce. It enhances productivity, job satisfaction, and engagement, and reduces absenteeism and turnover. Motivation leads to better workplace relationship, creativity, quality, organisational citizenship behaviour, and many other benefits. Motivation gives direction and energy to our actions.

Motivation can be broadly classified into extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. When the factor that creates the motivation is outside the job, for example, money, promotion, or a favourable workplace, it is called extrinsic motivation. Job design, job content, challenge, opportunity to be creative, leads to intrinsic motivation. What motivates one does not necessarily motivate another. Furthermore, what motivates a person changes with time depending on the age, stage of life, and other factors. Therefore, managers have to customise motivation to individual needs, all the time.

Theories of motivation can be grouped into content theories, process theories, and others. Content theories look at what constitutes motivation, whereas process theories look at the cognitive process of motivation.

Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs is the most remembered motivation theory. It is a content theory and states that human needs which motivate are hierarchically ordered. The hierarchy is physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness need, self-esteem needs, and self-actualisation needs. Although the existence of a strict hierarchy of these five needs is questionable, the conceptualisation of ‘needs’ as primary drivers of motivation has withstood the test of time.

Other content theories are ERG (existential, relatedness, and growth) theory, McClelland’s theory, Herzberg’s theory, and McGregor’s theory. ERG theory suggests that there are only three levels of motivation, namely existential, relatedness, and growth, rather than five levels postulated by Maslow. McClelland’s theory suggests that need power, need achievement, and need affiliation are the main components of motivation. Herzberg’s theory of hygiene and motivation suggests that some factors such as money and safe working environment are ‘hygiene’ factors and they do not motivate, but their absence demotivates. Motivators are job content, challenge, and the like. McGregor’s ‘X’ and ‘Y’ theory is about how a manager looks at a worker. If the manager uses ‘X’ framework, then, he would believe that employee dislikes work. Then, the manager tends to use carrot and stick policy to exercise more control. If the manger uses ‘Y’ framework, then, the employee is perceived as someone who likes work naturally. Then, the manager tends to use feedback and self-development. ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are abstract conceptualisation to highlight two different ways of looking at an employee and arriving at two different ways of motivating.

Process theories include Vroom’s expectancy theory, Porter and Lawler’s theory, Adam’s equity theory, goal theory, social cognition, and self-efficacy theories. Vroom’s expectancy theory postulates that motivation is a function of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence or the final outcome from the immediate results. For example, efforts for getting a good grade (expectancy), probability of getting that grade (instrumentality), and the probability that the grade will lead to a job (valence) would determine motivation. Porter and Lawler’s theory is built of Vroom’s theory, and suggests that effort leads to performance, and performance, in turn, leads to rewards and satisfaction. Quantity and quality of the reward determines motivation. Adam’s equity theory, in fact, puts a rider on rewards. It suggests that no matter what is the reward, unless it fulfils the rule of ‘equity’ and fairness, the reward will not motivate. Goal theory suggests that human beings are ‘goal seeking’ by nature and the very existence of goals and feeling of self-efficacy to achieve goals motivate people. Social cognition and self-efficacy theory suggests that people get motivated by seeing the actions of others.

Managers can use extrinsic and intrinsic strategies to motivate people depending on a person’s need. Structure of an organisation and its culture can also be used as motivational strategies. Self-motivation is another important motivational strategy that a manager can leverage.

Money, goal setting, providing feedbacks, customising rewards, job design, and participation are some of the important motivating tools used by an organisation. Performance management, as a tool for motivation, needs special mention, as it combines many tools such as goal setting, feedback, and reward. No matter what tool we use, we should keep in mind that the processes, we use to motivate do not violate the principles of justice.

Motivating teams, workforce of the knowledge era, and the millennials are key challenges that contemporary managers have to face. This chapter describes several applications of motivational tools and ways to design them. Learners should endeavour to master these tools so that they can lead a motivated workforce and create a high-performance work environment.

Test Your Understanding

1. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   F. W. Taylor is well known for ‘Scientific Management’. He believed that:

   1. Extrinsic motivation alone mattered.
   2. Intrinsic motivator alone mattered.
   3. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators mattered.
   4. None of the above is his contribution.
2. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   Manager ‘A’ presents a packet of sweets to all employees on their birthdays. This action fulfils:

   1. The physiological needs of the employees.
   2. Belongingness needs of the employees.
   3. Self-esteem needs of the employees.
   4. The self-actualisation needs of the manager.
3. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

   1. Gives a well settled order of precedence to the needs.
   2. Makes the idea of different needs foundational in the theory of motivation.
   3. Gives six distinct needs of human beings.
   4. None of these
4. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   Alderfer proposed thee levels of needs. These are:

   1. Existential, relatedness, and ego.
   2. Relatedness, ego, and self-esteem.
   3. Self-esteem, relatedness, and growth.
   4. Existential, relatedness, and growth.
5. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   Ram is a well-accomplished politician who has achieved a lot of goals in life and is very powerful. Raju takes great pride in moving around with him. The most probable reason could be that Raju has high:

   1. Need achievement or nAch.
   2. Need affiliation or nAff.
   3. Need power or nPow.
   4. Need achievement (nAch) and need power (now).
6. Herzberg’s theory of hygiene and motivation proposes that money does not motivate but lack of it can _________. (Fill the blank)
7. Which of the following is the least appropriate answer?

   Herzberg’s theory:

   1. Shifts focus from person to job.
   2. Creates better understanding of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators.
   3. Suggests that creative jobs motivate.
   4. Is not fully based on scientific methods as his propositions are difficult to replicate.
8. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   In Vroom’s expectancy theory, the amount of effort a person is willing to put in is called:

   1. Valence
   2. Expectancy
   3. Instrumentality
   4. None of these
9. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

   Most countries follow a minimum wage rule. This is an application of:

   1. Contribution rule of Adam’s equity theory.
   2. Need rule of Adam’s equity theory.
   3. Equality rule of Adam’s equity theory.
   4. Dissonance rule of Adam’s equity theory.
10. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    Sheela observed the eloquence of Geetha and began to practice public speaking. She wanted to be a public speaker like Geetha. The motivation of Sheela can be best explained by:

    1. Adam’s equity theory.
    2. Social cognition theory.
    3. Maslow’s self-esteem need.
    4. Goal theory.
11. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    Managers of Tata Steel often speak of the social values they follow. This is best explained by _________ of motivational language theory.

    1. Direction setting language
    2. Empathetic language
    3. Meaning making language
    4. Direction setting and empathetic language
12. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    New model of motivation by Nitin Nohria is rooted in:

    1. Evolutionary psychology.
    2. Maslow’s theory.
    3. Integration of Maslow’s theory and goal theory.
    4. Integration of expectancy theory and goal theory.
13. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    The manger tells an employee that he has not done the work because he lacks intelligence and should improve it. This is:

    1. An important positive feedback on which the employee should focus.
    2. An important negative feedback on which the employee should focus.
    3. A negative feedback which the employee should ignore.
    4. An abusive feedback the employee should ignore.
14. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    No matter what motivation strategy we design, we should ensure that:

    1. Extrinsic motivation is built into it.
    2. Intrinsic motivation is built into it.
    3. Justice is built into its implementation.
    4. None of these
15. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following options:

    In the study done while training bank employees described in the chapter, it emerges that:

    1. Managers have significant control on motivation, though they have little power to give monetary reward to employees.
    2. Money is the main motivator and rather than the corporate headquarters control it, the managers should be able to distribute at least some portion of it.
    3. What motivates the employees is remarkably identical.
    4. None of these

Need some help with this? Go to Answers to Test Your Understanding given at the end of the book.

Assimilation Questions

1. Workplace motivation is important for the individual and the organisation. Justify why it is important for an individual.
2. There are several characteristics of motivation. Which do you think is the most difficult to convert into reality? Justify.
3. Critique Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of motivation.
4. What do you think would be the predominant need of an entrepreneur? Research on your own and answer the question in the light of McClelland’s theory of nPow, nAch, and nAff.
5. Explain Herzberg’s theory of hygiene and motivation in the context of knowledge workers and millennial workforce.
6. Both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ frameworks motivate. Which do you think can create high-performance work organisations and why? Justify using inputs from other content theories.
7. Montek Raj measured the motivation of all his managers working in two different departments from a scale measuring from (–)1 to (+)1. He found the average score of Department 1 was E = 0.8, I = 0.01 and V = 0.5. What would be the motivation of the department as per Vroom’s expectancy theory? Do you think it is a good score? Justify.
8. With reference to Question 7 above, make a strategy to enhance motivation.
9. Why should justice be built into any motivation tool?
10. Justify that performance management is an excellent tool for motivation.
11. Mr Raj and Ms Kavitha live in Bangalore. Both are working executives and their son is in Class VIII. Usually Kavitha return home by 7 p.m and Raj by 8 p.m. When Raj reaches home, Kavitha prepares a cup of spiced tea for him. One day, Raj returned as usual but Kavitha had not returned. On checking on his smart phone, he realised that there is a traffic block in the route she usually takes. Going by the estimates given in the smart phone, it will take another two hours for Kavitha to return. He also saw a message from Kavitha, “Don’t worry. Stuck in traffic”. Just as he settled down in the drawing room, his son brought him a cup of spiced tea. Explain using motivational theories, the drive behind the son’s action.
12. Everyone wants more annual increase in salary and more creative work. Which motivation theory can explain this?
13. About 37 per cent of your organisation consists of millennial workforce. Develop a strategy for motivating this workforce. Justify the strategy.
14. There are a number of motivational tools. You are a manager of a midsized manufacturing firm, struggling to enhance quality. Suggest three motivation tools that you would like to use for this. List them in order of their priority and justify.
15. Explain how motivation and morale differ, if at all?

Need some help with this? Go to Clues to Answer Assimilation Questions given at the end of the book.

Application Challenges

1. Visit a small factory or organisation near your institute. Study their motivation plan and create a motivation strategy and tools they can use to motivate the employees better, using only intrinsic motivators. Present the plan to the manager(s) of the company and seek their response. Share the responses with other groups in the class or through a digital network. Then reflect why they responded in a particular way. Post your reflections in your learning group or discuss the same in the class.
2. Create a motivation strategy for Kiagen (initiating case).

Approach to Teaching/Learning

For Lecture-driven Teaching Those institutions which use lecture method can follow the standard pattern of lecture and quizzes. Thereafter, they can go to the experiential learning mode by attempting the application challenges.

For Case-driven Teaching Institutions that follow case method (participant-centred learning) may use the case mentioned below. To enhance the experiential learning, they can attempt one or both the application challenges.

Title of the case : ‘Life Stories of Recent MBAs: Life Stories’

Originator of the case : Harvard Business School

Case No: 9-410-031

Source/available through: Harvard Business School publishing

Brief description: This case highlights how motivation varies from person to person. Ask the students to assume that someone similar to the protagonist of each short case joined their organisation and then to create a motivation strategy and appropriate tools to motivate that person. This case has life stories of a number of young managers. There are full cases on each of these life stories also. Use the case that give the life stories of all, so that the students can have a wider view of what motivates people.