Employee Motivation Theory

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how employee motivation can be developed when employees are tightly controlled by management. In an organisation employees are the key resources of the firm’s success, thus organisations need to motivate employees in order to expect better performance and efficiency. Employee’s who are motivated in the organisation work harder, perform efficiently, produce higher quality of quantities and engage in more activities in the organisation. Motivation is a concept when organisations encourage and influence it’s employees to perform better which results to rewards either intrinsic or extrinsic. Motivation not only focuses on behaviour and the performance of the employee, but also on the attitudes that influence them due to the choice of actions (Hutchinson 2013). There are three fundamental theories which evaluate employee motivation which are; Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, Aldefer’s Modified Need Hierarchy and lastly Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory. Is it possible to develop employee motivation whilst employees are being tightly controlled?

Employees rely on their needs and being satisfied in order to be motivated, as they expect to have motivators in the organisation to keep them engaged with their tasks. In addition, there is a perception that job control of employees is overwhelming and makes it difficult for top management to build employee motivation; therefore this is measured by using models such as the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. According to Maslow, this theory relies on human motives and ensuring those needs are met, also this theory is pivotal for organisations due to the fact that it assists in developing various programs which can help organisations retain their employees, motiva...

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...are solutions to developing ways to motivate employees in an organisation that is controlled stringently. Moreover, Herzberg’s concern was that motivation is partially discovered by not only satisfaction, but the fact that ‘motivation for movement’ was not clearly understood by management. For instance, Herzberg pointed out that if employees are pressured to perform a task to achieve incentives, it’s not the employees who are really motivated, but its management who are motivated to promote employees ( (C.Lloyd, 2004)

In conclusion, there are several views that demonstrate how employee motivation can be developed in stringent organisations, by using the three theories. It is finally argued, that the most effective needs hierarchy that can motivate employees in tightly controlled firms is Herzberg’s two factory theory, which focuses on job satisfaction and needs.