Motivation Essay

971 Words2 Pages

Motivation is a vital topic in organisations as it 'concerns what drives a person's choice of what to do, how hard they try, and how long they keep trying.' Arnold et al 2010. Managers and senior managers try to understand human needs in the belief that doing so accurately makes it easier to influence what they do. (Boddy 2010, page 451). There are 2 types of rewards, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic rewards are valued benefits that come from the individual such as feelings of satisfaction, achievement and competence. (Boddy 2010, page 471) This is through internal motivation; the sense of satisfaction we experience drives us to do the job well, for example, if we thrive to learn new things, we may feel highly motivated through development and skill utilisation. Completing these tasks can provide us with inner satisfaction and can be a motivating factor. Extrinsic rewards are 'those that are separated by the task, such as pay, security and promotion.' (Boddy 2010 page 471) The two theories of motivation I am going to analyse fall into the content theory which focus on the needs that motivate employees to take action and achieve goals that satisfy these needs. Content theories include Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene theory and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The ideas from Maslow and Herzberg prompted attempts to increase the opportunity for people to satisfy higher-level needs at work. The assumption was that staff would work more productively if management offered intrinsic rewards (motivators in Herzberg's terms as well as extrinsic ones (Herzberg's hygiene factors), leading to ideas about job enrichment. (Boddy 2010 page 471). The John Lewis Partnership has changed over the past century, owing a proportion of success to it... ... middle of paper ... ... increasing levels of ability should be given increasing levels of responsibility. (Boddy page 464). Herzberg suggest that organisations can utilise three important methods to increase the motivational factors which are job enlargement, job enrichment and job rotation. However, Herzberg's ideas are linked to job enrichment which means that pay rises will not motivate workers but an example of job enrichment is being given different tasks to complete however this questions the quality of service delivered as job enrichment can be very expensive. This theory lacks inter-relations amongst some motivators, for example, an employee may receive adequate recognition however the individual may be dissatisfied with the level of responsibility they retain. Moreover, what motivates one employee may demotivate another therefore causing the theory to hold low representativeness.

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