Understanding Motivation: Why People Work

Why do people work? This is one of the most interesting questions with regard to personalities in the work environment. What motivates these people to work hard or little at all? There are numerous reasons why people work: work provides a source of income; a source of activity and stimulation; a source of social contacts; a way of structuring time; a source of self-fulfillment and self-actualization (1). Virtually everyone decides to work because of the intrinsic and extrinsic values that motivate people to work (George and Jones, 2012). However, individuals experience quite different amounts and types of motivation. The quantity, quality, enthusiasm shown at work appears to be a function of work motivation (1). Numerous theories on work motivation offer explanations on why people behave as they do in

The significant challenge, managers face in regards to motivation is how to influence employees to provide inputs to their job and to their employment organization (George et al, 2012). Managers desire employees to be motivated in order to contribute efforts such as effort, explicit job behaviors, skills knowledge, time and experience. These efforts are instrumental in the success of job performance and the overall performance of the organization (George et al, 2012). Employees desire outcomes from their organization in obtaining pertinent values such as pay, job security, feelings of accomplishment from performing a good job, or the enjoyment of performing an interesting job. These values, intrinsic or extrinsic, are the focal points for managers and employees that are the core of work motivation (George et al, 2012). To obtain a better understanding of organization motivation, one should understand the motivation need theory in which two of the most prevalent need theories are included; Malsow’s Need Theory and Alderfer’s Existence-Relatedness-Growth (ERG)