Week 6

Week 6: Motivating employees  Concept/ Mode/ Theory Definition: _ Motivation can be described as an individual’s willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach personal goals. _ Motivation is defined as the willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organisational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need. _ Motivation sees people increase their effort _ Increased effort will, in many cases, lead to improved results that may benefit the individual and a group, or organization, to which they belong _ Where goal related, effort will more likely see goals achieved (performance) In business, goal achievement (of efficiency and effectiveness) is crucial for success, & the job of managers / leaders l

Need – the basis of content theory m An internal state that makes certain outcomes appeared attractive. m An unsatisfied need creates tension which is reduced by an individual’s efforts to satisfy the need.

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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory m Needs were categorised as five levels of lower- to higherorder needs. l

Individuals must satisfy lower-order needs before they can satisfy higher order needs.

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Satisfied needs will no longer motivate.

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Motivating a person depends on knowing at what level that person is on the hierarchy.

m Hierarchy of needs l

Lower-order (external): physiological, safety, social

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Higher-order (internal): esteem, self-actualization

McGregor’s theory m Theory Y n A manager assumes that workers can exercise selfdirection, desire responsibility, and like to work. m Motivation is maximized by participative decision making, interesting jobs, and good group relations.

_Goal-setting theory (Locke) •

The cornerstone of MBO, goal setting theory maintains that specific goals increase performance and difficult goals, when accepted; result in higher performance than easy goals. Research has found that: o Intention to work towards a goal is a major source of job motivation. Studies have demonstrated the superiority of specific and challenging goals as motivating forces. o A major advantage however when people set their own goals is that individuals accept the goals; they have ‘ownership’ of the goals and are more likely to strive to achieve them. o Finally people will do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing towards their goals; feedback acts to guide behaviour

Simplified expectancy model

_The most comprehensive theory of motivation is Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory. Expectancy theory states that an individual tends to act in a certain way based upon the expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. _Key variables or relationships of expectancy theory 1. Effort-performance linkage: This is the probability perceived by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance. 2. Performance-reward linkage: This is the degree to which the individual believes that performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome. 3. Attractiveness of reward: This is the importance that the individual places on the potential outcome or reward that can be achieved on the job. This is a personal perspective and will vary amongst individuals depending on their attitudes, personalities and needs.  Rich Description of Practice in Group: On 29/07/2007, our group had a meeting at library to discuss about our poster. Actually, we nearly finished, although there had a mid term exam on this week. We had organized all the researches and put them

into our poster. James held this meeting to get feedback from us about the poster which we were going to submit, whether we had to correct it. Nick gave his final work after selecting and summarizing again from our research. Then, Louisa showed everyone about her final poster draft so that we could adjust somewhere in it if needed. Actually, it needed to cut down some parts to put more researches in it, instead of many pictures. We tried to keep it simple but attractive, short but relevant. And I checked again all the references from our researches carefully, and did the bibliography also. It seemed to be nearly finished by this week. Our final work was just cut and pasted all the color papers needed so that it looked the same as what we had designed in the poster draft. It was not that easy and simple because it was so hard to make it. But Louisa was keen on that and she told she really would like to do that. After Louisa had finished that, Nick would paste all the researches to our final poster. James looked through the whole process and found out where it needed to be correct. Obviously, like the goal for assessment 1, we all accept to set the goal for this assessment should get the highest mark as we could. So we had to do our work carefully, James did his role very well, he gave helps that increased our performance and attitudes effectively and set a specific goal for group  Analysis and Critical Reflection of relationship between Theory and Practice in Group: As mention in some previous topic, our group is designed to achieve the highest outcome for our assignment. So motivation takes as one of the most important role, in which each member in group was willing to use our effort to reach a specific goal. And this goal was conditioned by each member’s ability to achieve our personal needs. In addition, motivation increased our effort to do the project much, it got each member involve in the process. Obviously, it could improve the results that our group will get for the assignment. Every

member in group had their own needs for this assignment, and it could make our work more interesting when we tried to do it together. It also increased our effort to do the work well. If there has been an unsatisfied need, it would have leaded to the reduction of effort. Following to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, there are five levels of lower- to- higher needs. Our group was in social level because …. [see textbook to explain]. Besides that, as McGregor’s theory X, our group leader can orient each one to their work specifically, desire responsibilities and willing to get the job done together. For example, our group had a clear schedule list to do for the whole process, in which James divided our responsibilities with a clear date to finish the work. He also asked us before doing this schedule, in order to get the feedback and made sure that everyone satisfied with this. According to goal setting theory, our group has determined specific goals which were getting the highest performance and results for each separate part of our poster assessment. They were not easy goals to be achieved but when we took intention towards them. This was the main component that motivate us much to make our work done well. Once when all group members accepted with the goals, we just committed to our work and strive to achieve them all. Finally, when we got the results for each part, it motivated us a lot. The higher mark we got, the higher behavour we would be for our work. With the simplified expectancy model, it was define as the consequent key variables linked as the whole process in order to achieve a final individual group. Our group was following the same relationships as this process. The more efforts we had, the high performance we were. Then, at a particular level of performance, we could get the high result for assessment. To see how each member of our group member placed on the result to be achieved, it still depended on our own attitudes, personalities and needs. Because we had determined SWOT analysis in week 4,

so each member in our group had their own strengths and weaknesses to do this assessment. However, we all wanted to get the highest result by motivating each member to increase our productivities.