9.6 Contemporary Views on Motivation

Workplace motivation is a complex interplay of individual perceptions, goals, and rewards. Theories like expectancy and equity help explain how employees' beliefs about effort, performance, and fairness drive their motivation. Understanding these concepts can help managers create environments that inspire and energize their teams.

Goal-setting and reinforcement theories offer practical strategies for boosting motivation. By setting clear objectives, providing feedback, and using positive reinforcement, leaders can shape behavior and improve performance. These approaches, along with others like self-determination theory, provide a toolkit for fostering a motivated workforce.

Theories of Motivation

Expectancy theory in workplace motivation

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• Suggests individual's motivation determined by perception of three key factors
  • Expectancy: Belief increased effort leads to improved performance (working harder results in better output)
  • Instrumentality: Belief improved performance leads to desired rewards (meeting sales targets earns bonus)
  • Valence: Perceived value of rewards to individual (paid time off highly valued by employee with young children)
• Employees motivated when believe efforts result in better performance, leading to valuable rewards
• Managers apply theory by ensuring employees have skills and resources to perform tasks, communicating link between performance and rewards, offering meaningful rewards (recognition, promotions, flexible work arrangements)

Equity vs goal-setting theories

• Equity theory focuses on perceived fairness of rewards and treatment in workplace
  • Employees compare input-output ratio to colleagues (effort put in vs compensation received)
  • Motivated when perceive treatment as fair and equitable
  • Inequity leads to reduced motivation, decreased productivity, increased absenteeism (feeling undervalued compared to coworkers)
• Goal-setting theory emphasizes importance of specific, challenging, achievable goals for motivation and performance
  • Clear, well-defined goals provide direction and purpose (increasing market share by 10% within a year)
  • Feedback on progress essential for maintaining motivation
  • Employee participation in goal-setting increases commitment and ownership (collaborating with manager to set quarterly objectives)
• Both theories highlight fairness, clarity, aligning rewards and goals with employee values, regular communication and feedback
• Achievement motivation theory focuses on individuals' desire to accomplish challenging tasks and achieve success

Reinforcement theory for employee behavior

• Based on idea behavior shaped by consequences
• Four types of reinforcement managers use to influence behavior:
  1. Positive reinforcement: Rewarding desired behavior to increase frequency (praise for meeting deadlines, bonuses for exceeding sales targets)
  2. Negative reinforcement: Removing unpleasant stimulus to increase desired behavior frequency (reducing workload for consistently high-quality work)
  3. Punishment: Applying unpleasant consequence to reduce undesired behavior frequency (written warning for repeated tardiness)
  4. Extinction: Withholding reinforcement to decrease undesired behavior frequency (not engaging with employee complaints about minor issues)
• Effective application involves identifying specific behaviors to encourage or discourage, choosing appropriate reinforcement type, providing consistent and immediate reinforcement, regularly reviewing and adjusting strategies (adapting to changing employee needs and company goals)

Additional Motivation Theories

• Self-determination theory emphasizes importance of intrinsic motivation (internal desire to perform tasks) and extrinsic motivation (external rewards or consequences) in workplace
• Job characteristics model identifies five core job dimensions that influence motivation: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback
• Cognitive evaluation theory examines how external factors affect intrinsic motivation, suggesting that some extrinsic rewards can undermine internal drive