Motivation In The Workplace Essay, Research Paper

Fundamentals of Motivation

One of the most important things to learn in for human relations are:

How do you get people to do things?

? The answer rests on an understanding of what motivation is all

about, for it is motivated workers who ultimately get things

done, and without such people no organization can hope to

be effective.

What motivates an individual to act in a given way?

Let’s look at what motives are:

? Motives: needs, drives, wants, or impulses within the

individual.

Regardless of how we define motives; however, motive

arouse and maintain activity as well as determine the

general direction of an individual’s behavior.

Motives are classified in two categories:

Primary: motives that are unlearned. Ex: the need for food and shelter.

Secondary: motives that are learned. Ex: the need for power, achievement, and affiliation.

Motives are directed towards goals:

If a person needs money (motive), they will opt for overtime (goal).

An individual who desires recognition (motive) will strive for promotion (goal).

? Human Resources Department and individual’s goals.

The Department’s GoalsThe Individual’s Goals

Good customer serviceGood pay

High quality of RecruitmentJob security

High Recognition among the districtChance to achieve

Adequate worker efficiencyChallenging work

High quality of human relation skillsWork satisfaction

Motive Strength: In many occasions an individual may have many motives or needs and can not actively pursue all of them simultaneously. Motive Strength helps to determine which motives a person will attempt to satisfy through activity.

To understand this concept let’s look at the diagram drawn below.

(High)

Motive Strength

(Low) 1 2 3 4 5

? As you can see in this figure motive five has the greatest motive strength and will receive the most activity. This means that an individual will work hardest to satisfy a particular motive that they want to achieve.

Conclusion: When an individual is given the opportunity to attain a desired goal, he or she is positively motivated, and will pursue that objective’, however, negative motivation could be used to enforce and to shape employee behavior.

Individual Behavior

Values are something of worth or importance to an individual. Parents, friends,

and teachers all play a role, as well as co-workers, business associates, and others with whom we come in contact. In fact, learning and experience are the two greatest forces in

shaping an individual’s values.

We can examine values in terms of terminal and instrumental values.

Terminal values are expressed as the desire goal or end.

Instrumental values are means for achieving the desire goals.

Terminal Values (End)Instrumental Value (Means)

HonestySelf Respect

A comfortable lifeIndependence

Family SecurityAmbition

WisdomCourage

AccomplishmentHelpfulness

Politics at Work

Managers typically use political behavior to use their power. Rather than running

roughshod over someone, the effective manager often uses a well thought out political

approach. In this way, the particular individual gets what the manager wants done, while

causing the fewest number of hard feelings or problems.

The value of Networking: It is very important to use the process of socializing, politicking, and interacting with people throughout the district by networking.

The Evolution of Technology

In the past fifty years, the United States has progressed form an industrial society

to a post-industrial society. This transition his involved four major changes:

A) A service-oriented workplace

B) Dynamic increase in the number of professional and technology workers

C) Increase on the importance of theoretical knowledge

D) Planning and controlling the technological growth

Technology leads to changes in the work environment, from the machines people use in creating output and making decisions to the way in which their offices and workstations are designated.

Technology Alienation is very important in all the behavioral implications that follow technology changes. This concept incorporates four things:

A) Powerlessness: which is the feeling of being at the mercy of technology.

B) Meaninglessness: which is the feeling of doing work that has no personal

value.

C) Isolation: which is when people are confined to one particular work locale.

D) Self-estrangement: is characterized by lack of intrinsic job satisfaction.

Conclusion: Technology in the workplace has some specific effect on employees. This is why it is important to have a cultural match between the organization and the people. Otherwise, technology can cause alienation in the workplace in the form of powerlessness, meaningless, isolation, and self-estrangement. Technology is causing fear to employees because they think machines will replace them; however, this is not true among highly skilled professionals.

Conflict among employees

Many times there will be conflict among members of a group and it needs to be solved in the best way possible.

Conflict Resolution: Confrontation, Collaboration, and Compromise.

Confrontation: involves face to face problem solving. Getting the two conflict people

together and try to come to a solution.

Collaboration: It requires full cooperation of everyone.

Compromise: each party gives up something. The two people will have to put aside their attitudes towards someone in the workplace if nothing can be solved between them.

There are certain things that a group or team goes through. These things are problems or

conflicts within the group that must be solved.

Some of the conflicts that could or may happen among individuals on particular department/divisions, such as the Human Resources Divison are role ambiguity, role conflict, and status incongruency.

Role ambiguity: occurs when the job description is vague.

Role conflict: occurs when two roles are mutually incompatible; therefore, a problem with status (relative ranking of an individual in a group) among members of the team develops.

Status incongruence: is a discrepancy between a arson’s supposed status and the way the individual is treated.

Creativity among the group is very important. You need creative thinking to make important decisions. There is the preparation stage in which members get mentally prepared to make decisions. Incubation stage follows the process where all of the members’ subconscious minds start working on the problem. Then, the illumination phase is characterized by the group realizing the best decision to make. Now, they know wthat to do and the final stage called verification where the group modifies to makes final changes in the solution follows the last step.

Group Behavior

A group is a social unit of two or more interdependent, interactive people striving for common goals.

Types of Group workers: Functional, cross-functional, project group, and interest

friendship group.

Functional: perform the same tasks.

Cross Functional: composed of individuals from two or more functional areas.

Project group: members from many backgrounds different areas who work to attain an objective within predetermined time, cost, and quality limits.

Interest-friendship group: formed on the basis of common beliefs, concerns, or activities.

Stages of Group Development

When a group is formed, there is the initial ”feeling out” stage during which the members

get to know each other and lend how to interact effectively. As the members become

comfortable working together and learn about what each can contribute to the group

effort, performance begins to improve and may eventually result in a highly effective

work team. However, during this process the group goes through several stages.

Forming Stage: characterized by efforts to determine initial directions.

Norming: characterized by cooperative and teamwork.

Performing: characterized by openness and collaboration.

? All groups have certain characteristics. Some of the most important are

role, norms, status. cohesiveness, and size.

Attitudes

Attitudes are a person’s feelings about objects, events, and people.

Components of Attitudes:

Cognitive: set of values and beliefs a person has towards a person, object, or event.

Elective: the emotional feelings attached to an attitude.

Behavioral: tendency to act in a particular way towards a person, object, or an event.

? An organization must realize that attitudes are an intervening variable. This means that they are influenced by causal variables and, in turn, affect end-result variables. For an individual’s attitude to decline, there must be some cause, such as failure to get merit raise, submission of a poor performance

appraisal, or change in leadership style. This causes a change in attitude, which then results in a decline in output.

In Conclusion: managers should be aware of the available approaches to understanding interpersonal behavior. After all, values, perceptions, attitude, and to a large degree- personalities are developed through interpersonal relations. Individuals are complex beings. Nevertheless, many descriptive cliches have been used in trying to sum them up in a word or two.