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Category: Motivation

  • Need for Power

    In the last byte, we understood the need for achievement as a motivational factor for people better. In today’s byte, we look at the need for Power as a driver of Motivation.

    Need for Power as described earlier, is concerned with making and impact on others. It is the desire to influence others, the urge to change people or events and the desire to make a difference in life. This need is generally interpersonal in nature as it involves influencing others in the environment. People with high need for power could generally be like control people and events that happen around them.

    McClelland makes 2 distinctions in power:

    1. Socialized Power – which could be used for the benefit of others
    2. Personalized Power – which can be used for individual gains
    The Socialized Power is constructive in nature, and could yield a better bonding between people while Personalize power could be very disruptive and have destructive impact.

    McClelland’s research has indicated that managers who were rated “best” in the research had a very high need for socialized power, as opposed to personalized power. That is, they have an interest in organizational goals and have a concern for others; they also have a desire to be useful to the larger group, organization or society.

    Managers with high socialized power needs and a good success track record are found to grow the quickest in their organization compared to their contemporaries.

  • McClelland’s Need Theory

    In the last byte, we looked at ERG theory and understood what aspects of motivation it could explain. In today’s blog we look at McClelland’s Need Theory and attempt understanding it. While the first 3 theories of that we have discussed this far deal with the need as a basis of motivation. We now shift our attention to discuss about theories that focus on personality and learned needs.

    McClelland identified three learned or acquired needs, which he called manifest needs. These are:

    1. Need for Achievement
    2. Need for Power
    3. Need for Affiliation
    Some individuals have a high need for achievement, whereas others have a moderate or low need of achievement. Similarly one could think of the other two needs. Different needs dominate different people. A Manager may need a strong need of power a moderate need for achievement and a weak need for affiliation, this combination gives rise to a very different implication on the behavior of an individual.

     

    We could define these needs as below:
    Need for Achievement: Is a manifest (easily perceived) need that concerns individuals’ issues of excellence, competition, challenging goals, persistence, and overcoming difficulties.
    Need for Power: Is a manifest (easily perceived) need that concerns an individual’s need to make an impact on others, influence others, change people or events and make a difference in life
    Need for Affiliation: Is a manifest (easily perceived) need that concerns an individual’s need to establish and maintain warm, close, intimate relationships with other people.

    We shall explore these to a greater depth in the next byte.

  • ERG Theory

    In the last byte, we looked at who McGregor’s’ Theory X and Theory Y was built on the work of Maslow – Hierarchy of Need. In today’s byte, we look at ERG Theory and attempt to understand it.

    The ERG Theory was proposed by Clayton Alderfer, by reorganizing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. He classified Maslow’s Physiological and Physical Safety needs in an “existence” needs category. Moving further, the interpersonal safety, love and interpersonal esteem needs were classified into “Relatedness” need. Maslow’s self-actualization and self-esteem needs were classified into “growth” needs category.  This reclassification of Maslow’s Need Hierarchy theory as Existence, Relatedness and Growth gets this theory its name – ERG Theory. We could look at the mapping of Maslow’s hierarchy to ERG theory as shown below.


     
    While the Maslow’s theory explains the progression of how a person moves towards higher order needs, it doesn’t explain scenarios where one is frustrated due to one’s inability to meet the higher order needs in the hierarchy. This could be explained by the ERG theory of Alderfer. The Regression hypothesis states that people regress to the next lower order needs and intensify their desire to gratify these needs. Thus this theory explains both the progressive need gratification and regression when faced with frustration.

  • Motivation – Theory X & Theory Y

    In the last byte, we looked at the hierarchy of needs theory by Maslow. In today’s byte, we take a dig at understanding Theory X and Theory Y.

    An implication of the need theory of motivation for organizations is important when one is to manage people at work. A simple reorganization by Douglas McGregor was to look at the physiological and safety needs as the “lower order” needs while the remaining three would form the “upper order” needs. We have shown this in the earlier diagram.

    He proposed 2 alternative sets of assumptions about people at work based on the need motivators. Following table summarizes the assumptions. [This has been taken from the book “The Human Side of Enterprise” by Douglas M McGregor]


     
    McGregor believed that Theory X assumptions are appropriate for employees motivated by lower order needs. Theory Y assumptions, in contrast, are appropriate for employees motivated by higher order needs.

  • Motivation – Maslow’s Theory, Theory X and Theory Y

    In the last blog, we attempted to understand the role of incentives in motivating people. In today’s blog, we look at Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy of Need. 
    Maslow’s theory of human motivation mentions a hierarchy of five need categories as shown in the picture below. The five categories were labeled 0 physiological needs, safety and security needs, love (social) needs, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization.

    The theory has a distinct feature – that of progression. It is the lowest level of ungratified needs in the hierarchy that motivate behavior. As one level of need is met, a person progresses to the next higher level of need as a source of motivation. Hence, people progress up the hierarchy as they successively gratify each level of need.

    In the next blog, we look at understanding the theory x and theory y. We could map the Maslow’s hierarchy theory on to the theory x and theory y pictorially as follows:

  • Motivation – Technology & Recognition-Ownership

    In the last byte, we began discussion on the external incentives and their influence on the motivation, with the interest of providing a historical perspective. In today’s byte, we continue the discussion on external incentives and attempt to understand a few more concepts – primarily technology as an enabler and the role of recognition and ownership.

    Technology:
    Adam smith around whose work we had discussed in the last byte had defined the role of technology in economics pretty clearly. His view was that nation’s wealth was primarily determined by the labor force productivity – and more efficient and effective the labor force was, the greater would be the national abundance. Technology in this journey would play the role of a force multiplier, for the labor. Thus, technology attempts to increase the profit generated, and effective handling of the technology could create a good incentive to create greater wealth.

    Recognition and Ownership:
    It is almost common in today’s organization to have an employee recognition programs, flexible benefit package, stock ownership plans etc. These are based largely on the work of Adam Smith and Fredrick Taylor. The incentives today’s organizations do not limit themselves to only economic forms, they also take material forms – like recognition plaques, watches etc.

    Research has also found that the ownership that employees feel with their work has a crucial impact on the performance of the organization. We have talked about organizational citizenship behavior and other such positive behaviors early when employees feels the ownership of the task.

    Furthering from here, we begin discussing individual theories on motivation for the next few bytes.

  • Motivation – external incentives

    In the last byte, we looked at the early evolution of the study of internal need that acts as a motivation. In today’s byte, we look at the evolution of the external incentives that lead to motivation.

    A look at the literature on economic assumptions that initiate motivation in human would get us to identify that a differential piece-rate system was developed pretty early in organizations. The underlying assumption in all these cases was that: people are motivated by self-interest and economic gains.

    The most significant of the scholars who approached human motivation with this economic assumption was Adam Smith. He laid the cornerstone of modern free enterprise system of economics when he formulated the “invisible hand” and free market to explain the motivation to human behavior.  The “invisible hand” refers to the unseen forces of a free market system that shape the most efficient use of people, money, and resources for productive means.

    The basic assumption here is that people are motivated by self-interest for economic gains to provide the necessities and conveniences of life. Thus employees would have a higher productivity when they are motivated by self interest. A more recent focus in this concept of self-interest in the corporate centers is called – “enlightened” self interest. In this case, an individual don’t just look at what is in his/her best interest, but also recognize the self-interest of other people.

    This was further supported by the Hawthorne studies, where a positive relation between positive effects of pay on productivity was identified. In addition, social and inter-personal motives were also highlighted. We shall continue this discussion in the next byte.

  • Motivation – origin

    In the last byte, we defined the term motivation and mentioned about the various classifications of the theories. In today’s blow, we begin with understanding the origin of some of the theories of motivation.

    One could begin tracing back the evolution of studies on motivation to the past century and the most profound starting point for the study on motivation has been the work of Max Weber, a German Scholar. Webbers’ argument was that the meaning of work lay not in the work itself but in the deeper potential for contributing to salvation. This is in alignment with the Protestant ethic which said that people work hard because those who prospect at work were more likely to find a place in heaven!

    At this point it is interesting to note, that motivation could also be influenced by the cultural context.

    The next major contribution came from Sigmund Freud. He saw much of human motivation has an unconscious beginning. He used the method “psychoanalysis” to look into the unconscious mind and better understand a person’s motives and needs. This approach has been able to successfully explain in a lot of cases the self-destructing and irrational behavior that one exhibits. This initial work marked the foundation to the need based theories that would be proposed later.

  • Motivation

    Moving further from the last topic of discussion on values which concluded with the last byte, we shift our attention to understanding motivation in the managerial context. The following bytes would talk about various theories and use relevant examples to help understand. In today’s byte, we shall look at defining Motivation and attempt to understand what the rationale behind having theories to explain motivation.

    Motivation is derived from the Latin root word – movere (meaning to move)! Obviously, the movement is directed towards a goal and thus motivation is defined as – The process of arousing and sustaining goal directed behavior. It is important to understand that motivation has 2 components in the process:

    1. Arousing
    2. Sustaining
    Various theories attempt to understand the source of motivation and attempt to explain and predict the observed behavior. Coupled with the fact of diversity of people and complexity behavior in their behavior, there are a number of theories that have evolved. If one were to classify the various theories, we could categorize them into 3:
    1. Internal
    2. Process
    3. External
    Internal theories of motivation give priority considerations to the variable within the individual that give raise to motivation and behavior. The External Theories of motivation, focus on the elements part of the environment, these also include the consequence of behavior. The process theories of motivation emphasize on the nature of the interactions between the environment and the individual under study.

    It is to be understood upfront that no single theory on motivation is comprehensive; they are all able to explain only a small portion of the variance in human behavior.