Chapter 12 Motivating Employees: Achieving Superior Performance in
the Workplace Answer Key
True / False Questions
1.
In managing for motivation, you should think about employees as people who are investors;
they are investing their time, energy, and intelligence in your organization.
2.
Having a best friend at work is not a factor that is characteristic of the best workplaces.
3.
Motivation cannot be directly observed in another’s behavior; it must be inferred from one’s
behavior.
4.
Fulfilled needs motivate people to perform specific behaviors to receive rewards that feedback
and satisfy the original need.
5.
Feedback in the simple motivation model serves to inform you whether behavior worked and
should be used again.
6.
An extrinsic reward such as money is the payoff a person receives from others for performing
a particular task.
7.
An example of an intrinsic reward occurred during an experiment by General Electric, which
found that paying employees who were smokers up to $750 to quit and stay off cigarettes was
three times as successful as a comparison group that got no paid incentives.
8.
Managers use motivation to get talented prospective workers to work for them.
9.
Content perspectives, also known as need-based perspectives, are theories that emphasize
the needs that motivate people. Content theory asks, “What kind of needs motivate employees
in the workplace?”
10.
Self-determination theory assumes that people are driven to try to grow and attain fulfillment,
with their behavior and well-being influenced by three innate needs: competence, autonomy,
and relatedness.
11.
According to Maslow, persons will attempt to satisfy their love needs after their physiological
and safety needs are met.
12.
According to Maslow’s theory, self-respect, status, reputation, recognition, and self-confidence
are esteem needs.
13.
According to Maslow’s theory, food, clothing, shelter, comfort and self-preservation are the
needs at the lowest level of the hierarchy.
14.
Maslow’s theory indicates that employees have few needs beyond earning a paycheck.
15.
To motivate employees, employers need to primarily focus on fulfilling the top level of
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization.
16.
“I need close relationships.” This statement reflects the desire for friendly and warm relations
with other people, characteristic of the need for power.
17.
Self-determination theory focuses primarily on intrinsic motivation and rewards rather than on
extrinsic motivation and rewards.
18.
To achieve psychological growth, according to the two–factor theory, people need to satisfy
three innate needs including competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
19.
According to McClelland’s theory, people learn their needs for power, achievement, and
affiliation from their culture, and from life experiences; they are not born with them.
20.
In McClelland’s acquired needs theory, the desire to excel at challenging tasks is part of the
need for affiliation.
21.
McClelland identifies the need for institutional power as positive and involving problem solving
to further mutual goals.
22.
If you are happy with accomplishment of a task being its own reward, you may have a high
need for power.
23.
Those with a high need for achievement may be the least efficient managers because they
resist making decisions that make others resent them.
24.
In Herzberg’s theory, the lower-level needs are known as hygiene factors, and the higher-level
needs are called motivating factors.
25.
According to Herzberg’s two-factor theory, a worker’s salary and working conditions are
possible sources of job satisfaction.
26.
According to Herzberg, hygiene factors are associated with job dissatisfaction.
27.
In two-factor theory, motivating factors include achievement, recognition, and responsibility.
28.
The three process perspectives on motivation are equity theory, expectancy theory, and goal–
setting theory.
29.
Need-based perspectives try to explain why employees have different needs, what behaviors
they select to satisfy them and how they decide if their choices were successful.
30.
Equity theory is based on the idea that employees are motivated to see fairness in the rewards
they expect for task performance and are motivated to resolve feelings of injustice.
31.
Inputs, outputs, and comparisons are the essential elements in equity setting theory.
32.
According to equity theory, employees who feel they are being underrewarded might respond
by doing less work, calling in sick, or leaving early.
33.
No matter how fair managers think the organization’s policies, procedures, and reward system
are, each employee’s perception of those factors is what counts.
34.
According to expectancy theory, assuming they have choices, people will make the choice that
promises them the greatest reward if they think they can get it.
35.
Your motivation, according to expectancy theory, involves the relationship between your effort,
your personality, and the desirability of the outcomes (such as pay or recognition) of your
performance.
36.
If you assign a lot of importance or a high value to your prospective bonus or pay raise, then
your valence is said to be high.
37.
Instrumentality, also called the performance–to-reward expectancy, is the expectation that
successful performance of the task will lead to the outcome desired.
38.
John’s manager just told his team about this year’s contest, the winner of which will receive an
all-expense paid trip to Bangkok. John does not like to travel to places where he can’t speak
the language, so he is not very enthusiastic. This reward has a high valence for John.
39.
According to expectancy theory, for a person’s motivation to be high, he or she must be high
on all three elements: instrumentality, performance, and valence.
40.
It is natural for people to set and strive for goals; even if people don’t understand and accept
the goals, the goal-setting process is useful.
41.
To be most motivating, goals should be specific and challenging but achievable.
42.
Job simplification involves the division of an organization’s work among its employees and the
application of motivational theories to jobs to increase satisfaction and performance.
43.
Simplified, repetitive jobs lead to job dissatisfaction, poor mental health, and a low sense of
accomplishment and personal growth.
44.
Fitting people to jobs is based on the assumption that people are underutilized at work and
that they want more variety and responsibility.
45.
Job enrichment consists of building into a job such motivating factors as responsibility,
achievement, recognition, stimulating work, and advancement.
46.
The five core job characteristics are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy,
and feedback.
47.
The task significance for a craftsperson who goes through all the steps to build a handmade
acoustic guitar is higher than it is for an assembly-line worker who just installs windshields on
cars.
48.
Job design is positively associated with employee performance, job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, physical and psychological well-being, as well as lower absenteeism and
intentions to quit.
49.
According to the job design model, five core characteristics affect a worker’s motivation
because they affect three critical psychological states: meaningfulness of work, responsibility
for results, and knowledge of results.
50.
Reinforcement theory suggests that behavior with positive consequences tends to be
repeated, whereas behavior with negative consequences tends not to be repeated.
51.
To use positive reinforcement, give praise to employees not for showing up for work on time
(an expected part of any job) but for showing up early.
52.
You shouldn’t reprimand in public, which would lead only to resentments that may have
nothing to do with an employee’s infractions.
53.
Most workers rate monetary benefits higher than a caring boss.
54.
The number one reason people quit their jobs is their dissatisfaction with their supervisors, not
their paychecks.
55.
Goal-setting theory suggests behavior tends to be repeated if it has positive consequences
and tends not to be if it has negative consequences.
56.
Behavior modification is the use of reinforcement theory to change human behavior.
57.
Reinforcement is anything that causes a given behavior to be repeated or inhibited.
58.
Positive reinforcement is the process of strengthening a behavior by withdrawing something
negative.
59.
In reinforcement theory, both extinction and punishment increase the likelihood that a given
behavior will be repeated.
60.
For incentive compensation plans to work, rewards must be linked to performance and be
measurable; they must satisfy individual needs; they must be agreed on by manager and
employee; and they must be perceived as being equitable, believable, and achievable by
employees.
61.
A manager should administer punishment in public in front of employees because the
embarrassment enhances the punishment and its effectiveness.
62.
Pay for knowledge, also known as skill-based pay, ties pay to the number of job-relevant skills
or academic degrees employees earn.
63.
Gainsharing allow certain employees to buy stock at a future date for a discounted price.
64.
New research shows that the cubicle is not a motivational environment, stifling creativity and
morale for many workers.
65.
Managers can use both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to encourage better work performance.