Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
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blood, and so forth. There are three rules:
• Do not repeat objects in the same category. For example, since apples,
strawberries, cherries and plums are all fruits, only one should be listed.
• Nonsensical responses are unacceptable. You should not list “skyscraper” if a given
adjective is “short.”
• You may use abstract words. For example, for the adjective blue, you could list
mood.
STEP 3. Ask if there are any questions. If not, answer sheets for group members to
use in listing their responses should be distributed. Continue with the following
instructions:
“Remember, you have one minute for each of three trials. I will tell you when to begin
and when to stop. When I say stop, please cease writing immediately.”
STEP 4. Announce the group’s goal.
Students in Group One, the hard goal group, should be told: “Your goal is to list 12
objects per trial.”
Students in Group Two, the easy goal group, should be told: “Your goal for this exercise
is to list at least four objects per trial.”
Students in Group Three, the nonspecific goal group, should be told: “I would like you to
try your best. Try to list as many objects as you can for each trial.”
Step 4 is the most critical part of the experiment. To ensure that students in each group
understand their assigned goal, we recommend that the goal be written on a chalkboard
or newsprint and be repeated twice verbally. This is especially important for students in
the hard goal group. It should be made completely clear that they are being asked to
list TWELVE objects for EACH TRIAL.
STEP 5. Immediately after announcing the group’s goal, begin the exercise by writing
the first adjective on a chalkboard or newsprint. When one minute expires, the second
adjective should be displayed, and so on, until three trials have been completed.
Sample adjectives include: hot, short, round, blue, shiny, soft, strong, sharp, and hard.
STEP 6. After the task has been completed, ask one group member to collect the
answer sheets, calculate the total number of responses generated by each group
member for the three trials and then compute a group average.
STEP 7. Repeat Steps 1-6 with Groups Two and Three. Upon completing each
session, be sure to request that no aspect of the experiment be discussed outside the
classroom.
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
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STEP 8. When all three groups have completed the experimental task, display the
averages computed in Step 6 as a basis for discussion.
DISCUSSION
Based on our experience, the results are almost invariably consistent with findings
derived from goal-setting research. That is, the students in the hard goal group
outperform both the students in the nonspecific goal group and the students in the easy
goal group.
In the ensuing discussion, students in the hard goal group should be asked if they
reached their goal on the first trial. The typical response is “No!” These students may
then be asked how they felt after not reaching their assigned goal. Students typically
respond that they were upset with themselves for failing to reach the goal and wanted to
try harder on the next trial.
At this point, students in the easy goal group should be asked the same questions.
They usually respond that they reached their assigned goal on the first trial and were
content with their performance, feeling no pressure to try harder on subsequent trials.
When the same questions are posed to the nonspecific goal group, its members usually
respond that they had no strong feelings one way or the other because this was a novel
task and they had no definite idea about how many objects or things they were capable
of listing and just wanted to list as many as they could.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How satisfied are you with your group’s performance? (Ask hard goal, easy goal,
and nonspecific goal groups this question after they see the results of the other
groups’ averages.)
2. How well did the results of this exercise conform to goal setting theory and
research?
3. What practical management implications can be derived from this exercise?
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
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SUPPLEMENTAL EXERCISE 5: ROBERTA ENCOUNTERS A PERCEIVED
INEQUITY3
APPLICATION
This is the fourth installment of the continuing case, which started in Chapter 1 with
“Introduction to Roberta.” In order to make this case as effective as possible, students
should at least read the case in Chapter 1. It provides the background information
needed to understand the situation. This case also uses a character that was
introduced in the installment of the continuing case, “Roberta and the Undermotivated
Employee.” The previous case is not needed to use this case, but you may choose to
use it to provide more background on Mary Jo. This case focuses on equity issues in
the department. Roberta has to work with two employees, accuser and accused, and
treat each of them fairly. The situation portrayed in this case could also be useful in
Chapter 14, depending upon the response of Mary Jo to Kent’s accusations.
This is a situation Roberta must address. From an equity standpoint, ignoring the
situation will simply frustrate Kent and other department members. Also, Roberta
cannot correct the situation if she doesn’t know about it. Kent and other department
members feel that they are providing more input than Mary Jo but receiving equivalent
outputs, or consequences. This is exacerbated by the fact that Kent and the others
obey the injunctions set down in the policy manual and Mary Jo doesn’t. Yet up to this
point her consequences are consistent with the rest of the department.
Not following company policy in this case could invalidate the value of the policy to other
staff members in the future. It could also create legal problems, if one staff member is
fired later for a similar offense. Roberta needs to talk to human resources to have them
help determine the best option.
Another approach to the case is to have students assume that Mary Jo did lie and stay
home to take care of her sick child. Was this decision an ethical one on her part? The
“yes” answer is based on ranking a sick child as more important than a policy, and the
“no” response is because she broke the contract she had with the company. Another
issue to introduce is whether it is appropriate for HRI to limit the use of sick leave to
personal illness, rather than including family illness also. Is this policy an indication that
HRI is not responsive to the needs of the changing workforce?
* * *
HRI’s vacation and sick-leave policy is very simple and easy to understand. HRI
employees get two weeks paid vacation every year, with the first week available after
six months employment. Employees also earn one personal leave day for every three
3 Co-written by Edwin C. Leonard, Jr., Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, and Maria Muto, Arizona State
University.
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
8–43
months worked, to be used for family and personal emergencies. In addition, HRI
provides one personal sick day for every month worked, available immediately.
Mary Jo is a single parent with a three-year-old daughter. When she joined HRI nine
months ago, she attended an employee orientation and signed their standard
employment statement that she is familiar with and agrees to abide by the policies
contained in the employee handbook. Mary Jo has no vacation or personal days left in
this calendar year. She does have four personal illness days saved.
One Thursday, Mary Jo’s daughter developed a high fever and seemed to be ill. Mary
Jo felt she should stay home from work to care for her daughter. (Although the child’s
regular sitter would care for her, Mary Jo knew from past experience that the sitter
doesn’t care for exposing her own and the other children to a sick child.)
Mary Jo knew that the personal illness days are to be used for personal illness and not
for the illness of a sick family member. She also knew that the employee handbook
states that falsification of records will result in discharge. She has a tough decision to
make.
At 7:45, Roberta got a call, “Roberta, this is Mary Jo. I really don’t feel well. I think I
may be getting that flu that’s going around. I won’t be coming in to work today. ”
Roberta was caught off guard. This was the busiest time of the year for HRI. In
addition, one staff member had just left on her maternity leave the week before.
Roberta knew it was going to be a tough day. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well Mary Jo.
Take good care of yourself and get back tomorrow if you can. We’re really swamped
and need your help.”
Kent, a co-worker in Roberta’s department, discovered that Mary Jo missed work in
violation of company policy. On top of that, he and two other co-workers were required
to work overtime for three hours to make up for being short-handed that day. The next
week, Kent approached Roberta.” I need to talk to you in confidence.”
“Let’s go into my office, replied Roberta, “Kent, you know that anything you tell me won’t
go any further. I can tell you’re concerned about something; what can I help you with?”
“Well, Roberta, I really hate to bring this up,” Kent said. As you know, I was not happy
about having to work overtime last week. I missed half of my oldest child’s school
concert.”
“I wish you had let me know about that,” Roberta said, “You could have gone home
earlier.”
“That’s not the point. My frustration goes way beyond that.” Kent paused, sighed, and
continued, “Doggone it Roberta, I’m tired of Mary Jo taking advantage of you and
everyone else in this department. Just because she’s black, she gets away with
everything. The rest of us are being discriminated against.”
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
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Roberta was startled, “What specifically do you mean Kent?”
“Well, she is slower than everyone else and it’s obvious that she really doesn’t care
about her job or HRI.”
“Kent, I’ve talked to her about this, and that is between her and me. Does her
performance specifically affect your ability to do your job?”
“I’m not the only one who has a problem with this. We’re all working so hard, and it
doesn’t seem to matter. Her pay is almost exactly the same as mine. But what really
burns me is her lying.”
“What do you mean?” asked Roberta.
“Like, for example last week when we had to work overtime. She wasn’t really sick that
day. It was her daughter that was sick. When one of my boys is sick, I take a vacation
or personal leave day, or my wife stays home from work, or sometimes we just have to
take him to the sitter sick. But Mary Jo seems to think the rules don‘t apply to her. She
got paid like the rest of us on Thursday, except we were working our tails off and she
got to stay home with her kid.”
Shocked, Roberta said, “This is a serious accusation. How do you know this is true?”
“I overheard her talking to her babysitter on Friday. She had a customer on hold again
while she was checking up on her kid with the babysitter. I also know that one other
time when she called in sick she was getting ready for a family visit. My sister-in-law
saw her at the grocery store that day and she was talking about it with the cashier.”
Roberta was really concerned, “Kent, I understand your anger over this, and I
appreciate your sharing this with me, along with your frustrations over the situation.
Now, to be fair to Mary Jo, as well as the rest of the department, I need to investigate
this. As you know, these accusations, if proven true, are serious enough to warrant her
termination. Considering this, I would appreciate it if you would keep this conversation
between us until I can look into the matter further.”
“One other thing, Kent. I guess I haven’t made it clear enough to you, but I don’t see all
my employees as the same. I’ve noticed the extra care you put into your work, your
willingness to help other staff members, and your excellent attendance record. You
have become one of the mainstays of my department, and I really appreciate everything
you do.”
“Thanks Roberta. I appreciate your support. I hope I’m not being unreasonable here,
but we’re all just so frustrated,” Kent replied.
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
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As Kent left, Roberta thought to herself, “Now, where do I begin?”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Is Kent right in bringing his concern to Roberta?
2. How can Adams’s equity theory be used to explain Kent’s behavior?
3. Has Roberta handled this situation appropriately? Now that Kent has brought this
problem to her attention, what is her next step?
4. What background work should Roberta do before approaching Mary Jo with this
accusation? How should Roberta handle the meeting?
Roberta knows that there are two potential outcomes to this situation, neither of them
pleasant. If Mary Jo admits lying about her illness, she will be in clear violation of
company policy. Firing someone is something Roberta has never done, and she hates
the thought of firing a single mother only a few weeks before the holidays. On the other
hand, if Roberta doesn’t fire her, how will the other staff members who have followed
the rules feel? If Mary Jo adamantly insists that she was personally ill last Thursday,
Roberta is faced with one employee’s word against another. How can she handle this
situation?
SUPPLEMENTAL LECTURETTE 1: THE ROLE OF CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL
STATES IN THE JOB CHARACTERISTICS MODEL4
APPLICATION
This lecturette presents research dealing with the mediating role of critical psychological
states in Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics model. It may be used to
supplement the chapter’s coverage of the job characteristics approach to job design.
* * *
As presented in the text, the job characteristics model builds upon the self-perpetuating
cycle of internal motivation. Internal motivation occurs when an individual is stimulated
by his or her work because of the positive internal feelings that are generated by doing
well. Internal work motivation is determined by three psychological states: experienced
meaningfulness, experienced responsibility, and knowledge of results. According to
Hackman and Oldham, five core job characteristics elicit these three psychological
states. Skill variety, task identity, and task significance determine experienced
4 Adapted from R Renn and R Vandenberg, “The Critical Psychological States: An Underrepresented Component in
Job Characteristics Model Research” Journal of Management, 1995, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 279-303.
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
8–46
meaningfulness. Autonomy generates experienced responsibility, and feedback fosters
knowledge of results. In other words, critical psychological states completely mediate
the relationship between core job dimensions and affective and behavioral work
outcomes. A person’s motivating potential score (MPS) is a summary index
representing the extent to which the individual’s job characteristics foster internal work
motivation.
Relatively few studies have examined the hypothesized mediating role of the critical
psychological states indicated by the model. One study to do so was conducted by
Robert Renn and Robert Vandenberg and published in Journal of Management. Renn
and Vandenberg conducted two studies focusing on the job characteristics model. In
Study 1 they surveyed 188 people working for different offices on a single organization.
Participants functioned in a number of jobs, including management, professional
counseling, and secretarial and administrative support. The Job Diagnostic Survey
(JDS) was used to measure the five core job dimensions, critical psychological states,
and outcome variables (i.e., general job satisfaction, internal work motivation, and
growth satisfaction). Results from regression analysis indicated in most cases (13 of
15) critical psychological states are partial rather than complete mediators. Specifically,
“experienced meaningfulness completely mediated the skill variety-general job
satisfaction relationship, and knowledge of results completely mediated the feedback–
general satisfaction linkage.” “By contrast, the findings indicated that meaningfulness,
responsibility, and knowledge of results were partial mediators of the remaining
hypothesized relations between the core job dimensions and general job satisfaction,
growth satisfaction, and internal work motivation. In addition, the feedback-internal
work motivation relationship was not mediated by knowledge of results.”
Additional findings from a second study further supported the partial mediation role of
the critical psychological states. Ninety policy processing and customer service
employees completed the JDS. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the
data. The model best fitting the data represented critical psychological states as partial
rather than complete mediator variables.
In summary, although results indicated that inclusion of critical psychological states
contributed significantly to the model’s explanatory power, the findings did not support
their status as complete mediators (as originally proposed in the model). Rather, the
core job dimensions had both direct and indirect (through the critical psychological
states) effects on the outcome variables.
Chapter 08 – Foundations of Motivation
8–47
SUPPLEMENTAL LECTURETTE 2: GOAL-SETTING IMPLEMENTATION5
APPLICATION
This lecturette provides a practical outline to aid managers in implementing a goal-
setting program in the workplace.
* * *
When implementing a goal-setting program in the workplace, a manager must first
determine the difficulty level of the goal, whether the goal should be assigned,
participatively set, or self-set. With respect to goal difficulty, the research clearly
supports the notion that specific, difficult goals produce better performance results than
moderate, easy, do-your-best, or no goals. However, in order for difficult goals to yield
the desired results, two conditions must be met. Employees must receive feedback
regarding their performance relative to the goal and conditions in the work environment
must be conducive to successful goal completion. With respect to who should
determine the goal, research indicates positive results for assigned, participatively set,
or self-set goals. However, research also indicates that employees’ participation in the
goal-setting process tends to result in more difficult goals being set. It may also aid in
increasing worker commitment to the goal. Other factors which may increase goal
commitment include the physical presence and supportiveness of the manager.
Commitment is also fostered to the extent that employees trust the supervisor. Finally,
a beneficial amount of peer pressure can increase goal commitment.
Following the steps listed below can increase the likelihood that a goal-setting program
will achieve successful results:
1. Have those involved participate in setting the goals.
2. If possible, use group goals to cash in on beneficial peer pressure.
3. Goals should be difficult but not impossible.
4. Provide specific feedback to let employees know how they’re doing relative to the
goal.
5. Structure the work environment such that it supports opportunities and removes
obstacles for success.
6. Try to gain your subordinates’ trust.
7. Make sure employees know you personally support the goals.
8. Update and modify goals as warranted by changing conditions.
5 Adapted from A Cocco “Using Performance Goals to Motivate Workers: A Practical Guide for Project Managers”
Project Management Journal, June 1995, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 53-56.