I. Integrating Contemporary Motivation Theories
A. Exhibit 7-9 integrates much of what we know about motivation. Its basic foundation is
the expectancy model.
B. Expectancy theory predicts that an employee will exert a high level of effort if he/she
perceives that there is a strong relationship between effort and performance, performance
and rewards, and rewards and satisfaction of personal goals.
1. The final link in expectancy theory is the rewards-goals relationship.
2. The model considers the achievement, need, reinforcement, and equity/organizational
justice theories.
C. Reinforcement theory recognizes that the organization’s rewards reinforce the
individual’s performance.
II. Summary and Implications for Management
A. The motivation theories in this chapter differ in their predictive strength.
B. Maslow’s hierarchy, McClelland’s needs, and the two-factor theory focus on needs.
1. None has found widespread support, although McClelland’s is the strongest,
particularly regarding the relationship between achievement and productivity.
C. Self-determination theory and related theories have merits to consider.
D. Goal-setting theory can be helpful but does not cover absenteeism, turnover, or job
satisfaction.
E. Self-efficacy theory contributes to our understanding of personal motivation.
F. Reinforcement theory can be helpful, but not regarding employee satisfaction or the
decision to quit.
G. Equity theory’s strongest legacy is that it provided the spark for research on
organizational justice, which has more support in the literature.
H. Expectancy theory can be helpful, but assumes employees have few constraints on
decision making, such as bias or incomplete information, and this limits its applicability.
I. Job engagement goes a long way toward explaining employee commitment.
J. Specific implications for managers are below:
1. Make sure extrinsic rewards for employees are not viewed as coercive, but instead
provide information about competence and relatedness.
2. Consider goal-setting theory: clear and difficult goals often lead to higher levels of
employee productivity.
3. Consider reinforcement theory regarding quality and quantity of work, persistence of
effort, absenteeism, tardiness, and accident rates.
4. Consult equity theory to help understand productivity, satisfaction, absence, and
turnover variables.
5. Expectancy theory offers a powerful explanation of performance variables such as
employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover.
EXPANDED CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Defining Motivation
A. What Is Motivation?
1. The level of motivation varies both between individuals and within individuals at
different times.
2. Motivation is the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and
persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.
3. We will narrow the focus to organizational goals in order to reflect our singular
interest in work-related behavior.
4. The three key elements of our definition are intensity, direction, and persistence.
a. Intensity is concerned with how hard a person tries. This is the element most of us
focus on when we talk about motivation.
b. Direction is the orientation that benefits the organization.
c. Persistence is a measure of how long a person can maintain his/her effort.
Motivated individuals stay with a task long enough to achieve their goal.
II. Early Theories of Motivation
A. Introduction
1. In the 1950s, three specific theories were formulated and are the best known.
2. These early theories are important to understand because they represent a foundation
from which contemporary theories have grown.
B. Hierarchy of Needs Theory
1. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is the most well-known theory of motivation.
He hypothesized that within every human being there exists a hierarchy of five needs.
(Exhibit 7-1)
a. Physiological: Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs.
b. Safety: Includes security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
c. Social: Includes affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
d. Esteem: Includes internal esteem factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and
achievement; and external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and
attention.
e. Self-actualization: The drive to become what one is capable of becoming;
includes growth, achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfillment.
2. As a need becomes substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant. No need
is ever fully gratified; a substantially satisfied need no longer motivates.
3. Maslow separated the five needs into higher and lower orders.
a. Physiological and safety needs are described as lower-order needs.
b. Social, esteem, and self-actualization are described as higher-order needs.
c. Higher-order needs are satisfied internally.
d. Lower-order needs are predominantly satisfied externally.
4. Maslow’s need theory has received wide recognition, particularly among practicing
managers.
a. Research does not generally validate the theory.
C. Two-Factor Theory
1. The two-factor theory is sometimes also called motivation-hygiene theory.
2. Proposed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg when he investigated the question,
“What do people want from their jobs?” He asked people to describe, in detail,
situations in which they felt exceptionally good or bad about their jobs. (Exhibit 7-2)
These responses were then tabulated and categorized.
3. From the categorized responses, Herzberg concluded:
a. Intrinsic factors, such as advancement, recognition, responsibility, and
achievement, seem to be related to job satisfaction.
b. Dissatisfied respondents tended to cite extrinsic factors, such as supervision, pay,
company policies, and working conditions.
c. The opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction.
d. Removing dissatisfying characteristics from a job does not necessarily make the
job satisfying.
e. Job satisfaction factors are separate and distinct from job dissatisfaction factors.
Managers who eliminate job dissatisfaction factors may not necessarily bring
about motivation. (Exhibit 7-3)
f. When hygiene factors are adequate, people will not be dissatisfied; neither will
they be satisfied. To motivate people, emphasize factors intrinsically rewarding
that are associated with the work itself or to outcomes directly derived from it.
4. Criticisms of the theory:
a. The procedure that Herzberg used is limited by its methodology.
b. The reliability of Herzberg’s methodology is questioned.
5. Regardless of criticisms, Herzberg’s theory has been widely read, and few managers
are unfamiliar with his recommendations.
D. McClelland’s Theory of Needs
1. McClelland’s theory of needs focuses on three needs: achievement, power, and
affiliation.
a. Need for achievement need (nAch): The drive to excel, to achieve in relation to
a set of standards, to strive to succeed.
i. High achievers perform best when they perceive their probability of success
as 50/50.
ii. They like to set goals that require stretching themselves a little.
iii. Predicted relationships:
(a) When jobs have a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback and
an intermediate degree of risk, high achievers are strongly motivated.
(b) A high need to achieve does not necessarily make someone a good
manager, especially in large organizations.
(c) Needs for affiliation and power tend to be closely related to managerial
success.
iv. The view that a high achievement need acts as an internal motivator
presupposes two U.S. cultural characteristics:
(a) Willingness to accept a moderate degree of risk (which excludes countries
with strong uncertainty-avoidance characteristics).
(b) Concern with performance (which applies to countries with strong
achievement characteristics).
b. Need for power: the need to make others behave in a way that they would not
have behaved otherwise.
i. The need for power (nPow): the desire to have impact, to be influential, and to
control others.
c. Need for affiliation (nAfl): the desire for friendly and close interpersonal
relationships
i. This need for affiliation is well established and accepted in research.
2. Among the early theories of motivation, McClelland’s has had the best research
support particularly cross-culturally.
III. Contemporary Theories of Motivation
A. Introduction
1. Contemporary theories have one thing in common:
a. Each has a reasonable degree of valid supporting documentation.
b. This doesn’t mean they are unquestionably right.
c. We call them “contemporary theories” because they represent the current state of
thinking in explaining employee motivation.
B. Self-Determination Theory
1. Self-determination theory proposes that people prefer to feel they have control over
their actions, so anything that makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an
obligation than a freely chosen activity will undermine motivation.
2. Much research on self-determination theory in OB has focused on cognitive
evaluation theory, which hypothesizes that extrinsic rewards will reduce intrinsic
interest in a task.
a. When people are paid for work, it feels less like something they want to do and
more like something they have to do.
3. Self-determination theory also proposes that in addition to being driven by a need for
autonomy, people seek ways to achieve competence and positive connections to
others.
4. When organizations use extrinsic rewards as payoffs for superior performance,
employees feel they are doing a good job less because of their own intrinsic desire to
excel than because that’s what the organization wants.
a. Eliminating extrinsic rewards can also shift an individual’s perception of why she
works on a task from an external to an internal explanation.
5. What does self-determination theory suggest for providing rewards?
a. If a computer programmer values writing code because she likes to solve
problems, a reward for working to an externally imposed standard she does not
accept, such as writing a certain number of lines of code every day, could feel
coercive, and her intrinsic motivation would suffer.
i. She would be less interested in the task and might reduce her effort.
b. A recent outgrowth of self-determination theory is self-concordance, which
considers how strongly peoples’ reasons for pursuing goals are consistent with
their interests and core values.
i. If individuals pursue goals because of an intrinsic interest, they are more
likely to attain their goals and are happy even if they do not.
(a) The process of striving toward them is fun.
ii. In contrast, people who pursue goals for extrinsic reasons (money, status, or
other benefits) are less likely to attain their goals and less happy even when
they do.
(a) Because the goals are less meaningful to them. OB research suggests that
people who pursue work goals for intrinsic reasons are more satisfied with
their jobs, feel they fit into their organizations better, and may perform
better.
6. Implications
a. For individuals, it means choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic
rewards.
b. For organizations, it means managers should provide intrinsic as well as extrinsic
incentives.
i. They need to make the work interesting, provide recognition, and support
employee growth and development.
ii. Employees who feel what they do is within their control and a result of free
choice are likely to be more motivated by their work and committed to their
employers.
C. Goal-Setting Theory
1. Goal-setting theory: Edwin Locke proposed that intentions to work toward a goal are
a major source of work motivation.
2. Goals tell an employee what needs to be done and how much effort is needed.
3. Evidence strongly suggests that specific goals increase performance, that difficult
goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals, and that
feedback leads to higher performance than does non-feedback.
4. Specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than do the generalized goals.
5. If factors like ability and acceptance of the goals are held constant, we can also state
that the more difficult the goal, the higher the level of performance.
a. Why are people motivated by difficult goals?
i. Challenging goals get our attention and thus, tend to help us focus.
ii. Difficult goals energize us because we have to work harder to attain them.
iii. When goals are difficult, people persist in trying to attain them.
iv. Difficult goals lead us to discover strategies that help us perform the job or
task more effectively.
b. People will do better when they get feedback on how well they are progressing
toward their goals. Self-generated feedback is a more powerful motivator than
externally generated feedback.
c. Recent research has shown that people monitor progress differently depending on
how close they are to goal accomplishment.
d. The evidence is mixed regarding the superiority of participative over assigned
goals. If employees have the opportunity to participate in the setting of their own
goals, will they try harder?
i. A major advantage of participation may be in increasing acceptance.
ii. If people participate in goal setting, they are more likely to accept even a
difficult goal than if they are arbitrarily assigned it by their boss.
iii. If participation isn’t used, then the individual assigning the goal needs to
clearly explain its purpose and importance.
6. There are contingencies in goal-setting theory. In addition to feedback, three other
factors influence the goals-performance relationship: goal commitment, task
characteristics, and national culture.
a. Goal commitment. Goal-setting theory presupposes that an individual is
committed to the goal.
i. Believes he or she can achieve the goal and wants to achieve it.
b. Goal commitment is most likely to occur when goals are made public, when the
individual has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather
than assigned.
c. Task Characteristics. Goals themselves seem to affect performance more
strongly when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather than
novel, and independent rather than interdependent.
d. On interdependent tasks, group goals are preferable.
e. National Culture. Setting specific, difficult, individual goals may have different
effects in different cultures.
i. In collectivistic and high-power-distance cultures, achievable moderate goals
can be more highly motivating than difficult ones.
ii. Finally, assigned goals appear to generate greater goal commitment in high
than in low power-distance cultures. More research is needed to assess how
goal constructs might differ across cultures.
7. When learning something is important, goals related to performance undermine
adaptation and creativity because people become too focused on outcomes and ignore
changing conditions.
8. Goals can lead employees to be too focused on a single standard to the exclusion of
all others.
9. Despite differences of opinion, most researchers do agree that goals are powerful in
shaping behavior.
10. Research has also found that people differ in the way they regulate their thoughts and
behaviors during goal pursuit.
11. Generally, people fall into one of two categories, though they could belong to both.
a. Those with a promotion focus strive for advancement and accomplishment and
approach conditions that move them closer toward desired goals.
b. Those with a prevention focus strive to fulfill duties and obligations and avoid
conditions that pull them away from desired goals.
12. Which is the better strategy? Ideally, it’s probably best to be both promotion and
prevention oriented.
13. Implementing goal-setting.
a. How do you make goal-setting operation in practice?
i. Management by Objectives (MBO)
(a) Participatively set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable.
ii. Organizations’ overall objectives are translated into specific objectives for
each succeeding level. (Exhibit 7-4)
b. Four ingredients common to MBO programs:
i. Goal specificity.
ii. Participation in decision making.
iii. Explicit time period.
iv. Performance feedback.
c. MBO programs are common in many business, health care, educational,
government, and nonprofit organizations.
14. Goal Setting and Ethics. The relationship between goal-setting and ethics is quite
complex: If we emphasize the attainment of goals, what is the cost?
a. Time pressure often increases as we are nearing a goal, which can tempt us to act
unethically to achieve it.
b. Specifically, we may forgo mastering tasks and adopt avoidance techniques so we
don’t look bad, both of which can incline us toward unethical choices.
IV. Other Contemporary Theories of Motivation
A. Self-Efficacy Theory
1. Self-efficacy theory, known also as social cognitive theory and social learning
theory, refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.
a. The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your ability to
succeed in a task.
b. Self-efficacy can create a positive spiral in which those with high efficacy become
more engaged in their tasks and then, in turn, increase performance, which
increases efficacy further.
c. Changes in self-efficacy over time are related to changes in creative performance
as well.
d. Individuals high in self-efficacy also seem to respond to negative feedback with
increased effort and motivation, while those low in self-efficacy are likely to
lessen their effort after negative feedback.
2. Goal-setting theory and self-efficacy theory don’t compete with one another; they
complement each other. (Exhibit 7-5)
3. When a manager sets difficult goals for employees, it leads employees to have higher
levels of self-efficacy, leading them to set higher goals for their own performance.
4. Albert Bandura, developer of self-efficacy theory, identified four ways to increase
self-efficacy:
a. Enactive mastery—gaining relevant experience with the task or job.
b. Vicarious modeling—becoming more confident because you see someone else
doing the task.
c. Verbal persuasion—more confident because someone convinces you that you
have the skills.
d. Arousal—leads to an energized state driving a person to complete the task.
5. The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through the Pygmalion effect
or the Galatea effect.
i. The Pygmalion effect is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which believing
something can make it true.
ii. In some studies, teachers were told their students had very high IQ scores
when in fact they spanned a range from high to low.
iii. Consistent with the Pygmalion effect, the teachers spent more time with the
students they thought were smart, gave them more challenging assignments,
and expected more of them—all of which led to higher student self-efficacy
and better grades.
iv. This strategy has also been used in the workplace.
b. Training programs often make use of enactive mastery by having people practice
and build their skills.
i. In fact, one reason training works is that it increases self-efficacy. Individuals
with higher levels of self-efficacy also appear to reap more benefits from
training programs and are more likely to use their training on the job.
B. Reinforcement Theory
1. Goal-setting is a cognitive approach, proposing that an individual’s purposes direct
his action.
2. Reinforcement theory, in contrast, takes a behavioristic view, arguing that
reinforcement conditions behavior.
a. The two theories are clearly at odds philosophically. Reinforcement theorists see
behavior as environmentally caused.
b. You need not be concerned, they would argue, with internal cognitive events;
what controls behavior is reinforcers—any consequences that, when immediately
following responses, increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated.
3. Reinforcement theory ignores the inner state of the individual and concentrates solely
on what happens when he or she takes some action.
a. Because it does not concern itself with what initiates behavior, it is not, strictly
speaking, a theory of motivation.
b. But it does provide a powerful means of analyzing what controls behavior, and
this is why we typically consider it in discussions of motivation.
4. Operant conditioning theory argues that people learn to behave to get something
they want or to avoid something they don’t want.
a. Unlike reflexive or unlearned behavior, operant behavior is influenced by the
reinforcement or lack of reinforcement brought about by its consequences.
b. Reinforcement strengthens a behavior and increases the likelihood it will be
repeated.
c. B. F. Skinner, one of the most prominent advocates of operant conditioning,
argued that creating pleasing consequences to follow specific forms of behavior
would increase the frequency of that behavior.
i. He demonstrated that people will most likely engage in desired behaviors if
they are positively reinforced for doing so; that rewards are most effective if
they immediately follow the desired response; and that behavior that is not
rewarded, or is punished, is less likely to be repeated.
d. The concept of operant conditioning was part of Skinner’s broader concept of
behaviorism, which argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively
unthinking manner.
i. Skinner’s form of radical behaviorism rejects feelings, thoughts, and other
states of mind as causes of behavior.
ii. In short, people learn to associate stimulus and response, but their conscious
awareness of this association is irrelevant.
e. You can see illustrations of operant conditioning everywhere that reinforcements
are contingent on some action on your part.
f. Of course, the linkage can also teach individuals to engage in behaviors that work
against the best interests of the organization.
g. Individuals can learn by being told or by observing what happens to other people,
as well as through direct experiences.
i. By watching models—parents, teachers, peers, film and television performers,
bosses, and so forth, we can learn through both observation and direct
experience and it is called social-learning theory.
ii. Although social-learning theory is an extension of operant conditioning—that
is, it assumes behavior is a function of consequences—it also acknowledges
the effects of observational learning and perception.
iii. People respond to the way they perceive and define consequences, not to the
objective consequences themselves.
iv. Models are central to the social-learning viewpoint. Four processes determine
their influence on an individual:
(a) Attentional processes. People learn from a model only when they
recognize and pay attention to its critical features.
(b) Retention processes. A model’s influence depends on how well the
individual remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer
readily available.
(c) Motor reproduction processes. After a person has seen a new behavior
by observing the model, watching must be converted to doing.
(d) Reinforcement processes. Individuals are motivated to exhibit the
modeled behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided.
C. Equity Theory/Organizational Justice
1. What role does equity play in motivation?
a. Equity theory: individuals make comparisons of their job inputs and outcomes
relative to those of others and then respond to any inequities. (Exhibit 7-6)
b. If we perceive our ratio to be equal to that of the relevant others with whom we
compare ourselves, a state of equity is said to exist. We perceive our situation as
fair.
c. When we see the ratio as unequal, we experience equity tension.
2. When employees perceive an inequity, they can be predicted to make one of six
choices:
a. Change their inputs.
b. Change their outcomes.
c. Distort perceptions of self.
d. Distort perceptions of others.
e. Choose a different referent.
f. Leave the field.
3. Some of these propositions have been supported, but others haven’t.
a. First, inequities created by overpayment do not seem to significantly affect
behavior in most work situations.
i. People have more tolerance of overpayment inequities than of underpayment
inequities or are better able to rationalize them.
ii. It’s pretty damaging to a theory when half the equation falls apart.
b. Second, not all people are equity sensitive.
i. A few actually prefer outcome-input ratios lower than the referent
comparisons.
ii. Predictions from equity theory are not likely to be very accurate about these
“benevolent types.”
4. Organizational justice (fairness in the workplace) draws a bigger picture.
a. For the most part, employees evaluate how fairly they are treated along four
dimensions. (Exhibit 7-7)
5. Distributive Justice. Distributive justice is concerned with the fairness of the
outcomes, such as pay and recognition that employees receive.
6. Procedural Justice. Although employees care a lot about what outcomes are
distributed (distributive justice), they also care a lot about how outcomes are
distributed.
a. While distributive justice looks at what outcomes are allocated, procedural
justice examines how outcomes are allocated.
i. Having direct influence over how decisions are made, or at the very least
being able to present your opinion to decision makers, creates a sense of
control and makes us feel empowered.
ii. Employees also perceive that procedures are fairer when decision makers
follow several “rules.”
b. It turns out that procedural and distributive justice combine to influence people’s
perceptions of fairness.