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Questions for Review
7-1. What are the three key elements of motivation?
Answer: Motivation is the processes that account for an individual’s intensity,
direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal – specifically, an
Learning Objective: Describe the three key elements of motivation
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
7-2. What are some early theories of motivation? How applicable are they today?
Answer: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory; McGregor’s Theory X and
Theory Y; Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory; and McClelland’s Theory of Needs.
Learning Objective: Compare the early theories of motivation
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
7-3. What are the similarities and differences between self-determination theory and
goal-setting theory?
Answer: 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.
Learning Objective: Contrast the elements of self-determination theory and goal-setting theory;
Demonstrate the differences among self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory; equity theory, and
expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
7-4. What are the key principles of self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory, equity
theory, and expectancy theory?
Answer: Self-efficacy theory, also known as social cognitive theory or social
learning theory, refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of
performing a task. Individuals with high self-efficacy have greater confidence in
their ability to succeed. Albert Bandura proposed that self-efficacy can be
increased through enactive mastery, vicarious modeling, verbal persuasion, and
Learning Objective: Demonstrate the differences among self-efficacy theory, reinforcement
theory, equity theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
7-5. Why is employee job engagement important to managers?
Answer: One key to understanding employee engagement is the degree to which
an employee believes it is meaningful to engage in work. Another factor is a
match between the individual’s values and those of the organization. Leadership
behaviors that inspire workers to a greater sense of mission also increase
Learning Objective: Identify the implications of employee job engagement for management
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
7-6. How do the contemporary theories of motivation compare to one another?
Answer: Contemporary theories have one thing in common: each has a
reasonable degree of valid supporting documentation. This doesn’t mean they are
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. Job
engagement refers to the investment of an employee’s physical, cognitive, and
Learning Objectives: Demonstrate the differences among self-efficacy theory, reinforcement
theory, equity theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Experiential Exercise
Organizational Justice Task
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Demonstrate how organizational justice is a refinement of equity theory Describe how
contemporary theories of motivation complement one another; Demonstrate the differences among
self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory, equity theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Break the class into groups of three or four.
7-7. Each person should recall an instance in which he or she was (a) treated especially
fairly and (b) treated especially unfairly. Work-related instances are preferable, but
non-work examples are fine too. What do the stories have in common?
7-8. Spend several minutes discussing whether the instance was more distributive,
procedural, informational, or interpersonal in nature. What was the source of the
fair/unfair treatment? How did you feel, and how did you respond?
7-9. Each group should develop a set of recommendations for handling the unfair
situations in a fairer manner. Select a leader for your group who will briefly
summarize the unfair instances, along with the group’s recommendations for
handling them better. The discussion should reflect the four types of justice
discussed in this chapter (distributive, procedural, informational, and
interpersonal).
Ethical Dilemma
The New GPA
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Contrast the elements of self-determination theory and goal-setting theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
In the college classroom, is an A the new B? Grade inflation is of particular concern in
graduate programs, where it is not uncommon for 75 percent of grades to be As. In fact,
the most frequent grade given in U.S. universities is an A, by 43 percent. This percentage
has risen from 30 percent 20 years ago, representing a significant increase. And at
Harvard, the average grade is an A-. While this may sound like a great place to be, there
is a powerful downside to grade inflation. If an A- is the new class average, the crowding
of grades at the top end of the scale can sap away the student’s motivation to work hard.
Organizations also have a tougher time of evaluating candidates’ transcripts if grades are
inflated, which means they must rely more on results of standardized tests, often ones
which were taken in high school, that may not reflect a student’s current or best
capabilities. Professors too may be less motivated to accurately assess and teach students
through strong grading feedback that would help students learn.
There is no easy solution to the phenomenon of grade inflation. In a culture where
“everyone does it,” schools that take a stand against grade inflation produce students with
potentially lower grades—but no less education—than their peers. These students may
not be able to stand out in the increasingly competitive job market even when they are
equally prepared. Over time, their schools will not be able to boast of the
accomplishments of their graduates in terms of grades and employment placements. No
longer will these schools look as attractive to potential students, so enrollment and thus
revenue will suffer, endangering the institution’s ability to teach. Therefore, eliminating
grade inflation poses powerful disincentives, and few if any colleges have successfully
tried it. There is much more motivation for organizations, schools, professors, and
students to continue grade inflation practices, even though they may be wrong.
Questions
7-10. How might forcing equitable grade distributions with C as average motivate
students?
7-11. If around 75 percent of grades in graduate programs are As, have grades become
meaningless as motivators?
7-12. State funding of many schools has decreased dramatically over the years,
increasing the pressure on administrators to generate revenue through tuition
increases and other means. How might this pressure create ethical tensions among
the need to generate revenue, student retention, and grading?
Sources: A. Ellin, “Failure Is Not an Option,” The New York Times, April 15, 2012, 13–14; A. Massoia,“The New Normal: The
Problem of Grade Inflation in American Schools,” The Huffington Post, January 12, 2015,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angelina-massoia/the-new-normal-the-proble_b_6146236. html15; and S. Slavov, “How to Fix
College Grade Inflation,” US News, December 26, 2013,
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/12/26/why-college-grade-inflation-isa-real-problem-and-how-to-fi
x-it.
Teaching Notes
Students’ responses will vary significantly. This exercise will produce stimulating discussion
in class. No preparation is necessary other than having completed the reading of the chapter.
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Case Incident 1
The Demotivation of CEO Pay
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Demonstrate the differences among self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory, equity
theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Quick: How much did your CEO get paid this year? What did any CEO get paid? You
may not know the exact amounts, but you probably think the answer is, “Too much
money.” According to research from 40 countries that probed the thoughts of CEOs,
cabinet ministers, and unskilled employees, we all think leaders should be paid less.
Beyond that, we are clueless.
Where we err can be calculated by an organization’s pay ratio, or the ratio between CEO
pay and average worker pay. In the United States, for example, the average S&P 500
CEO is paid 354 times what the lowest-ranking employee makes, for a ratio of 354:1
(eight times greater than in the 1950s). U.S. participants in the study estimated that the
ratio between CEOs and unskilled workers was only 30:1! Americans are not alone in
making this gross underestimate: Participants from Germany, for instance, estimated a
ratio of around 18:1 when the actual is closer to 151:1.
In general, people worldwide are unhappy with—and demotivated by—their perception
of inequity, even when their estimates of the ratios are far below the reality. Taking the
German example further, the ideal ratio of CEO pay to unskilled workers as judged by
study participants was around 7:1. To put it all together, then, people think the ratio
should be 7:1, believe it is 18:1, and don’t realize it is actually 151:1. For all the countries
worldwide in the study, the estimated ratios were above the ideal ratios, meaning
participants universally thought CEOs are overpaid.
How does this affect the average worker’s motivation? It appears that the less a person
earns, the less satisfied the person is with the pay gap. Yet virtually everyone in the study
wanted greater equality. The ideal ratio, they indicated, should be between 5:1 and 4:1,
whereas they thought it was between 10:1 and 8:1. They believed skilled employees
should earn more money than unskilled individuals, but that the gap between them should
be smaller.
No one in the United States would likely think the 354:1 ratio is going to dip to the ideal
of 7:1 soon, although some changes in that direction have been suggested. Other
countries have tried to be more progressive. The Social Democratic Party in Switzerland
proposed a ceiling for the ratio of 12:1, but putting a cap into law was considered too
extreme by voters. No countries have yet been able to successfully impose a maximum
ratio.
Therefore, the job of restoring justice perceptions has fallen to CEOs themselves. Many
CEOs, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google, have taken $1
annual salaries, though they still earn substantial compensation by exercising their stock
options. In one extreme recent example, Gravity CEO Dan Price cut his salary by $1
million to $70,000, using the money to give significant raises to the payment processing
firm’s employees. Price said he expects to “see more of this.” In addition, shareholders of
some companies, such as Verizon, are playing a greater role in setting CEO compensation
by reducing awards when the company underperforms.
Sources: J. Ewing, “Swiss Voters Decisively Reject a Measure to Put Limits on Executive Pay,” The New York Times, November 24,
2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/business/swiss-reject-measure-to-curb-executive-pay.html?_r=0; C. Isidore, “Gravity
Payments CEO Takes 90% Pay Cut to Give Workers Huge Raise,” CNN Money, April 15, 2015,
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/14/news/companies/
ceo-pay-cuts-pay-increases/; S. Kiatpongsan and M. I. Norton, “How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More
Equal Pay,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9, no. 6 (2014): 587–93; A. Kleinman, “Mark Zuckerberg $1 Salary Puts Him in
Elite Group of $1 CEOs,” The Huffington Post, April 29, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com; and G. Morgenson, “If Shareholders Say
‘Enough Already,’ the Board May Listen,” The New York Times, April 6, 2013, www.newyorktimes.com.
Questions
7-13. What do you think is the ideal ratio? Why might the ideal vary from country to
country?
Answer: Responses to this question will vary depending on each student’s
opinion. The ideal might vary from country to country based on each country’s
7-14. How does the executive compensation issue relate to equity theory? How should
we determine what is a “fair” level of pay for top executives?
Answer: There are two viewpoints for application of equity theory to executive
compensation. First, the executives themselves will have a perspective based on
their compensation in comparison to executives in similar-sized companies and
7-15. The study found that participants thought performance should be essential or very
important in deciding pay. What might be the positive motivational consequences
for average employees if CEO pay is tied to performance?
Answer: This item can be assigned as a Discussion Question in
Case Incident 2
The Sleepiness Epidemic
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Describe the three key elements of motivation; Demonstrate the differences among
self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory, equity theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Ronit Rogosziniski, a financial planner, loses sleep because of her 5 a.m. wake-up call, so
she sneaks to her car for a quick lunchtime snooze each day. She is not alone, as
evidenced by the comments on Wall Street Oasis, a website frequented by investment
bankers who blog about their travails. Should the legions of secret nappers be blessed or
cursed by their organizations for this behavior? Research suggests they should be
encouraged.
Sleep is a problem, or rather, lack of quality zzz’s is a costly organizational problem we
can no longer overlook. Sleepiness, a technical term in this case that denotes a true
physiological pressure for sleep, lowers performance, and increases accidents, injuries,
and unethical behavior. One survey found that 29 percent of respondents slept on the job,
12 percent were late to work, 4 percent left work early, and 2 percent did not go to work
due to sleepiness. While sleepiness affects 33 percent of the U.S. population, the clinical
extreme, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), is fully debilitating to an additional 11
percent.
In a vicious cycle where the effects of sleepiness affect the organization, which leads to
longer work hours and thus more sleepiness, the reason for the sleepiness epidemic seems
to be the modern workplace. Full-time employees have been getting less sleep over the
past 30 years as a direct result of longer work days, putting them more at risk for sleep
disorders. Sleepiness directly decreases attention span, memory, information processing,
affect, and emotion regulation capabilities. Research on sleep deprivation has found that
tired workers experience higher levels of back pain, heart disease, depression, work
withdrawal, and job dissatisfaction. All these outcomes have significant implications for
organizational effectiveness and costs. Sleepiness may account for $14 billion of medical
expenses, up to $69 billion for auto accidents, and up to $24 billion in workplace
accidents in the United States annually.
Although being around bright light and loud sounds, standing, eating, and practicing
good posture can reduce sleepiness temporarily, there is only one lasting cure: more hours
of good-quality sleep. Some companies are encouraging napping at work as a solution to
the problem, and one survey of 600 companies revealed that 6 percent had dedicated nap
rooms. In addition, in a poll of 1,508 workers conducted by the National Sleep
Foundation, 34 percent said they were allowed to nap at work. These policies may be a
good start, but they are only Band-Aid approaches since more and better sleep is what’s
needed. Researchers suggest that organizations should consider flexible working hours
and greater autonomy to allow employees to maximize their productive waking hours.
Given the high costs of sleepiness, it’s time for them to take the problem much more
seriously.
Sources: Based on C. Delo, “Why Companies are Cozying Up to Napping at Work,” CNN (August 18, 2011),
(www.management.fortune.cnn.com); D. T. Wagner, C. M. Barnes, V. K. G. Lim, and D. L. Ferris, “Lost Sleep and Cyberloafing:
Evidence from the Laboratory and a Daylight Saving Time Quasi-Experiment,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97 (2012), pp.
1068–-1076; and D. Wescott, “Do Not Disturb,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek (April 23–rd-29th, 2012), p. 90.
Questions
7-16. Should organizations be concerned about the sleepiness of their employees? What
factors influencing sleep might be more or less under the control of an
organization?
Answer: Most students will probably agree that organizations should be
concerned about their employees being sleep-deprived. Numerous studies show
that sleep deprivation has a negative effect on performance, and that it can
7-17. How might sleep deprivation influence aspects of expectancy theory? How might
the incorporation of “nap rooms” for sleep-deprived employees demonstrate
aspects of equity theory?
Answer: Expectancy theory suggests that the strength of a tendency to act in a
certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed
by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. It
focuses on three relationships: effort-performance; performance-rewards; and
7-18. If you were a manager who noticed your employees were sleep-deprived, what
steps might you take to help them? What theories of motivation could you use to
help them?
Answer: This item can be assigned as a Discussion Question in
My Management Lab
Go to mymanagementlab.com for Auto-graded writing questions as well as the
following Assisted-graded writing questions:
7-19. In regard to the Ethical Dilemma, do you believe your school has experienced grade
inflation? Do you think schools like yours should endeavor to curtail grade
inflation? What are the pros and cons for you as a student?
7-20. In considering Case Incident 1, do you think the government has a legitimate role in
controlling executive compensation? How might aspects of justice (distributive,
procedural, and informational) inform this debate?
7-21. MyManagementLab Only – comprehensive writing assignment for this chapter.
Instructor’s Choice
Making the Connection
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objectives: Compare the early theories of motivation; Contrast the elements of
self-determination theory and goal-setting theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Many companies have pay-for-performance programs (e.g., sales incentive programs). In
fact, some members of the class may have held similar jobs. If so, ask them to briefly
characterize the pros and cons of such positions. What behavior is an organization trying
to encourage with such plans? What are the ethical implications for the three main
parties: the employee, the customer, and the organization? How does the organization use
outcomes such as pay and bonuses to promote high motivation and performance?
Student teams could discuss the issues and then get back together for a class discussion.
Exploring OB Topics on the Web
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Demonstrate the differences among self-efficacy theory, reinforcement theory, equity
theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
1. Motivation the old fashioned way? Read how Bill Mork reenergized his
workforce and realized real savings in the process. Go to:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19941101/3187.html and read the article on his company’s
2. What motivated you to go to college? What is motivating you to stay and
succeed? Visit these sites for ideas and tips for being successful and staying motivated
during your academic career.
http://www.academictips.org/acad/collegemotivation.html
http://www.career.arizona.edu/student/choosing-a-career/planning-your-career
3. Stock options are used as management and employee motivators. Are they
powerful motivators? Read the article “Reward System: Increasing Performance and
Employee Happiness” found on the website listed below. Write a one-page reaction paper
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/motivating_reward_s
ystem.html
4. For brief outlines of classic motivation theories go to:
http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ and
http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/FIS/Courses/LIS1230/LIS1230sharma/motive1.htm
Select one theory that you think has application to the job you have now, or a
previous job, and write a short description of the job and how the theory was
5. Read the article found on
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7research/7calag07.htm concerning piece
rate vs. hourly rate for agricultural workers. Write a journal entry or short reaction paper
