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1.
II. Job Engagement
1. Job engagement: the investment of an employee’s physical, cognitive, and
emotional energies into job performance.
or finding it interesting drives performance.
2. Many studies attempt to measure this deeper level of commitment.
a) The Gallup organization has been using 12 questions to assess the extent
have higher levels of productivity, fewer safety incidents, and lower
turnover.
engagement associated with task performance and citizenship
behavior.
3. What makes people more likely to be engaged in their jobs?
engage in work.
b) This is partially determined by job characteristics and access to sufficient
resources to work effectively.
organization.
d) Leadership behaviors that inspire workers to a greater sense of mission
also increase employee engagement.
4. One of the critiques of engagement is that the construct is partially redundant
with job attitudes like satisfaction or stress.
a) However, engagement questionnaires usually assess motivation and
absorption in a task, quite unlike job satisfaction questionnaires.
job attitudes.
6. Other critics note that there may be a “dark side” to engagement, as evidenced
responsibilities become an unwelcome intrusion.
7. Further research exploring how engagement relates to these negative
outcomes may help clarify whether some highly engaged employees might be
getting “too much of a good thing.”
III. Integrating Contemporary Motivation Theories
foundation is the expectancy model.
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 216
goals.
1. Each of these relationships, in turn, is influenced by certain factors. For effort
fair and objective.
2. The final link in expectancy theory is the rewards-goals relationship.
3. The model considers the achievement, need, reinforcement, and
equity/organizational justice theories.
individual’s performance.
1. Individuals will compare the rewards (outcomes) they receive from the inputs
they make with the outcome-input ratio of relevant others and inequities may
influence the effort expended.
IV. Summary and Implications for Management
efforts toward a goal.
B. Although not well supported, many foundational early theories of motivation
focused on the needs that employees have along with the consequences of need
satisfaction.
relationships.
D. Beyond these theories, various forms of organizational justice (e.g., distributive,
procedural, and interactional), all deriving from equity theory, are important in
motivating employees.
including their job engagement.
F. Overall, motivation underlies how and why employees exert effort to engage in
performance activities, which in turn meet personal or organizational goals.
G. Specific implications for managers are below:
3. Try to align or tie in employee goals to the goals of your organization.
employees.
5. Expectancy theory offers a powerful explanation of performance variables
such as employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover.
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 217
6. When making decisions regarding resources in your organization, make sure
to consider how the resources are being distributed (and who’s impacted), the
fairness of the decision, along with whether your actions demonstrate that you
respect those involved.
Career OBjectives
Why won’t he take my advice?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objectives: 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: Diverse and multicultural work environment; Reflective thinking
The new guy in the office is nice enough, but he’s straight out of college, and I have 20
years of experience in the field. I’d like to help him out, but he won’t take it, no matter
how I approach him. Is there anything I can do to motivate him to accept my advice? He
badly needs a few pointers. —James
Dear James:
It’s great that you want to help, and surely you have wisdom to offer. But let’s start with
this: When is the last time you took someone else’s advice? Chances are it’s easier for
you to remember the last time you didn’t take someone’s advice than when you did.
That’s because we want success on our own terms, and we don’t like the idea that a ready
answer was out there all along (and we missed it). “When somebody says, ‘You should
do something,’ the subtext is: ‘You’re an idiot for not already doing it,’” said psychologist
Alan Goldberg. “Nobody takes advice under those conditions.” So under what conditions
do people take advice?
There are two parts to the motivation equation for advice: what your coworker wants to
hear, and how you can approach him. For the first part, keep this rule in mind: He wants
to hear that whatever decisions he’s made are brilliant. If he hears anything different from
that, he’s likely to tune you out or keep talking until you come over to his side.
For the second part, your coworker’s motivation to accept and, more importantly, act on
advice has a lot to do with how you approach him. Are you likely to “impart your wisdom
to the younger generation?” Anything like “I wish I had known this when I was just
starting out like you” advice will likely have him thinking you (and your advice) are out
of date. Are you going to give “If I were you, I would do this” advice? He may resent
your intrusion. According to research, what is most likely to work is a gentle suggestion,
phrased as a request. Ravi Dhar, a director at Yale, said, “Interrogatives have less
reactance and may be more effective.” You might say, for instance, “Would you consider
trying out this idea?”
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 218
Take heart, the problem isn’t that we don’t like advice—we do, as long as we seek it.
According to research, we are more motivated toward advice when we are facing
important decisions, so good timing may work in your favor. When he does ask, you may
suggest that he writes down the parameters of his choices and his interpretations of the
ethics of each decision. Researcher Dan Ariely has found that we are much more
motivated to make morally right decisions when we’ve considered the moral implications
in a forthright manner. In this way, your coworker may motivate himself to make the
right decisions.
Keep trying!
Sources: D. Ariely, “What Price for the Soul of a Stranger?” The Wall Street Journal, May 10–11, 2014, C12; J. Queenan, “A Word to
the Wise,” The Wall Street Journal, February 8–9, 2014, C1–C2; and S. Reddy, “The Trick to Getting People to Take the Stairs? Just
Ask,” The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2015, R4.
Myth or Science?
“Helping Others and Being a Good Citizen Is Good for
Your Career”
This exercise contributes to:
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
We might think we should motivate employees to display organizational citizenship
behavior (OCB), and that helping others would benefit their careers. We would probably
also believe our own OCB will yield us career benefits. Surprisingly, there is some
careers thus benefit because of their helpfulness toward coworkers.
However, in other organizations, employees are evaluated more on what gets done. Here,
employees are determined to be “good” performers if they meet objective goals such as
billing clients a certain number of hours or reaching a certain sales volume. When
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 219
The upshot? There may be a trade-off between being a good performer and being a good
citizen. In organizations that focus more on behaviors, following your motivation to be a
good citizen can help to accomplish your career goals. However, in organizations that
deeds.
Sources: D. M. Bergeron, “The Potential Paradox of Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Good Citizens at What Cost?” Academy of
Management Review, 32, no. 4 (2007); and D. M. Bergeron, A. J. Shipp, B. Rosen, & and S. A. Furst, “Organizational Citizenship
Behavior and Career Outcomes: The Cost of Being a Good Citizen,” Journal of Management, 39, no. 4 (2013), pp. 958–984.
Class Exercise
how their work gets done.
3. Then, ask students to consider the benefits and drawbacks of evaluating
employees on what gets done.
4. Discuss the type of organization where each approach could be successful and
where it might not.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
(http://go.secondlife.com/landing/education/) for more information.
An Ethical Choice
Motivated by Big Brother
This exercise contributes to:
theory, and expectancy theory
Learning Outcome: Describe the major theories of motivation and relate them to organizational
performance
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
Technology is a great thing. The Internet provides us with instant access to an abundance
center teams, so it asked around 100 workers to wear badges for a few weeks that tracked
their whereabouts. Discovering that the most productive workers interacted most
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 220
motivation of the workers?
Other companies track employees to ensure they are hard at work, which risks completely
demotivating some. Accurate Biometrics, for example, uses computer monitoring to
oversee its telecommuters. Says Timothy Daniels, VP of Operations, looking at websites
his employees have visited “enables us to keep a watchful eye without being
something that might help them and the organization as a whole? Or are they being
monitored to ensure they never slack off? Finally, it should be made clear which
behaviors are inappropriate. Taking a legitimate work break is different from spending
hours on a social networking site. These guidelines should increase the likelihood that
March 7, 2003, www.wsj.com.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into groups of three to five students each.
2. Ask the groups to discuss whether it is ethical for employers to track their
employees.
been tracked.
4. Finally, ask each group to develop a list of “acceptable” actions by companies and
a list of “unacceptable” actions.
5. Each group should present their results to the class. Were the lists similar across
groups? What does this tell students about the ethics of employee tracking by
employers?
Teaching Notes
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-k
e-anna-skipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 221
MyLab Management
Watch It!
Motivation (TWZ Role Play)
to complete the video exercise.
MyLab Management
Personal Inventory Assessments
Work Motivation Indicator
Do you find that some jobs motivate you more than others? Take this PIA to determine
your work motivation.
MyLab Management
Try It!
Motivation
to complete the video exercise.
Point/Counterpoint
Goals Get You to Where You Want to Be
This exercise contributes to:
performance
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Point
Of course this is a true statement. Goal-setting theory is one of the best-supported
theories in all the motivation literature. Study after study has consistently shown the
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 222
with a particular income level, or improve your golf game? If you want to be a high
performer, merely set a specific, difficult goal and let nature take its course. That goal
will dominate your attention, cause you to focus, and make you try harder.
best when they said, “The effects of goal-setting are very reliable.” In short, goal-setting
theory is among the most valid and practical theories of motivation in organizational
psychology.
Counterpoint
yet were forced to take on a part-time job or delay retirement altogether in order to
continue to make ends meet. When too many things are out of our control, our difficult
goals become impossible.
Or, consider this: goals can lead to unethical behavior and poorer performance. How
ball even when he should have.
In addition to this anecdotal evidence, research has directly linked goal-setting to
cheating. We should heed the warning of Professor Maurice E. Schweitzer—that
“Goal-setting is like a powerful medication”—before blindly accepting that specific,
difficult goal.
Class Exercise
In most universities, professors use fear to motivate students to performance. They are
likely to say something like, “Study hard to make a good grade on the test. If you don’t,
Chapter 7 Motivation Concepts Page 223
rather that learn the information.
1. Divide the class into groups of three to five students each.
2. Ask students to discuss what their goals are in the class.
3. Students should identify their first objective. Is it to make a grade? Or is it to learn
the topic? Ask them to be honest. Most often, the former is most students’ primary
objective.
expectation theory.
5. Discuss whether or not these theories would make a difference in a professor’s
approach to the motivation of students. Do the students believe their performance
would be affected by different motivational approaches?
Teaching Notes
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-k
e-anna-skipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.