Chapter 8 Motivation: From Concepts to Applications Page
Chapter 8
Motivation:
From Concepts to Applications
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
environment.
8-2. Compare the main ways jobs can be redesigned.
8-3. Explain how specific alternative work arrangements can motivate employees.
8-4. Describe how employee involvement measures can motivate employees.
employee motivation.
8-6. Show how flexible benefits turn benefits into motivators.
8-7. Identify the motivational benefits of intrinsic rewards.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter.
Text Exercises
Myth or Science?: “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”
MyLab Management
oPersonal Inventory Assessments: Diagnosing Poor Performance and
Enhancing Motivation
oWatch It!: Zappos: Motivating Employees Through Company Culture
oTry It!: Simulation: Motivation: From Concepts to Applications
Career OBjectives: How Can I Get Flextime?
An Ethical Choice: Sweatshops and Worker Safety
Point/Counterpoint: “Face-Time” Matters
Questions for Review
Experiential Exercise: Developing an Organizational Development and
Compensation Plan for Automotive Sales Consultants
Ethical Dilemma: You Want Me to Do WHAT?
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Text Cases
Case Incident 1: Motivation for Leisure
Case Incident 2: Pay Raises Every Day
Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s
Choice reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s Choice
activities are centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student
experiences. Some can be used in class in their entirety, while others require some
additional work on the student’s part. The course instructor may choose to use these at
any time throughout the class—some may be more effective as icebreakers, while some
may be used to pull together various concepts covered in the chapter.
Web Exercises
and ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics
on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to
your class, and make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as
an out-of-class activity or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
Understanding what motivates individuals is ultimately key to organizational
performance. Employees whose differences are recognized, who feel valued, and who
can work in jobs that are tailored to their strengths and interests will be motivated to
perform at the highest levels. Employee participation can also increase employee
productivity, commitment to work goals, motivation, and job satisfaction.
However, we cannot overlook the powerful role of organizational rewards in influencing
motivation. Pay, benefits, and intrinsic rewards must be carefully and thoughtfully
designed in order to enhance employee motivation toward positive organizational
outcomes. Specific implications for managers are below:
Recognize individual differences. Spend the time necessary to understand what’s
important to each employee. Design jobs to align with individual needs and
maximize their motivation potential.
Use goals and feedback. You should give employees firm, specific goals, and they
should get feedback on how well they are faring in pursuit of those goals.
Allow employees to participate in decisions that affect them. Employees can
contribute to setting work goals, choosing their own benefits packages, and
solving productivity and quality problems.
Link rewards to performance. Rewards should be contingent on performance, and
employees must perceive the link between the two.
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Check the system for equity. Employees should perceive that experience, skills,
abilities, effort, and other obvious inputs explain differences in performance and
hence in pay, job assignments, and other obvious rewards.
This chapter begins with a vignette describing the job rotation programs some employers have put in place.
As we can see from the number of firms switching to job rotation methods; task characteristics, job design
elements, work arrangements, and a sense of agency are all powerful motivators within the realm of work
—these are elements that can be altered or changed perhaps just by letting workers try something new.
However, the process of motivating is more complex than it may seem on the surface, and requires an
understanding of many job design and redesign elements, along with a consideration of the motivation
concepts described in the previous chapter.
In Chapter 7, we focused on motivation theories. While it’s important to understand the underlying
concepts, it’s also important to see how you can use them as a manager. In this chapter, we apply
motivation concepts to practices, beginning with job design.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Motivating by Job Design: The Job Characteristics Model (Exhibit 8-1)
A. The job characteristics model (JCM) proposed that any job may be described by
five core job dimensions:
identifiable piece of work.
other people.
4. Autonomy: the degree to which the job provides the worker freedom,
independence, and discretion in scheduling the work and determining the
procedures to be used in carrying it out.
5. Feedback: the degree to which carrying out the work activities generates
generate higher and more satisfying job performance.
1. We can combine the core dimensions of the JCM into a single
predictive index, called the motivating potential score
(MPS) and calculated as follows:
2. MPS = Skill variety + Task identity + Task signiticance x
Autonomy x Feedback
3
conclusion—that supportive leadership behaviors improved the job characteristics
of R&D professionals
D. Job Redesign
1. Introduction
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E. Job rotation and Job Enrichment
1. Periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another.
a. Often referred to as cross-training.
c. Job rotation does have drawbacks.
i. Training costs increase when each rotation necessitates a round of
training.
that role.
iii. Job rotation creates disruptions when members of the work group have
tomust adjust to new employees.
F. Job Enrichment
1. In job enrichment, high-level responsibilities are added to the job to increase a
sense of purpose, direction, and meaning and increase intrinsic motivation.
2. Enriching a job in this way is different from enlarging it, or adding more tasks
meaning.
a. Job enrichment has its roots in Herzberg’s theories of providing hygiene,
3. Early reviews suggested that job enrichment can be effective at reducing
turnover, almost twice as effective as giving employees a “realistic preview”
G. Relational Job Design
1. While redesigning jobs on the basis of job characteristics theory is likely to
make work more intrinsically motivating to people, more contemporary
people.
2. In other words, how can managers design work so employees are motivated
to promote the well-being of the organization’s beneficiaries?
stories from customers who have found the company’s products or services to
be helpful.
5. In addition, connections with beneficiaries make customers or clients more
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6. Finally, connections allow employees to easily take the perspective of
beneficiaries, which fosters higher levels of commitment.
II. Alternative Work Arrangements
A. Flextime
1. Flextime or flexible work hours (or “flexible” work arrangements). Allows
employees some discretion over when they arrive at and leave work. (Exhibit
8-2)
a. Benefits include reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, reduced
overtime expense, reduced hostility toward management, and increased
autonomy and responsibility for employees.
b. Major drawback is that it’s not applicable to all jobs.
B. Job Sharing
1. Job sharing. Allows two or more individuals to split a traditional
40-hour-a-week job.
a. Only 18 percent of large organizations offered job sharing in 2014, a 29
percent decline from 2008.
b. Job sharing allows an organization to draw on the talents of more than one
individual in any given job.
c. It also opens the opportunity to acquire skilled workers—for instance,
women with young children and retirees—who might not be available on a
full-time basis.
d. From the employee’s perspective, job sharing increases flexibility and can
increase motivation and satisfaction when a 40-hour-a-week job is just not
practical.
e. In the United States, the national Affordable Care Act may create an
incentive for companies to increase job sharing arrangements in order to
avoid the fees employees must pay the government for full-time
employees.
C. Telecommuting
1. Telecommuting. Employees who do their work at home at least two days a
week on a computer that is linked to their office.
a. Despite the benefits of telecommuting, large organizations such as Yahoo!
and Best Buy have eliminated it.
b. Potential benefits of telecommuting:
i. Telecommuting is positively related to objective and super-visor rated
performance and job satisfaction; to a lesser degree, it reduces role
stress and turnover intentions.
telecommuting has potential benefits to society.
i. One study estimated that if people in the United States telecommuted
half the time, carbon emissions would be reduced by approximately 51
metric tons per year.
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ii. Furthermore, whether your manager works remotely affects can affect
your performance negatively as well.
III. From the employee’s standpoint, telecommuting can increase feelings of isolation and
reduce job satisfaction as well as coworker relationship quality Telecommuters are
Participation
A. Introduction
1. Employee involvement and participation (EIP) is a participative process
that uses employees’ input to increase their commitment to the organization’s
success.
2. Employee involvement programs differ among countries.
B. Examples of Employee Involvement Programs
1. Participative management
a. Common to all participative management programs is joint decision
making, in which subordinates share a significant degree of decision
making power with their immediate superiors.
progress.
e. Studies of the participation–organizational performance relationship have
yielded more mixed findings.
2. Representative participation
representative participation.
b. The goal is to redistribute power within an organization, putting labor on a
more equal footing with the interests of management and stockholders by
letting workers be represented by a small group of employees who
actually participate.
board representatives.
IV. Using Rewards to Motivate Employees
A. Introduction
1. As we saw in Chapter 3, pay is not a primary factor driving job satisfaction.
However, it does motivate people, and companies often underestimate its
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importance in keeping top talent.
1. Introduction
a. A number of organizations are moving away from paying solely on
credentials or length of service.
b. Piece-rate plans, merit-based pay, bonuses, profit sharing, gain sharing,
and/or organizational measure of performance.
c. Earnings therefore fluctuate up and down.
2. Variable-pay plans have long been used to compensate salespeople and
executives.
a. Globally, around 84 percent of companies offer some form of variable-pay
plan.
exclusively.
c. Unfortunately, most employees still don’t see a strong connection between
pay and performance.
d. The fluctuation in variable pay is what makes these programs attractive to
management.
production completed.
a. A pure piece-rate plan provides no base salary and pays the employee only
for what he or she produces.
b. The chief concern of both individual and team piece-rate workers is
financial risk.
pay.
4. Merit-based pay plans—based on performance appraisal ratings.
a. Main advantage is that it allows employers to differentiate pay based on
performance.
b. Create perceptions of relationships between performance and rewards.
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5. Bonuses
many jobs.
b. Bonus plans increasingly include lower-ranking employees; many
companies now routinely reward productive employees with bonuses in
the thousands of dollars when profits improve.
c. The way bonuses and rewards are categorized also affects peoples’
increase motivation.
6. Profit-sharing plans
a. Profit-sharing plans are organization-wide programs that distribute
compensation based on some established formula centered around a
company’s profitability.
7. Employee stock ownership plans
prices, as part of their benefits.
b. Research on ESOPs indicates they increase employee satisfaction and
innovation.
8. Evaluation of variable pay
a. Do variable-pay programs increase motivation and productivity?
them.
V. Using Benefits to Motivate Employees
1. Flexible benefits: developing a benefits package
needs and situation.
b. Flexible benefits can accommodate differences in employee needs based
on age, marital status, spouses’ benefit status, and number and age of
dependents.
benefits.
d. However, it may be surprising that their usage is not yet global.
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