Essay/Term paper: Motivation to work well depends more than high wages and on working conditions

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Humanities Essays

Motivation to Work Well Depends More Than High Wages and on Working Conditions

1) Discuss critically the validity of the contention that the motivation to work
well depends on more than a high salary and good working conditions.

This essay will define what motivation is, the influence and effect that money
and good working conditions have on staff and the other factors and issues that
motivate staff to work in the context of the workplace.

In order to critically discuss and evaluate what motivates staff in the
workplace it is imperitive to firstly define the concept of motivation.
Motivation can be defined as the force or process which impels people to behave
in the way they do; Newcomb (1950) said that an organism is motivated:

"when - and only when - it is characterized both by a state of drive and by a
direction of behaviour towards some goal which is selected in preference to all
other possible goals. Motive, then is a concept which joins together drive and
goal".

This implies that providing the drive for staff to achieve goals that have been
set is a vital and important part of the managerial role.

Although it is apparent that to become or be motivated does not always rely on
drive and goals - it can often arise through voluntary action as well.
McDougall (1908) made this extension of the concept of motivation to 'voluntary
behaviour' explicit by suggesting that instincts were the 'prime movers' of all
human activity. McDougall disagrees with the drive theorists arguing that the
instincts of staff in the workplace provide a major source of motivation.

Hebb (1949) also disagrees with the assumptions that directed and persistant
behaviour is always preceeded by 'extra neural bodily irritants'. Hebb claims
that 'The term motivation then refers to: (1) To the existence of an
organisational phase sequence, (2) to its direction or content, and (3) to its
persistence in a given direction or stability of content. There are obviously
many schools of thought and theories on exactly what is motivation and why
people are motivated, but it seems that the general concensus opinion lies with
Maslow (1970) "Motivation is the force or combination of forces which lead us to
behave as we do". The actual force or forces that motivate will be now be
discussed.

Money is an important factor in the motivation of employees, as profit acts as a
measure of success of a business, so many people judge their own success or
failure and the esteem in which they are held by the employer or the
renumeration received for the job done. It must be mentioned that although a
high salary is not the only motivator, it can act as an incentive to work more
productively;

"Pay buys the goods and services that people want to satisfy other needs. The
more boring the job, and the less its intrinsic interest the greater the
importance of money as a motivator and incentive to effort". Hammond (1988).

An organisation offers both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to its employees.
It must be realised that pay is only an extinsic reward. Employees derive
intrinsic rewards from the job itself, for example an employee may be motivated
by the degree of authority given at the work place or the sense of achievement
derived from completing their task (achievement motivation). Intrinsic rewards
are usually totally unrelated to an employees pay/salary.

The extrinsic rewards that employees derive are not directly related to the work
itself but are associated with doing the job; they include the salary/pay,
financial incentives, fringe benefits, working conditions and interaction with
other people in the work place. The importance of the different types of
rewards varies according to each individual and the situation that they are in
- their particular stage in life. For example, for an eighteen year old school
leaver eager to rent his or her own flat , money might be the determining factor
in deciding whether or not to do a job (extrinsic reward), whereas a fifty year
old executive with less pressing money worries will probably be search for a
more challenging job (intrinsic reward). These examples can be related to the
work of Maslow (1954) who identified five categories of need which he claimed
could be placed in a hierarchy (FIG 1). By this he meant that at any given
moment an individual will be aiming to satisfy one particular category of need,
but once this has been done that person will be interested in satisfying the
next higher level.

FIGURE 1 - Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs (1954)

The previous example can be related to Figure 1 - the eighteen year old has
lower level needs than the executive and, consequently the reward an
organisation must offer to motivate will differ. In this case money is the main
motivator for the eighteen year old whereas the executive is concerned more with
working conditions and intrinsic rewards. According to Herzberg the distinction
between extrinsic rewards is a significant one in that he found the fomer
(which he called 'maintenance' or 'hygiene' factors) are important to prevent an
employee being dissatisfied at work whilst the latter (called motivators) are
the ones which actually satisfy. If the hygiene factors are inappropriate - for
example , working conditions are poor or the company rules are seen as unfair -
the individuals will be dissatisfied. By improving the hygiene factors an
organisation can help to remove employees discontent. If however, they want to
motivate their staff rather than just removing the causes of dissatisfaction
then intrinsic rewards are necessary. Herzbergs "Two Factor" theory of
motivation supports the latter part of the contention that the motivation for
staff to work depends on high salary and good working conditions.

McClelland (1953) said that even when presented with a high salary good working
conditions and all other contributing factors some people are still not
motivated. McClellands theory of achievement motivation says that we all want
to achieve but for some people it is a high priority while for others success is
relatively unimportant. The strength for ones need for achievement is not an
inherited personality feature but is determined by environmental influences and
parental attitudes to goal achievement. These people who have high achivement
goals will realistically set themselves goals they can achieve. At the same
time, because they have a high need for personal achivements, the individual
prefers situations where there is a high degree of autonomy, responsibility and
control over tasks for these individuals high salaries and good working
conditions are not the major providers of motivation.

When it comes to motivating people what matters is not just the actual reward
but also their perception of it. For example a superior may ask a subordinate
to take over a responsibility for a task because he or she believes it will give
the subordinate the chance to develop their abilty in a given area. However,
the subordinate might well view this as additional and unwelcome work. To the
superior it is an opportunity to give the subordinate more challenging tasks and
enable them to gain more experience; to the subordinate it could simply be seen
as extra duties.

Perception is also important when it comes to assessing the liklihood that a
particular reward will be received. To be motivated an individual must believe
that rewards on offer are attainable. If people want what is being offered to
them, but do not believe that they can achiveve the outsomes necessary to earn
such rewards their motivation will obviously be low. Simply offering the
individual the chance of greater responsibility is of limited value it that
person does not feel they can perform well enough in the existing job to be
awarded it. As Vroom (1964) highlighted in his expectancy theory, if people are
to be motivated they must: (a) want the rewards offered (b) believe they can
achieve the outcomes necessary to be awarded to them.

In conclusion high salary and good working conditions alone are not sufficient
moivators for all staff to work well. Within an organisation the level of
motivation that individuals have to do their work primarily depends on the fit
between and individuals needs and a range of factors such as basic pay, fringe
benefits, job design and the quality of communication, the more motivated that
person is likely to be. Ultimately levels of motivation in an organisation can
always be improved but that really depends on management wanting to probe how
people in the organisation are working, thinking and identifying with what they
are doing. Whilst there are inevitably real problems involved in trying to
identify and meet the needs of each individual, there is no doubt that many
firms still do not do enough to motivate their employees and still many believe
in the contention that the motivation for staff to work well depends on high
salary and good working conditions. This essay has outlined that there are a
vast array of factors that contribute to the motivation for staff to work well -
all staff are individual - managers need to take a reductionist view as opposed
to holistic when examining what motivates staff to work well - in order to
formulate motivation stategies that encompass the need of all individuals.

Bibliography

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