PM 4035The Psychology of Work
Lecture 3Week 3
Studying Individuals at workMotivation
Motivation
• Force that energizes, directs and sustains behavior• Psychological processes that initiate and determine
direction, intensity and persistence of voluntary and goal-directed actions (Mitchel, 1987)
• Work motivation: internal and external forces that initiate work-related action and determine its form, intensity, direction and duration (Pinder, 1998)
We will look at
• Content-related theories-focus on why individuals are motivated and explore personal and situational (task-related) factors
• Process-related theories-focus on how motivation evolves and is transformed into goal-directed behavior– Expectancy theories– Goal-setting theory
Content-related theories
Assumption is
• That work-related behavior is explained as determined by
– Characteristics of employee– Characteristics of task– Characteristics of job context– Interaction of these
– It is intrinsically motivated behavior
A. CHARACTERISTICS OF EMPLOYEEPersonal factors-Individual needs
• McClelland• Need for Achievement: Individual's need to
seek and accomplish challenging tasks
• Need for affiliation: evaluation of social interaction with others-need to belong
• Need for power: Interest in influencing others
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Two sets of motivational forces:– Those that ensure survival by satisfying basic
physical and psychological needs– Those that promote the person’s self-actualization
• Assumptions of hierarchy:– Needs lower down must be satisfied before– Higher-level needs are an evolutionary
development of species and individuals– Higher-level needs are related to experience, not
biology– The higher the need, the more difficult to achieve
B. JOB CHARACTERISTICS
• Herzberg’s two-factor theory• Two factors are important in determining job
satisfaction and dissatisfaction– Motivators: elements related to job content that
when present offer satisfaction– Hygienes: elements related to job context that
when absent cause job dissatisfaction
• Job Characteristics Model-JCM Hackman and Oldham (1976)
• Employees must experience three psychological states to be motivated:– Perceive their work as meaningful– Associate a sense of responsibility with the job– Have some knowledge of results of their efforts
• Emphasizes the role that certain aspects of jobs play in influencing work motivation– Skill variety– Task identity– Task significance– Autonomy– feedback
• MPS=skill variety+task identity+task significance/3 x autonomy x feedback
C. INTERACTION BETWEEN PERSON AND TASK CHARACTERISTICS
• Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1982)• Subjective experience of optimal motivational
state when people are completely engaged in what they are doing
• Three antecedents:– Clear set of goals and rules– Match between perceived task demands and
individual skills– Clear and immediate performance feedback
Process related theories
Expectancy-Valence theory (Vroom, 1964)
• Valence: desirability of an outcome to an individual
• Instrumentality: the perceived relationship between the performance of a particular behaviour and the likelihood of receiving a particular outcome
• Expectancy: the perceived relationship between the individual’s effort and performance of a behavior
Goal setting theory
• Specificity– Often quantitative
• Difficulty– Should be hard but not impossible for most workers to
achieve• Acceptability– Especially important when managers set goals for
subordinates• Feedback• So that workers know how well they are doing