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