MOTIVATING

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT

Chapter 6- Motivating

          Motivating can be defined as getting people to contribute their maximum effort toward the attainment of organizational objectives. In addition, it is the creation of working conditions that will help arouse a desire in the workers to achieve these objectives.

Approaches to Motivation

1. Work Performance Approach – This stresses rewards based on the individual’s productivity. Job descriptions are specific, work performance is carefully measured and the wage is explicitly stated. In other words, money is used as motivator.

2. Environmental Approach – This assumes that a worker will perform best in a comfortable environment. To motivate, the manager must extend friendliness and personal considerations to the workers. He must constantly identify and demotivating factors in the environment and eliminate them.

3. Needs-Satisfaction Approach – This adopts the standpoint that a satisfied worker is a productive worker and that management should aim to identify the workers needs and find ways of satisfying them.

Theories of Motivation

1. Classical Theory – Frederick W. Taylor propounded the theory that people will be highly motivated if their reward is tied directly to performance. His theory assumes that man consciously chooses the course that is most profitable financially and that money is the best motivation.

2. Human Relations Theory – The theory evolved by Elton mayo states that informal groups exists alongside the formal organization and that those informal groups could exert a greater pull on the worker’s motivation that the combined strength of money, discipline and job security. Further, these informal groups are inclined to set their own levels of output, often in disregard to organizational requirements.

3. Hierarchy of Needs Theory – According to Abraham H. Maslow, each of us is a wanting being; there is always a need to satisfy. He visualized human needs as taking the form of a hierarchy. Once a low-level need is satisfied, it ceases to become a motivator and only a higher-level need could then fulfill the same function.

a. Physiological Needs – Those needs for sustaining human life itself. They include food, clothing, water, shelter, and sexual gratification. Not until these needs are satisfied to an acceptable level will a person aspire to the nest level in the pyramid.

b. Safety and Security Needs – These needs are connected with protection from possible harm. They do not only include protection from physical dangers, but also freedom from fear of loss of job, property, food, clothing or shelter. Only when such threats are removed will the individual be motivated by the next level in the pyramid.

c. Social Needs – People need to belong, to be accepted by others. They seek physical and psychological “stroking” from others and, in turn, wish to reciprocate.

d. Esteem Needs – These refer to the individual’s need for self-respect and good opinion of others. When those around him make it clear the he is important, feelings of power, prestige, status and self-confidence are produced. Failure to achieve esteem needs within the social or work group often leads to a feeling of inadequacy and lowering of morale.

e. Self-Actualization Needs – This need is the desire to become more and more what one is idiosyncratically is, to become everything that is one capable of becoming. At this level the individual attempts to maximize his full potential. He is motivated to seek and find the activity which satisfies a deep urge. This need is often associated with creativity and with the desire to exercise ultimate control. Many artists, writers, actors, executives and politicians can be said to be operating at this level.

4. Needs Theory – Researches by David C. McClelland and his associates have identified three basic types of motivating needs:

1. Need for Power – People who have a high need for power express great concern for exercising influence and control over others. These individuals generally seek positions of leadership, are good speakers and are forceful, outspoken, hard-headed and demanding.

2. Need for Affiliation – People with a high need for affiliation seek acceptance by social groups. They are likely to be concerned with maintaining pleasant relationships and avoiding rejections by social groups. They derive pleasure from being loved and are ready to help people in trouble.

3. Need for Achievement – People having a high need for achievement have an intense desire for success and equally intense dread of failure. They want challenges, set reasonably difficult goals for themselves, analyze problems in detail, prefer to assume personal personality to get the job done and line feedback on performance. Other characteristics include: disposition to be restless, preference to work long hours and tendency toward autonomy.

The Manager’s Task

          Authorities in the field of motivation point out, however, that there are certain propositions which experience has shown to have wide applicability. These are:

a.  Before attempting to positively motivate his people, the manager must eliminate demotivating influences.

Demotivators include among others inadequate salary, excessive control, and rigid decisions by the book, narrowly defined jobs, unclear objectives and performance standards, and no timely feedback on performance.

b. Treat subordinates as individuals. Juan de la Cruz should be treated as Juan de la Cruz not as Juan Janitor. He is a person first and a janitor second. He must always be given the attention and the respect he rightfully deserves.

c. Encourage the subordinates’ participation and cooperation to make them feel that they contribute to decisions affecting them.

d. Provide rewards that employee’s value and relate such rewards directly to performance.

e. Use the most appropriate motivation in the light of control results and changing conditions.