Theories Of Employee Motivation

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ccording to Simons and Enz, 1995, “Employee motivation is based on a force that pushes people to make a particular choice, remain at the job and put in effort”. Motivation provides that extra push or encouragement that some individuals’needs, not only atthe work place but with every activity done .There aremany factors that influence motivation. They are divided into intrinsic and extrinsic factors of the workplace as well as looking at process theories of motivation. First to be explored is intrinsic motivation.In a paper written by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in the year 2000 the definition of intrinsic motivation is given as “doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence.” The authors further…show more content…
The study goes on the state that persons are only intrinsically motivated when the situation conduces i.e. only when the conditions are right towards the person will they perform a task intrinsically. The Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) (Ryan and Deci 1985) states that “Events and structures that contribute towards feelings of competence during an action can enhance intrinsic motivation towards that action.” This confirms that the situationsneed to be right for a worker/employee to be motivated as such. Other than in those situations the person will not be intrinsically motivated. This same theory advocates a sense of autonomy going hand in hand with the feeling of competence so that the employee experiences their behaviour as self-directed. Early studies as stated by (Deci 1971) (Harackiewicz 1979) showed that positive performance feedback also enhanced intrinsic motivation.Moving on to extrinsic motivation, while deemed as not comparably important as intrinsic motivation, many if not most of the activities are not intrinsically motivated thus by definition are regarded as extrinsic…show more content…
Thus the person seeks to rectify this situation. Sometimes however this may not be the case as the observer may compare and find there is a situation of over-reward i.e. at thesame level of effort the observer receives higher outcome or puts in less effort which makes the observer reluctant to make any changes. This too is inequity as described by Adams (1963) and highlighted by Pritchard (1969). Regardless of the type of inequity however the result is tension within the workplace. Thus Adams proposed several ideas for reducing or avoiding inequity. Some are distorting one’s inputs or outcomes, advocating the change of the other person’s outcomes or inputs or even choose anotherperson to compare with or leave the field in the worst case.Again appearing in the theory and highlighted in the paper is the fact that one’s view of inputs or outcomes distorts the way in which equity or inequity is deemed the situation.A person’s ideas of outcomes and inputs vary and makes it difficult to classify and call for inequity or otherwise. A hypothesis presented by Wieck (1965) states that “the greater the similarity between the Person and Other on relevant input and outcome dimensions the greater discomfort the Person will experience with a given amount of inequity.” This simply means that the more comparable both persons are e.g. close co-workers then inequity between them would become a great issue.Lastly apaper published by N. Nohria, B.
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