Theories Of Work Motivation

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This study will apply on the motivation theory which relevant to work. A review of current literature indicates that, there are 6 six authoritative theories which are regarding to work motivation and each of them also get their own view of work motivation. They are Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory (1943), McClelland’s Theory of Needs (1961), Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory (1966), ERG theory (1969), Job Design Theory (1980), Congruent Temperament Model of work motivation (2004) respectively. After reviewing some secondary data, it is said that an individual is not only motivated by psychological needs and personality, but also the external factors, like the salary and pay in the workplace. There are some different views and suggestions by these…show more content…
And Fany Yang (2011) also expressed that a lower level need must be satisfied before a higher one is expected and the needs are all the same for all human beings. As Sunil Ramlall (2012) stated that Human are a perpetually wanting group that are motivated by the desire to achieve or maintain the various conditions which these basic satisfaction rest and by certain more intellectual desires. Second, it is the McCelland’s Learned Needs Theory which is first developed by McCelland in 1961. As Fany Yang (2011) said that, “individuals are motivated by three needs which are achievement, power and affiliation. The need for achievement refers to the need to excel and succeed, the need for behave in a way, and the need for affiliation refers to the desire to spend time in establishing and maintaining close interpersonal relationships with others.” Third, it is about the Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory which is developed by Herzberg in 1966 and this theory can be mainly divided into two clusters, “Motivator” and “Hygiene”. By taking reference from Porter, Bigley and Steers (2003), motivators were intrinsic to the content of the job itself, such as achievement and responsibility. Contrarily, hygiene factors mean the extrinsic, non-job-related factors, such as company polices, salary and supervisory…show more content…
Champoux (1991) and John Humphreys (2007), there are two work motivation theories, called job design theory and congruent temperament model of work which is developed in 1980 and 2004 respectively. The former one is reported that employee can be motivated through five core job dimensions, skill variety, task identify, task significance, autonomy and feedback. And the latter one is told that people with different personality have different needs and desires. They said that there is no needs hierarchy that fit all people. Generally, work motivation can be affected by the psychological needs and individual personality at the same time. According to (Chiu et al., 2002), “The cash mentality” has been used in Hong Kong to describe work and money-related attitude. For Hong Kong workers, pay is the most important aspect of a job (England, 1989). As Geren (2002) indicates that Chinese employees are more motivated by group goals because of a collective nature of their work values, but Western people tend to be motivated by individual goals. Finally, people living in international metropolitan cities like Hong Kong can be very materialistic, capitalistic, individualistic and egoistic (Chiu and Kosinski,
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