Work Motivation: Review of the literature

Résumé du document

Work motivation has been an important component of industrial and organisational psychology since the 1930s (Donovan, 2001:55) and continues to play an important role in organisational research (Büssing, 2001:372). The amount of research on motivation has varied through time. During the 1930s and 1940s, work motivation became prevalent through drive theories i.e. reinforcement or need theories. While the 1950s and 1960s showed a decrease in the amount of attention on work motivation, however further theories were developed based on the cognitive perspective which provided the basis for future theories in the 1960s such as Vroom (1964) or Locke (1968). The 1980s were characterised by researcher trying to co-ordinate the various theories together which resulted in a focus on goal based theory (Kanfer, 1990:76). While most of the drive theories have fallen out of favour in the research community (Kanfer, 1990) the theories remains strongly in the today's literature (Donovan, 2001:53). Research in work motivation has lead to a large scope of result “about both the factors and processes of behaviour and performance in the workplace” (Büssing, 2001:372). Even though most people have an intuitive idea of what motivation is it can be difficult to describe or define properly (Petri et al, 2004:16). Motivation can easily be explained by classifying an employee function at three levels (Mol, 1990:42).

Extraits

[...] Internal vs External Theorist debate whether motivation is a result of needs (internal) that activate and direct behaviour toward items that will fulfill this perceive deprivation i.e. need for water or food. Other theorist believes that motivation is a result of goals (external). From this perspective motivation is a result of a change in the environment. Mechanistic vs cognitive The last difference in assumption lies in whether the researchers assume that the way information is processed influences the person motive state (cognitive approach) or “whether the researcher assumes that change in specific factors activate circuits that in turn motivate the person to engage in certain behaviour”. [...]

[...] Work Motivation in organizational behaviour. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Porter, L.W. and Lawler, E.E. (1968). Managerial attitudes and performances, Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press. Rousseau, D.M. & Parks, J. (1993). contracts of individuals and organizations', In Cummings, L.L. and Staw, N.M. (Eds.) Research in organizational behavior (Vol Greenwich: JAI Press. pp: 1-43. [...]

[...] Dunnette (Ed.). Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Chicago: Rand McNally 1297-351). Locke, E.A., Latham, G.P. and Erez, M. (1988). The determinants of goal commitment, Academy of Management Review, 13: 23-39. Loher, B.T., Noe, R.A., Moeller, N.L. and Fitzgerald, M.P. (1985). A meta- analysis of the relation of job characteristics to job satisfaction, Journal of Applied Psychology, 70: 280-289. Lussier, R.N. (1997), Management. [...]

[...] The hierarchy of needs is illustrated in Figure 2. Men is in a constant struggle to satisfy the hierarchy of needs, all behaviour and action aims at satisfying some particular needs. According to Maslow, once a need has been fulfilled i.e. physiological need, they are no longer a source of motivation (Feldberg, 1983:33) while unsatisfied needs are the prime motivators of behaviour and the needs at the lowest level take precedence over needs at the higher level (George et al, 2002:191) as such individual move upwards the pyramid (prepotency process theory). [...]

[...] George, J.M., and Jones, G.R. (2002). Organizational Behavior (3rd Ed.) New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. pp: 469-485. Gollwitzer, P.M. and Bargh, J.A. (1996). The psychology of Action: Linking cognition and Motivation to behaviour. New York: Guilford Press. Graen, G. (1969). Instrumentality theory of work motivation: Some experimental results and suggested modifications [monograph], Journal of Applied Psychology, 53: 1-25. Greenberg, J. [...]