Motivation Theories Essay

A couple of decades ago, the government issue of indigence were only if a nonher landmark in the passwords of man epochrs assay to implement behavioral techniques on their employees. Give perks, give pecuniary benefits, performance proceedss and employees atomic number 18 bound to be displaced as simple as that. But gradually as the eld passed by, as people began to move go forth of the shackles of mo nononous, menial locomote environments, in that location was a radical break of serve on how circumspection studies began to view motif. There were debates, lectures, psychological-social experiments and theories which utterly threw the sure-enough(a) beliefs aside and brought in overbold whizs.The number became a cynosure of all management, scientific and stinting studies a topic which was deemed simple suddenly became a complex monster without which, the study culture was poised to be threatened. Employees, aft(prenominal) all, are the biggest assets of org anizations and motif is what keeps them going. This paper give explore why the different penuryal theories are important and break forward from the usual old age concept of enquire and show it as the land is viewing motivation nowadays.The idea is to bring forth a certain amount of concern and debate in the topic (otherwise relative) so as to obtain a ingest understanding as to what might be the underlying reasons for employee motivation. Motivation Theories Assuming that the reviewer already knows what motivation is, contract cognise or so the dis correspondent popular motivation theories and jackpot distinguish amongst the respective(a) motivational theories and the literature surrounding them it has been discover how the traditional motivational theories of Maslow have closely vanished from the experiments and recent research papers, whilst laying dialect on ances judge environments and social evaluations.As the global market moves by repeat waves of stinti ng slowdown and instability, much organisational changes have occurred leading to fluctuations in employee expiation and the way workers view their argumentations. Motivation, clearly, has been a challenge. expiration aside the various theories, basic motivational factors such(prenominal) as compensation rewards, mod performance evaluation methods, the nature of work, organisational changes and socio-political structure have been evolving over the prehistoric few years and that has a repoint impact on motivation.Among all the theories, the one which stands out (and is probably relevant) is Herzbergs incentive hygiene theory, which divides the concept into two separate the inducement factors and the hygiene factors. While air enjoyment and work liberty go to the motivator factors, hygiene factors constituted of recompense and performance. Herzberg deduced that the insufficient hygiene factors lead to de-motivation and the motivator factors care job enrichment contri y ete to motivation.This is in compliance with the Hackman and Oldhams theory of job enrichment which talks about increasing motivation stemming from skill identity, autonomy, task signifi loaferce and job purpose. Deci & Ryans impersonate talk about the similar aspects, giving rise to the persuasion that extrinsic motivational factors (factors outside work like pay, performance compensations, rewards) directly cope with the ingrained factors (job satisfaction, challenging tasks, etcetera). While it is solely baseless to say that monetary rewards, i. e. xtrinsic factors do not work, it has been observed that insufficiency of such factors lead to extreme de motivation.On the ripple side, intrinsic motivational factors work lonesome(prenominal) if the work is challenging enough to interlace the interest of an individual wherein the job has a psychological impact on the skills of the employee. 1 mod Theories and Experiments As we usher into newer business environments, new theori es and experiments have cropped up which are cause a paradigm shift in the way the world get winds at motivation.The to the highest degree popular which are utilise in business organizations are the carrot and commove come near 10 where colloquially employees are granted carrots as rewards and sticks for reprimands. This consequently produces desirable and unsuitable behaviours among employees who perform mechanical and process orientated jobs as in the function effort 13 . However, playing by the rules of the motivation theories, there have been an opposition to this and there was an nest constructed around the concept of intrinsic motivation when it comes to jobs which require creativity and rudimentary cognitive skills like building new products.Among the just about famous ones are the performance of the cd experiment (see Appendix 1) with a trio groups of people where each(prenominal) group was given up varying monetary rewards to solve the compact disk problem 6. The result shows how the motivation through monetary rewards falls flat in the face of creative and cognitive jobs. The resembling has been elucidated Author Dan Pink in his bestseller book about motivation, Drive 14. A similar experiment was performed by LSE economics who reason out that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance 4.As the higg takey-piggledy war between various motivation theories continues, there are companies who have exemplified intrinsic motivation by providing autonomy to their employees to move them Google, Atlassian, Wikipedia are just among the few examples. This demo of be able to make a motion their employees has led to these companies being the stalwarts in their respective industries. righteousness and autonomy has been redefining motivation theories all crossways organizations in the horse opera world 3.However, across industries, organizations have been still trying to motivate their employees through rewards and monetary benefits while ignoring the age old basics of the intrinsic motivation theory. Motivation in an economic crisis The exculpate test for managers concerning this subject comes during an economic downswing when employee motivation is at an all epoch low. Organizational behaviour theory suggests the physical exertion of three models The Authoritarian model is used by nearly quicks worldwide involving trying to have got processes and bring all the imagerys in order through downsizing.However, this only leads to a substantial decrease in employee motivation. The IT avail manufacture in India and other move of Asia has been using this model during economic slowdown. This can be traced back to the roots of the Indian society which is built on a more(prenominal) authoritarian culture 11 . As the IT redevelopment pains is a more process oriented job, the managers more often than not try to balance the company profits with resource downsizing. Interestingly, this persistence field also successfully uses the carrot and stick approach to motivate their employees.The Paternalistic model tries to build up on the social protection of employees by gaining their trust and their willingness to continue with the company. This does not fracture motivation but does not prink employee motivation enough to bring the firm out of crisis, as the employees are not encouraged to improve their skills. Russian firms in the 1990s used this model to control the economic down change state but failed miserably as the employees were not do and it also accentuated the crisis situation.Based on Rensis Likerts encouraging relationships doctrine, the Supportive model recognizes the employee as the most important member of the firm, which in turn is likened to a social system 2 . credibly the best form of motivation during a crisis would be the supportive relationship principle wherein peoples outlook towards economic barriers are used to overcome the crisi s, wherefore changing their attitude towards job satisfaction and organization commitment by discovering return opportunities, giving the employees ideas to foster company gainfulness and minimizing their professional crisis 5.Motivation in IT industries Asiatic vs. Western As the world is being swept by technological advancements, the IT sphere of influence has been in the boom and has been defining the vogue in economic patterns. Considering the IT attention, in Asian markets such as India or the Philippines, where the industry is more service oriented, the motivation model is completely different from that which is used in the Western world. Western IT companies, which are more product based, do not keep up the age old motivation theories.These theories like Maslow and Taylor of trying to influence workers and employees with fat salaries have been pick out by organizations which have an Indian base. However, the Indian companies which deal with the IT service industry address the needs of the employees in a more radical and structured agency as these companies understand the needs of the employees check than the Western companies with a presence in India. The dichotomy of the East-West cultures force organizations to take various approaches to the subject of motivating employees.In India, the BPO and the IT industry, which mostly dominate the economy, is heavily dependent on people, hence the motivational approaches are as important as the job itself 12. The industry also shows a large spike in contriteness as ago trends have shown arising out of factors mainly because the employee is not motivated. An attitude study was conducted by Robbins to arrive out behavioural patterns of employees in BPO industry and to find out whether redesign of work, autonomy and restructuring teamwork and feedback increase satisfaction at the workplace, which in turn results in higher performance and motivating employees.The results were surprising as it was m ake up that there was no relationship between job characteristics and motivation. Instead it was found that BPO workers were motivated to work as long as their salaries and financial demands were being met 9. This technique is adopted by a lot of multinational companies which establish their BPO base in Indian and Philippine market. However, the Indian companies in the IT sector take a different approach by addressing the working conditions (like graveyard shift benefits), social concerns and standard of living of the employees.This is provided, not only by monetary benefits, but also by work sequence flexibility, autonomy, purpose and a sense of belonging. Surprisingly, this is the analogous strategy which is used in the westerly culture to motivate the employees. In Malaysia, where the service industry is one of the most appear markets in Asia, there are several(prenominal) push and tear factors which affect employee motivation, which in turn affects the high rate of attriti on in this sector.Studies in the Malaysian IT service market have concluded that though compensation and rewards have been the primary methods to motivate employees, work and job purpose are also seen as among the various pull factors which affect it 7. Recently, however, international businesses have been restructuring and redesigning their reward and motivation scheme to address the local anaesthetic culture of Asian countries, aligning them with those of the Western cultures. Conclusion Motivation, as we see, is not just about trying to encourage employees with rewards and benefits.A lot of psychological and social aspects are intertwined with the way motivation works. All the motivational theories are bound to clash against each other as organizations are changing the way they look at employees and their needs. Managers need to be aware of the fact that employees are not just assets and treat workers with a sense of belonging. As globalization is bend a page, managers have to keep in mind how the workers react to workplace environments and how they can be motivated to shape up organizations and industries, on a whole by inducing creativity and encouraging them to look at the broader picture existing in businesses.