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Motivating and Rewarding Employees - Coggle Diagram
Motivating and Rewarding Employees
How do contemporary theories explain motivation?
In recent times, new theories to explain and generate motivation have appeared.
The main contemporary motivation approaches include:
Goal-setting theory
Job design theory
Equity theory
Expectancy theory
Goal-setting theory
What is Goal-setting theory?
Research into this theory suggests that specific goals increase performance and that
difficult goals (when accepted) result in higher performance than do easy goals.
More specific findings into Goal-setting theory:
Working toward a goal is a major source of job motivation. The specificity of the goal itself acts as an internal stimulus.
Employee participation in goal setting does not always lead to superior performance.
Feedback helps people do better, because It helps the employee identify discrepancies between what they have done and what they want to do.
Three other contingencies besides feedback influence the goal-performance relationship.
They include:
Goal commitment
Adequate self-efficacy
National culture
Goal-setting theory assumes that an individual is committed to the goal.
Commitment
is most likely when goals are made public, when the individual has an internal locus of control, and when goals are self-set rather than assigned.
Self-efficacy
refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.
The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task. In addition, individuals with high self-efficacy seem to respond to negative feedback with increased effort and motivation, whereas those with low self-efficacy are likely to reduce their effort when given negative feedback.
The value of Goal-setting theory also depends on
national culture
.
It is well-suited to North American countries. It assumes that subordinates will be reasonably independent, that people will seek challenging goals, and that performance is considered important by managers and subordinates. Where these assumptions do not apply, the theory might not be too useful.
Job Design
How does Job Design influence motivation?
Job design refers to the way tasks are combined to form complete jobs. One of tasks of managers is to design jobs for their employees.
Managers should design jobs deliberately and thoughtfully to reflect the demands of the changing environment, the organization’s technology, and employee’s skills, abilities, and preferences. When jobs are designed like that, employees are motivated to work hard.
What are the ways that managers can design motivating jobs?
The
job characteristics model
can help. According to the model, all jobs have
five core job dimensions
. They are:
Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Autonomy
Feedback
Skill variety:
the degree to which the job requires a variety of activities so the worker can use a number of different skills and talents.
Task identity:
the degree to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
Task significance:
the degree to which the job affects the lives or work of other people.
Autonomy:
the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out.
Feedback:
the degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job results in the individual’s obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.
The Job Characteristics Model suggests
that internal rewards are obtained when an employee learns that he or she personally has performed well on a task that he or she cares about.
The more these three conditions characterize a job, the greater the employee’s motivation, performance, and satisfaction and the lower his or her absenteeism and the likelihood of resigning.
Equity Theory
What is Equity Theory?
Equity theory proposes that employees compare what they get from a job (outcomes) in relation to what they put into it (inputs) and then compare their inputs-outcomes ratios of relevant others.
Although the theory focuses on distributive justice (the perceived fairness of the amount of rewards among individuals), recent research has focused more on procedural justice (the perceived fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of rewards).
To increase the perception and acceptance of procedural justice among employees within an organization, managers should consider openly sharing information on how allocation decisions are made and follow consistent and unbiased practices.
Expectancy Theory
How does Expectancy Theory explain motivation?
This theory states that an individual tends to act in a certain way based on the expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. The theory considers three variables or relationships.
Expectancy Theory: the three variables/relationships
Expectancy or effort-performance linkage: the probability perceived by the individual that exerting a give amount of effort will lead to a certain amount of performance.
Instrumentality or performance-reward linkage: the degree to which the individual believes that performing at a particular level is instrumental in attaining the desired outcome.
Valence or attractiveness of reward: the importance that the individual places on the potential outcome or reward that can be achieved on the job.
Expectancy theory as an explanation of motivation may seem complex, but is not. It can be summed up in
a few questions.
How hard do I have to work to achieve a certain level of performance, and can I actually achieve that level?
What reward will performing at that level of performance get me?
How attractive is the reward to me, and does it help me achieve my own personal goals?
The key to Expectancy theory
is understanding an individual’s goal and the linkage between effort and performance, between performance and rewards, and between rewards and individual goal satisfaction.
The theory
emphasizes
rewards and expected behaviors.