discussion 2 new

Introduction: Chapters 7 & 8

Welcome again to Organizational Behavior. 

This Module will prepare you to meet the course learning objective 

of describing different applications of motivation for managing employee behavior. 

This Module introduces us to a major focus area in the world of OB – motivation. We 

want to motivate our employees to do their best work because it leads to gains in productivity, 

innovation, and employee retention. What is Motivation? 

Motivation is a broad and complex concept, but managers agree it has basic characteristics. 

We can define it as the processes that accounts for an individual’s intensity, direction, and 

persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. The 3 key characteristics of motivation include: 

Intensity: concerned with how hard a person tries. 

Direction: the orientation that benefits and aligns with the organization’s goals. 

Persistence: a measure of how long a person can maintain his/her effort. 

An analogy might be a sales person who wants to meet their sales quota. The drive behind 

the person’s actions is the intensity level. To meet the sales quota, the sales person is 

going to do several things including work late, make extra calls, and study the product line. 

These steps are referred to as the direction or the path toward meeting the goal. 

Then the final part has to do with maintaining the behavior or persistence. 

How long will the sales person attempt to meet their goal? How motivated are they? 

To better understand Motivation, we will first look at three 

Classic basic “Needs” Motivation Theories. The three early theories of employee motivation 

formulated during the 1950’s are: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Two-Factor Theory, 

and McClelland’s Theory of Needs. Let’s take a quick look at Maslow’s theory. 

Maslow hypothesized that within every human being there exists a hierarchy of five needs. 

As a need becomes substantially satisfied, the next need becomes dominant. 

If you want to motivate someone, you must understand what level of the hierarchy 

that person is currently on and focus on satisfying needs at or above that level. 

As you reach the top of the pyramid, you will notice that self-actualization 

is a need that is satisfied internally (versus externally such as physiological needs). 

By the way, there is a Video on Maslow’s hierarchy provided in the Module. 

For Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, also referred to as the Motivation-Hygiene Theory 

(and no. it doesn’t have anything to do with your motivation to maintain your personal hygiene.) 

Herzberg used the concept of Job satisfaction (one of the major job 

attitudes we talked about in the last Module) to formulate his theory of motivation. 

The traditional view was that an individual is either Satisfied or Dissatisfied with their job. 

Herzberg believed this view of motivation was too simple. From his research, 

he believed there were different sets of factors that determined satisfaction from dissatisfaction 

and thus believed there were two continuums. One continuum of motivators that determined job 

satisfaction and another continuum of Hygiene Factors that determined job dissatisfaction, 

thus the Two-Factor Theory. For example, Herzberg would 

argue that pay isn’t a “motivation” factor, but rather a hygiene factor (it is an expectation 

of work) and thus, pay only helps us to understand job dissatisfaction, not job satisfaction. 

The last Needs Theory is McClelland’s Theory of Needs. He believed motivation was driven from 

three basic needs: (The need for Achievement, the Need for Power and the Need for Affiliation). 

McClelland argued that one of these needs will be greater than the others, 

and that individuals whom work in jobs that are designed to meet their primary need, 

should be more motivated. The research is mixed on how well 

these theories accurately explain motivation. But, because these theories are so well known 

by managers and leaders and so often applied in business settings, they cannot be ignored. 

Now, we will discuss more Contemporary Theories of Motivation. 

There are many contemporary theories of motivation. 

For example, the “self-determination theory” which proposes that people prefer 

to feel they have control over their actions. Anything that makes a previously enjoyed task 

feel more like an obligation than a freely chosen activity will undermine motivation. 

The theory proposes that people seek ways to achieve competence and positive connections. 

This theory is the first to make a distinction between “Internal” motivation and “external” 

motivation. This theory tells us that we should choose our job for reasons 

other than extrinsic rewards such as compensation. We should consider the work 

environment, relationship with colleagues, and opportunities for development/growth. 

Play video starting at :5: and follow transcript

Another popular contemporary theory of motivation is the “self-efficacy theory”. 

Efficacy is an individual belief that and individual is capable of performing a task. 

The higher your self-efficacy, the more confidence you have in your ability to succeed. 

Feedback is a critical piece of this theory. There are 4 tools for increasing self-efficacy: 

Enactive Mastery: where you gain relevant experience with the task or 

job. This is why training programs are used! Vicarious Modeling: where you become more 

confident because you see someone else doing the work through job shadowing/observation. 

When you are new in a position, you often job shadow more experienced employees to 

gain a better understanding of the role. Verbal Persuasion: occurs when a person is 

more confident because someone convinces him that he has the skills (example – 

coaches – famous Super Bowl Speech). Arousal: this leads to an energized 

state that drives a person to complete the task. You’re excited about it. 

You will also read and learn about other theories in this Module such as: Goal-setting theory, 

Reinforcement Theory, Social Learning Theory, Equity Theory and Expectancy Theory. 

All of these theories have contributed to our knowledge and 

understanding of motivation in important ways. The next natural question you might have at this 

point is, how are these different Motivation Theories actually applied in Org. Behavior? 

Managers must first understand several of these theories, then apply appropriate motivation 

theories to improve productivity and help prevent negative work behaviors such as absenteeism 

and turnover which are both expensive issues for any business to overcome. 

Some applications of motivation theories might result in restructuring/redesigning 

jobs to increase motivation or exploring alternative work arrangements. 

We can motivate employees by structuring jobs to make them more interesting. 

Usually this is through “Job Enlargement” (the practice of expanding content of a job) or through 

“Job Enrichment” (the practice of giving employees a higher degree of control over their work). 

In fact, the Job Characteristics Model (JCM Model) is an approach to job enrichment. It specifies 

five core job dimensions that produce critical psychological states that lead to beneficial 

outcomes for individuals and the organization. The five core job dimensions are: Skill Variety, 

Task Identity, Task Significance, Autonomy, and Feedback. 

The chapter also examines “job redesign”. This may be done with repetitive jobs that provide 

little variety, autonomy, or motivation. People tend to want and seek out jobs that 

are challenging and stimulating in some way. Organizations may need to consider ways to 

redesign jobs so that they provide more variety, autonomy, and significance to 

organization goals to increase motivation. Another technique would be to offer job 

rotation – the periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another with similar skill 

requirements at the same organizational level (this is often referred to as lateral movements). 

There are a lot of reasons companies use job rotation system including the potential 

for product quality, giving employees the opportunity to explore alternative career 

paths within the organization, and perhaps most importantly, preventing stagnation and boredom. 

Many management training programs use job rotation to help trainees get a better understanding 

of the entire organization and how the different departments complement one another and work 

together to meet the company’s mission and goals. Another popular tool for motivating employees 

is “alternative work arrangements” such as flextime and telecommuting. After COVID-19, 

most of us are fairly familiar with the telecommuting option. Some alternative 

work arrangement tools are discussed further in the media-based video in the module. 

No discussion on Motivation would be complete without addressing Extrinsic 

Rewards as Motivation Tools. So, let’s talk a little bit 

about the elephant in the room, “Money”. When we say extrinsic rewards for motivating 

employees, base pay compensation comes to mind first, but there are other extrinsic tools too. 

Organizations tend to use “variable pay” programs as motivational tools. 

These plans base a portion of an employee’s pay on some individual and/or organizational measure 

of performance including piece rate plans, merit-based pay, bonuses, profit sharing, 

and employee stock ownership plans to name a few. A discussion on developing comprehensive and 

effective compensation plans go beyond the scope of an introductory OB course. But it is important 

to understand that all compensation systems have pluses and minuses, strengths and weakness 

associated with them in terms of their ability to effectively motivate employee behavior. 

There are a couple of components that tend to define effective compensation programs: 

the compensation system is easily understood, well communicated, 

deemed fair and has internal and external equity. As with pay, employee benefits are considered 

indirect compensation and are both an employee provision and an employee motivator. 

For benefit programs to motivate employees it is important that employee benefits programs are 

market competitive, easily used and accessed, meet the wide range of needs of your employees 

and allow flexibility to meet the needs of employees as their needs change. 

In Summary, understanding what motivates individuals is key to managerial and 

leadership success, and ultimately key to organizational performance. 

Employees whose differences are positively recognized, 

who feel valued, and who have the opportunity to work in jobs 

tailored to their strengths and interests are more motivated to perform at their highest levels.

https://coursera.org/share/39516a88876cad5350646cfaf87bb481

Power Point

CH 7 MGMT 3721 Textbook Power Point 14th ed.pptx (added this power point to email)

Chapter Outline

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Supporting Video

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Links to an external site.) (URL below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx3qR3gLh60

The above video helps explain Chapter Learning Objective 7.2 - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which is one of the early theories of motivation.

CH 7 Video-Take 5

Welcome again to Take 5 with Dr. Nasco. 

This is Chapter 7, motivation concepts. 

Now motivation is so important to our understanding of organizational 

behavior that two chapters of the book are actually dedicated to it. 

So the first chapter is going to focus on the theories and there are many and 

we're going to go over those theories at a high level here quickly. 

And then Chapter 8 will allow us to actually kind of look at more application 

of those theories in the context of organizational behavior.

So let's go ahead and move on,

And talk about those motivation concepts here in this chapter. 

And oops, I think. 

What? 

We're good. Sorry. 

I just threw myself off there a little bit apologized. 

All right, so again, 

we're focusing on the micro level of behavior within organizations. 

So the question here is what motivates behavior in organizations? 

And our goal again is managers and leaders is to better understand and predict. 

And if we go along with what's going to happen in the next chapter here, 

also influenced and/or change behavior of individuals within organizations. 

So what is motivation? 

It's processes that account for 

an individual's intensity, direction and 

persistence in behavior or toward a goal, 

behavior within for an individual. 

All right, so what does that mean? 

So intensity basically is how hard a person tries, 

the amount of effort that they put into that behavior. 

Direction is also important, so we're not just looking at the effort 

that someone puts into it, but is that effort in alignment with a goal. 

And so that also has to do with the quality, so it's towards the goal. 

And that goal specifically for us and organizational behavior is goals 

that benefit the organization and the individual. 

And then persistence, how long the person can maintain effort to reach that goal, 

it's before that person would actually give up. 

So persistence is important, so we have intensity, direction and 

persistence of a behavior towards a goal. 

Now let's start to look at some of those theories. 

The first early theories are often called needs theories, and 

one that I'm sure everybody is aware of is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 

We can't ignore Maslow because everybody is aware of it. 

It's taught in so many classes, regardless of whether it's business associate, 

psychology, sociology, whatever might be. 

But everybody is actually aware of it in the workforce too, so 

it's important that we we understand it. 

Basically, Maslow says, there's a hierarchy of needs, 

those needs start at a bottom level of physiological needs and then move up. 

And as we look at these, we can also see that this kind of move from 

the physiological more to the psychological when we look at them. 

And that indeed work, actually fulfills many of these needs in some way, and so 

that's why it's important for us to look at Maslow's theory. 

So basically, we have these needs and these needs help to drive behavior. 

And once we fulfill a need that's lowest on the pyramid here, 

then we're able to focus on a need that's at a higher level. 

And then once we fulfill those needs we can move up again to needs that need 

a higher level.

That's the basics of Maslow's. 

Next theory is the Two-Factor theory or the hygiene theory. 

What's interesting about Hertzberg's theory is that before this point, 

people basically looked at job satisfaction from the idea that people 

either satisfied or dissatisfied. 

And Herzberg noticed that there were factors, so let's say things like pay or 

a safe work environment that didn't seem to have that sort of connection to 

satisfaction and dissatisfaction or weren't that clear cut. 

And that he noticed that there were factors that he would call motivating 

factors and factors that were hygiene factors. 

And so some of these factors did not seem to really motivate or change behavior. 

And basically, Hertzberg's theorized their expectations, so 

safety and pay our expectations of the work environment. 

And so we actually posited that there were to continuums, one continuum that 

was based on motivators that would either be satisfaction or no satisfaction. 

And then another continuing based off hygiene factors. 

And what we'll get there was that the person is not dissatisfied or 

dissatisfied, and so it's just very interesting. 

So it helped basically, as we look at some additional theories here. 

He was probably one of the first people who noticed that hey, 

you could actually raise someone's pay and they're not more motivated to do work. 

So what's going on there? 

It doesn't seem to be a motivating factor, has to be something else at play, and so 

he doesn't necessarily do a great job of explaining what's at play. 

But he recognized that something new is that play and 

then later theories kind of come along and pick that up and expand on that. 

Then we have McClelland Theory of Needs, which basically says 

that we have three basic needs, a need for achievement and 

that's a drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a set of standards. 

A need for power, and 

that is the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have otherwise. 

And a need for affiliation, and that is basically we're social animals and 

they need to desire for friendly close interpersonal relationships. 

What's kind of interesting for us and the management organizational behavior 

research is that people that are high in need for 

power and high end and low in need for affiliations. 

So that's combined, they have both, it's actually related to managerial success. 

So maybe counterintuitive to what people think. 

Remember where there is a difference between managerial success and 

a manager effectiveness. 

And we this is related to managerial success in other words, whether or 

not people are promoted, so keep that in mind. 

So that's the Needs Theories, let's move on and 

talk more about some other contemporary theories of motivation. 

The next set of theories is a self-determination theory. 

And the self determination theory, basically said is that we have 

a need to be in control of what's happening around us. 

And then we feel that control we're more motivated, and 

it also makes the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. 

So the next set of theory that kind of builds on self-determination theories, 

cognitive evaluation theory which basically says that we're more 

motivated by intrinsic motivators. 

And that extrinsic motivators are less motivating and 

can actually decrease our motivations. 

So we kind of go back to the two factor hygiene theory. 

Hertzberg is saying, hey, some extrinsic motivators seem to Not motivated 

behavior or, in the cognitive evaluation theory, actually do the opposite. 

So we've actually this baseball player has signed a new $200 million contract, 

but now their motivation and performance has gone down. 

What's going on? 

All right, so, they're attempting to to address those things. 

Self concordance theory, is pursuing goals consistent with interests and values. 

So again, we're looking at, self importance, is saying that intrinsic 

motivators, working on goals that are consistent with our interests and values. 

Something that we've looked at before in the past in another chapter, 

are more motivating when those things are important to an individual.

So again, a set of intrinsic motivators. 

The next, we've already mentioned that motivation and the definition of 

motivation, focuses on behavior, that's actually directed towards a set up goals. 

So, we have to look at, goal setting theory. 

And that goal setting theory basically, 

says that specific difficult goals with feedback lead to higher performance. 

All right, so, we have to have, goals that are difficult enough, 

that we have to actually change our behaviors to obtain them. 

And then, we have to get feedback along the way on how are performing. 

And that feedback allows us to maintain momentum and stay motivated. 

And then, along with goal setting theory, 

we have these ideas of promotion focus, versus prevention focus. 

And so, promotion focus, is more of maybe focusing on outcomes. 

And things like advancement and 

accomplishment associated with our behaviors. 

And prevention focuses a bit more on the process, 

and fulfilling job duties and obligations. 

So, and another way to maybe look at this would be with promotion focus. 

If we wanted to do well on the test, promotion focus might be, 

we might set aside specific times to study prevention. 

Focus might be more of well, now we're going to eliminate things like, 

playing video games, so that, that allows us to have more time. 

So, we have different approaches. 

The promotion focused on the prevention focus to our behavior. 

And then, within organizations the application of the school study theory. 

We see a lot in the management by objectives, theory and philosophy. 

And so, that's a program where, people participated fully with their employees, 

participated fully with their managers and leaders, 

set goals that are tangible, verifiable and measurable. 

So, smart goals, e all know that those are. 

And that goals are set up by basically, cascading set of goals that are set to 

the organizations, but the highest level of the organization. 

Specific goals are set, and then the next level of the organization sets goals that 

are in line with that set of goals in the next organization and so forth and so on. 

I'm sorry, the next level in the organization, 

and I think it's always down to the individual, 

that are setting goals, that are in line with the organization's goals. 

And that again, they're tangible, difficult, verifiable, 

measurable and feedback as part of the process. 

All right, let's continue to look at more contemporary motivation theories. 

We also have this self efficacy theory, and 

that is basically just the belief, that one is capable of performing a task. 

And that actually comes to us from Albert Bandara. 

And that we can actually gain this self efficacy. 

In one of four ways, an Active Mac and mastery, by Karius modeling, 

verbal persuasion, an arousal. 

An active mastery is basically just performing it, doing it, experience. 

Bi-curious modeling is watching somebody else, do it and 

learning from that verbal persuasion, is actually like what a coach would do. 

I believe in you, you can do this, that sort of thing. 

And then arousal, is that energy peace, having the psychological and 

physical energy to put towards a behavior or a task. 

And then, in a way, this is also called the self fulfilling prophecy or 

the Pygmalion effect, believing in something, 

can make it true or make it happen. 

And so, that's what the self efficacy theory is based on, 

that we have reinforcement theories. 

And that's behavior is a function of its consequences. 

And the most basic form of this might be, Skinner's behaviorism. 

The pure stimulus response like that we don't think, 

the environment creates a stimulus, and then, we just respond to that. 

And there is behavior that we do have, like the fight or 

flight kind of behaviors. 

And then we have operate conditioning, 

which is builds upon this idea of reinforcement theory. 

But has an additional components that we can actually learn to behave. 

To get what we want or to behave in a way to avoid something that we don't want. 

And so, that we can be conditioned, we can learn on how to respond. 

So, it's not just a basic, unthinking responses that we have learned. 

We are conditioned by our environment to start to react in certain ways, 

to get things that we want, to avoid things that we don't want. 

And then, that social learning theory again. 

We can go back to Van Dura here, but we can learn by observation and 

direct experience. 

In other words, operate conditioning can be learned either by and through 

observation or actually experiencing and experiencing that behavior.

Then we have equity theory and organizational justice, 

which are basically two theories, but we're kind of putting them together here. 

Equity theory is that individuals 

compare, their job inputs and 

outcomes with those of others. 

So, we're kind of moving just from psychology, just to individual to also 

understanding that, our behavior is also shaped in the context of the groups. In 

the situations, that were involved in that we naturally compare, 

especially at work, our job inputs and 

outcomes with those of others. Okay, and then, 

we also from an organizational justice perspective, it's the overall perception 

of what is fair, in the workplace. So, in other words, it's a combination of 

basically these four things, distributive justice, procedural justice and 

interaction with justice. And 

to a lesser extent, informational justice. So again, organizational justices 

are overall perception of what is fair in the workplace. 

Distributive justice, 

is perceived fairness of the amount and allocations, 

of rewards, among others. And procedural justice, is the perceived 

fairness of the process used to determine the distribution of awards, rewards. 

Inter actual justice, 

is the perceived degree to which one is to treat it with dignity and respect. 

And then, informational justice, 

is the degree to which employees are provided truthful explanation for 

their decisions. So, 

especially when decisions are made that are not, beneficial to us or 

possibly negative. For us, 

it's important that we feel l the truth. And 

truthful information and explanation has been given to us, 

in that process. So, that's equity theory and 

organizational justice theory. 

So, the last two that I want to talk to you about, 

are expectancy theory or vrooms expectancy theory and job engagement. 

Vrooms expectancy theory, is probably overall the best theory. 

And the ones that we've looked at to help us to understand behavior, and 

it's complex because it has >> Four components to it and 

three processes to it. 

But in its most basic sense, expecting theory is a strength to act in a certain 

way, depends on the strength of an outcome and attractiveness of that outcome. 

So there's a relationship between individual effort and 

individual performance, and that's the effort performance relationship. 

There is a relationship between individual performance and organizational rewards, 

that's the performance war relationship. 

And then there's also relationship between organization rewards and 

personal goals, and that is rewards personal goals relationship. 

So just kind of really quickly, let's say that you, let's just step back and 

say okay, so the first thing is, I have to believe that if I 

change my behavior that there will be a change in performance. 

So I study harder and I can get a better grade on a test as an example. 

And that grade on the test, right? 

Starts to become the difference between okay, but 

my overall grade will be on in the course, right? 

So that's the performance to reward relationship, okay? 

So maybe then that means I can now get an A in the class or 

a B in the classroom where I may not been able to do that before. 

And then how important is that to you? 

And that kind of comes down to the rewards personal goals, relationship. 

What Vroom argues is that there's a breakdown in any one of, 

anywhere in this process there is a breakdown and motivation. 

All right, so the last thing is a job engagement, and that's the investment of 

an employee's physical, cognitive and emotional energies into job performance. 

And this is important because we've looked in the past outcomes of people's work, 

and we've looked at things like employee engagement and commitment. 

So that's what job engagement is looking at here. 

Is that it's more important to try to understand how people are motivated 

at work and how we can get that consistent investment of physical, 

cognitive and emotional energies into their job performance. 

And so that leads us to the job characteristics piece of what we're 

going to look at in chapter eight, and the job characteristics model. 

So again, how do we actually apply what we've learned about 

motivational concepts in the organizational context? 

So last, but certainly not least again, at a very high level. 

If we just kind of looked at all those theories all together and we integrated 

them together, we would see that maybe at its quarter of Vroom's again, 

is the best equity theories. 

That is the best, sorry, expects in theory is the best theory 

to maybe kind of overall explain human behavior. 

But if we break down those four component parts and the processes, 

we see the other theories start to come in to play. 

We see McLellan's theory. 

We see Hertzberg's theory. 

We see reinforcement theory. 

We see goal theory. 

We see equity and organizational justice is all being important components and 

helping us to better explain overall human behavior. 

So our goal now is that we at least we have a baseline understanding of how 

motivation works, and different theories of motivation. 

In the next chapter, 

we'll look at how we can apply those theories to better understanding, 

and predicting and changing and influencing behavior in the workplace.

https://coursera.org/share/2754cfe3c1a6f0d29d26f5f7f39989f1

Power Point

CH 8 MGMT 3721 Textbook Power Point 14th ed-1.pptx

Chapter Outline

CH 8 MGMT 3721 Chapter Outline 14th ed.docx

CH 8 Video-Take 5

Hello, welcome to Take 5. 

This is chapter 8, motivation, concepts to applications with Dr. Nasco. 

All right, so we're going to talk about chapter 8 today.

All right, so let's just remember again, for the last time actually we're 

going to be talking specifically again at the individual level or the micro level. 

And we're looking at how motivation theory can be applied in organizational behavior. 

So let's just remember that motivation is processes that account for 

an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort towards a goal. 

And maybe more specifically, when we're looking at organizational behavior, 

the goal of motivation, right? 

Is to increase the individual's performance, the organization's 

performance, job satisfaction, and commitment in the employee. 

So let's look at some ways that organizations apply 

motivational theory to the organization environment, to try to do these things. 

To try to increase individual and organization performance, 

job satisfaction, and ultimately employee commitment. 

First, what I want to look at is the concept of job design or 

the concept of job redesign. 

And that is the way the elements of the job are actually organized. 

So how do we put a job actually together? 

If we were spending time in an HR classroom talking about what job design 

is, but again just really high level. 

It's how we put all these different roles, responsibilities, 

relationships, and tasks together to create a job. 

But when we're creating that job, 

we need to think about how the different elements of that job, or 

the different characteristics of that job, and what are they. 

And so the job characteristics model helps us to do that. 

Because it basically says that we can understand all jobs by five different 

characteristics or five different dimensions. 

And those dimensions either exist at a high level or at a low level. 

And it helps us to understand what is expected of that 

job in these basic five dimensions. 

So the first one is skill variety. 

And skill variety is the degree to which is the job requires a variety of different 

activities. 

So does it repeat the same activities again, and again, 

and again in a very quick cycle, right? 

So let's say, a cycle that may occur every minute, for example. 

Other jobs may have a cycle, but that cycle might exist on a monthly or 

quarterly basis. 

So they would definitely be doing more skill variety there.

Then we have task identity. 

And that's the degree to which the job requires completion of a whole or 

identifiable piece of work. 

If you're writing a research paper and you had a group of five people and 

you broke it up and one person was responsible for 

doing the statistical analysis, they don't want to be working on one part. 

So their task identity as low. 

Versus where, if you are writing the paper all by yourself, 

you might have to determine one what was going to be researched. 

Actually, do the research itself design a study, collect data, 

analyze data, write up the data, right? 

So if you're doing all those different pieces then you have greater task 

identity. 

Because you are involved in many more pieces of the entire park of a research 

paper. 

And then we have task significance. 

That's the degree to which a job affects the lives or work of other people. 

So, I think the book gives an example of a nurse or a doctor. 

That has high task significance. 

So you can see what they do directly affects individuals' health, right? 

And then maybe in another position, 

if you're working on a machine that stamps metal shapes out all day long, 

you may not have as much task significance in a position like that. 

Then, autonomy that is the degree to which job provides the work of freedom, 

independence, and discretion, and scheduling work, and 

determining the procedures for carrying out that work. 

As a college professor, 

we have an enormous amount of autonomy in terms of how we choose to teach a class. 

And what we actually choose to teach, and how we choose to teach it. 

And how we choose to assess student knowledge, like all those things, right? 

So that's a great level of autonomy. 

If you're working at McDonalds and you're flipping burgers, it's really important 

that you have standardization in terms of the quality of the burger, and taste, and 

that sort of thing. 

And so you don't have the opportunity to be creative there in that environment. 

You have to do it one particular way because that's what McDonalds wants versus 

if you were a chef in a 5-star Michelin restaurant. 

You can have a whole lot of opportunity to be creative and free in terms of the menus 

that you create and how you actually cook and prepare food, right? 

And then the last piece is feedback. 

That's degree to which carrying out work activities generates direct and 

clear information about your own performance. 

And some positions we get immediate feedback. 

You could be working on a manufacturing line every 

hour they're communicating to you what your quality rate is. 

Where your error rate is in the work that you're doing. 

And that be immediate and direct feedback on the work that you're doing. 

The other, let's say you work in government and 

your job is to create public policy. 

You create public policy, you implement that policy. 

But it could be years before you know whether or not that public policy was 

correct or not and the implications of that policy that was implemented. 

So that would be a very slow feedback cycle. 

So that position is low, maybe in feedback, 

in terms of knowing how well you're doing in your job, right? 

So all jobs have these five dimensions to it. 

And then we can look at that job and see whether it's low or 

high in those dimensions. 

Well, the JCM theory basically postulates that the higher 

you are in these five dimensions, then the more likelihood 

that this person is going to be motivated to do well in their job. 

And have to have high job performance or high quality job performance, and 

high job satisfaction. 

And how does that occur? 

Well, there's a link between these dimensions and 

psychological states that are created by these dimensions. 

So obviously, if we're talking about psychological states, 

this is more intrinsic motivation, right? 

So how people feel about these things and whether or not an extend feel good, right? 

So they experience meaningfulness in their jobs, they experience responsibility. 

And then they also have knowledge about the work that they're doing and the output 

that they're doing and whether or not it's doing what it's meant to do, right? 

That gives us a sense of accomplishment in what we're doing. 

And that leads to higher overall job performance, quality, motivation 

of the employee, and also things like decreased absenteeism and turnover. 

So that's where we get this motivating potential score. 

Whether or not you believe it's multiplicative or it's additive. 

The idea is that the more high the job is in skill variety, 

task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, 

the more likelihood that someone is going to be motivated. 

Now, this isn't true for every person. 

This isn't true necessary for every personality and true for every job. 

In every culture, right? 

So we do see differences there, and in some jobs, it's difficult to 

create skill variety, but we'll talk a bit more about that in a second. 

So how do we apply the JCM? 

Well, there are three basic ways. 

The book only really talks about job redesign, but 

the terms that we'll often hear when we're talking about applying 

the JCM model to work is job enrichment, job enlargement, and job rotation. 

Job enrichment is increasing things like skill variety, 

task identity, and task, significance and autonomy in the job itself. 

So we redesign the job to actually have more of those things in it. 

Job enlargement is mainly skill variety focused. 

In other words, we're introducing additional skills and 

tasks that need to be performed in that job. 

It makes the job larger and less narrow than it was before. 

One of the ways that companies can do this is through job rotation, and 

job rotation is literally having teaching people to perform multiple jobs, 

and then they rotate through those different jobs at their work. 

And so there's benefits to that because it automatically enriches and enlarges 

skills, knowledge, and abilities and tasks and helps to deal with lowering boredom. 

And it also, for an organization, 

creates an organization that has more of the ability to adapt more 

quickly to the needs of what's happening at work, because it can 

move people around into different positions as needed based off workflow. 

And or things like an individual's sick and 

you have somebody else who's cross trained and can easily moved into that position. 

We also have the concept of relational job design. 

That's similar to task significance, 

but it's a little bit different because it allows employees to see 

the positive differences they can make in others' lives. 

So I gave maybe an example before of someone who stamps metal all day. 

But that metal goes into these robotics parts that 

actually end up becoming limbs that are used for 

people who have lost limbs for whatever reason. 

And so then you get that person whose job is to stamp metal all day the actual 

opportunity to interact with customers and individuals who actually 

now get to use these limbs and see how those limbs change their lives. 

So that would be an example of relational job design, 

where you're giving that person an opportunity who stamps metal all day to 

actually interact with customers and see how much more significant what they do 

is because of the impact it has on people's lives. 

All right, then we also have alternative work arrangements. 

So here are again ways that we can think about, what are things that we can do that 

maybe motivate people through the work that they have? 

And so things like this has a lot has to do with autonomy. 

So flex time is letting people choose or having a choice over their 

work hours as long as it still meets the needs of the organization. 

So there's there's some flexibility, 

it's not complete flexibility, but again, depending on the job, 

we allow people to maybe move their hours a little bit in one direction or 

another, as long as they still are at work in over a set of core business hours. 

And this may allow people to move from four day work weeks, 

three day work weeks, five day work weeks. 

I mean, there's all kinds of examples of how flextime can be done, 

even letting people move from anywhere from maybe 30 up to 40 

hour work weeks depending again on what works for them. 

So there's a lot of ways that flextime can be applied. 

Job sharing, that allows at least two employees, 

maybe more, to actually split a full-time job. 

So it allows us to maybe keep employees that would normally leave the workforce 

maybe because of family demands or maybe they're later on in their career and 

they don't want to work as much anymore. 

Or maybe their health makes it more difficult for them to work full-time, but 

they could contribute still to an organization in more of a part-time role. 

And so we have things like job sharing, which would allow people to do that and 

stay connected and motivated when working. 

And then telecommuting or virtual. 

This is a little bit different now because of the COVID environment. 

In the past, a lot of times, telecommuting was actually even use as a reward given 

to employees, or that flexibility was given to employees to reward them for 

being good employees and giving them the opportunity to work from home more. 

But we also know that this also allows people, again, 

that have family requirements and things like that, it allows them to be able to 

work full-time but still be able to not have to be in the office all the time. 

I think COVID is really going to mess with this concept in the sense 

that when a benefit such as telecommuting or being virtual, which means, 

again, allowing somebody to work at least two days a week outside 

of their normal office environment, starts to become the expectation, 

then it loses its reward capabilities or its motivational pieces to it. 

So I think we might see the exact opposite to this. 

In other words, I think people actually having more of a choice about when and 

how they will work at home or work in an office, 

may be more of the equation moving forward. 

Then we have employee involvement and participation programs. 

Now, the book talks about very specific types of programs and 

EIPs are participative processes that uses inputs of employees to 

increase employee commitment to organizational success. 

And if you think about it, this is really a great application of 

organizational justice, and it's letting employees be directly 

involved in participative management or representative participation. 

So participative management is a process in which subordinates share 

a significant degree of decision making power with their immediate supervisors. 

And so if you think about it, again, that goes directly to organizational justice. 

When we talk about distributive justice, procedural justice, 

interactional justice, and informational justice, 

that being that employees want to be part of the process and 

know that the process is fair and just and applied fairly and justly to everybody. 

And so during participative management and representative participation, 

employees are given an opportunity to have that equal part, 

have a say in what's being done to them and in the business. 

So representative participation is a formal system often, 

in which workers participated organizational decision making through 

a small group of representative employees. 

These represented employees are at management meetings. 

This may also be done in having formal members of 

the employees represented at board meetings or 

within organizations and things like that. 

All right, let's look at extrinsic rewards to motivation. 

And this is interesting, because again, 

we've talked a little bit more about some of the intrinsic pieces so far. 

But we have to look at what are the most common applications of rewards 

in the business environment, we can't do this without talking about pay. 

We have to look at that, so that's definitely something that we need to look 

at and we know there are some issues with that. 

Because we've already talked a little bit about, cognitive evaluation theory and 

self determination theory right, that there is a difference in intrinsic and 

extrinsic motivators. 

And then, it's a little bit trickier when we get to extremism, rewards, yes, 

they can be motivators but then, 

we also go back to things like Hertzberg's to factor hygiene theory. 

You know what is the baseline expectation and 

if that baseline expectation is met, does that truly motivate people? 

Or is it just put them in a state of not being dissatisfied but 

anyways, let's talk about it a little just a little bit at a high level. 

So for pay structure, we have to balance things like we have to make decisions 

about whether we're going to lead, match or lag the market in our pay strategy. 

So that is the balance of internal equity and external equity, right, 

so the external equity pieces that you know is our pay competitive with 

what other companies in our industry location. 

Things like that pay And then also the internal equity 

piece is the value that that position holds within the organization. 

Also in comparison to the value that that that position holds compared to 

other positions within the organization. 

So we have to have we have to create this balance and 

remember that that balance is important because we do also compare. 

Right, so that's equity theory, right, 

we do compare our compensation to external markets, we do compare our 

conversation to the people that we work with in an organization. 

So do we have a way to create that balance and then, 

we also have to look at the mix of the pay itself, right? 

So is that pay what we call base pay or is it variable pay or 

is it a combination of those things? 

And so, again, the trick is just to try to create pay structures and 

strategies that, at the very least, don't dis satisfy employees. 

Okay, so then we look at, so what is a variable pay plan or something, 

that's often called pay for performance plan, there's many examples of this. 

Things would be like piece rates, and 

we do know that piece rates do work, they do increase output productivity, but 

we don't have to be concerned about things like quality. 

Commission was not specifically talked about here necessarily in the book, but 

that's a very common form of variable pay, especially before sales positions. 

Then we have merit based pay, so 

that is differences that we ultimately make in base pay changes, 

raises to base pay based off somebody's performance. 

There are lots of problems and issues with base pay, merit based pay, 

one of the issues is that, we just think about if we maybe look at, 

like, stimulus response kinds of ideas in behaviorism. 

In what we looked at past motivational theory here, 

there's a usually a pretty big time lag between the work that we do and 

when a merit based pay raise occurs. 

And then, there's a lot of research that say that says that there's just not 

a significant difference enough. 

And the raises that are often receive between highly productive employees and 

less productive employees and so merit based pay raises don't truly motivate. 

People are content again, sometimes do the opposite, 

We also have bonus pay, which is much more boast based on recent performance. 

So it's better that merit based pay in that sense and 

it also doesn't compounds on itself, like merit based pay does. 

And it tends to be shorter term, more lump, sum based kinds of pay and 

then, we also have things like profit sharing, 

which are based on a formula with the company's profit. 

Some of the problems with profit sharing, though, or that again you know, 

how much does the individual truly impact the overall company's profitability? 

For example, employees could be doing a really good job working really hard and 

high quality work. 

And then, covid happens, and the company's profit suddenly dropped well and 

that profits sharing scenario, the employees were doing great. 

They were doing what we asked of them they were doing, and 

maybe even better than what we asked of them but 

external factors is what ultimately affected the company's profitability. 

So there are issues with every one of these kinds of pay systems because of 

how much control someone may have or may not have in the outcomes. 

The last piece would maybe be benefits that are put in place to motivate 

employees and so examples of benefits our employee stock ownership plans. 

And these are plans where employees can actually acquire or 

rewarded stock on that below market prices as part of their retirement packages. 

Again, some of the issues with this is, is that you know, the timeframe, 

you might be awarded this stock, but when can you actually take advantage of it. 

And use it, if you're 20 five years old and 

someone is telling you that they're adding money to your retirement plan? 

There's a 40, 50 year lag between the work that you're doing and when you're 

actually going to get your reward, so to speak, right, so that that's tough. 

But the goal here is does that actually create a feeling of ownership, Not just 

the feeling of ownership to actually give you more ownership in the organization. 

and from that, create more motivation, and 

then we also have flexible benefits plans or help. 

These will have a lot to do with, you know, what we would traditionally 

think of as the health, dental vision, education benefits. 

All those kinds of things that people may have and the choices that they have and 

so, we do know that. 

When we create benefits plans that it actually meets more of the needs of more 

of our employees because not all employees have the same sets of needs. 

So it's more likely two again either motivate individuals or, 

at the very least, can not dissatisfied them again, 

the problem is that things like health care, their requirements in right now. 

It's still are, at least today in our law And so, 

is it truly a benefit or an expectation of the work that we I don't have? 

And so, if it's an expectation and then I think we have to look at them Or 

maybe from Hertzberg's theory of, let's make sure that we put our plans together 

in such a way that they're not detrimental and to our employees. 

And don't dis satisfy them, all right, so then we have intrinsic rewards to 

motivation, and that's a little bit more difficult in the book, 

doesn't mean we already talked about that a little bit with the JC model. 

But there are employee recognition programs that 

organizations set up that encourage specific types of behavior by 

formally appreciating employee contributions. 

And those are things like employee of the year programs, 

employee of the month programs, all kinds of things like that. 

They're when I when I worked out in HR, I work for a CEO, and 

he called these the a lot of times we call the low cost but 

high value kinds of things. 

So in other words, people value them a lot, but 

they don't cost the organization necessarily a lot. 

And one of those things that definitely falls in this category something like 

leadership praise, the book alludes to this but doesn't talk a lot about it. 

And I wish I'd talked more about it because we do know that one of the things 

that leaves greatly to job satisfaction is the relationship 

that an employee has with their boss. 

And then also with people that they work with, and so praise that comes from 

the people that you work with and from your boss is really important. 

And it makes people feel important, valued and needed and when people 

feel important value and needed, there are more likely to be satisfied in their job. 

And more likely to have overall higher work, performance and quality or 

performance, the last piece that I wish the book again, 

I talked a little bit more about. 

But again, in these types of books that are essentials, types of books, they 

dropped some things out but I wish I had talked more about the whole person idea. 

And the whole person idea, basically is, 

is that we treat employees not just as employees. 

We recognize them as people and that we also focus on things like we set up our 

work environment, caring and understanding of the fact that they honor people. 

Then they have all that they have a life outside of work and 

that we also encourage them to build relationships and friendships. 

At work because, again, we also know from a lot of the research is that if we have 

significant relationships with people at work and 

we have significant friendships with people at work. 

Were more likely to be happy at our workplace and 

more likely to stay in our workplace because we are social animals and 

those things are important to us in our work environments. 

Alright, so at a really high level, that's a couple of ways 

that we can apply the different motivational theories to actual policies. 

Procedures that are put in place and benefits and 

pay packages that are put in place is in different organizations.

Motivation

In this module, you will be reading about motivation and ways we can apply motivation 

theories in the workplace. Motivation is defined as the processes that account 

for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. 

The question of what it takes to motivate workers 

has received a great deal of attention by academic researchers and organizations.

Research tells us that individuals who are motivated perform better on the job. They 

also have lower absenteeism rates and they are less likely to leave the organization.

There are many approaches toward motivating employees. One approach to motivation is to 

consider alternative work arrangements such as flextime and telecommuting. These are likely to 

be especially important for a diverse workforce of dual-earner couples, single parents, and employees 

caring for sick or aging relatives. These options have become more relevant due to COVID-19. 

One common alternative work arrangement is flextime which allows employees some 

discretion over when they arrive at and leave work. Benefits include reduced absenteeism, 

increased productivity, reduced hostility toward management, and increased autonomy 

and responsibility of employees. Such options have yielded positive results for companies 

recruitment and retention efforts, as well as their employees’ development and productivity.

Another alternative work arrangement is telecommuting. Something most of 

us are familiar with thanks to COVID-19! 

Prior to COVID, there was debate on whether or not telecommuting undermined corporate culture. 

Some companies argued that while people are more productive when they are alone, 

they are not as collaborative and innovative as when they are together face-to-face. 

There are many advantages to telecommuting: companies have 

a larger labor pool of workers to recruit from that aren’t restricted geographically), 

employees are more productive, there is improved morale, and reduced office-space costs. 

There are some disadvantages though including possible 

technical difficulties and the possibility of not being recognized for your efforts. 

Play video starting at :2:5 and follow transcript

Due to COVID-19, it appears telecommuting and a virtual 

office culture will be around for quite some time. 

Play video starting at :2:12 and follow transcript

Now, companies must ask how do we motivate workers and keep our company culture in a virtual 

environment? In June 2020, a TELUS International Survey asked what people want in a virtual office 

culture. The results indicated that: 68% would like virtual workshops 

and continued learning opportunities 66% want weekly staff meetings and one-on-one 

conversations with managers, and 65% want schedule flexibility 

Play video starting at :2:40 and follow transcript

We encourage you to start thinking about the type of organizational culture and work arrangements 

you would find most motivating. Not all positions can offer telecommuting and/or 

flextime but many do. Consider what will work best to help with your work/life balance.