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7.1 The Importance of Worker Motivation
What motivates people at work? For the past century, I/O psychologists have been trying to answer this elusive question. Think about how you might answer it. Do coworkers motivate you? Rewards? Perhaps the fear of punishment? No matter how you respond, chances are your reasons for doing your job differ from those of your friends, family, and coworkers. Because everyone has different needs, values, emotions, and personality traits, each person will likewise possess a different set of factors that drive his or her motivation. The indeterminate number of variables that influence motivation are what makes studying this topic difficult.
Despite the challenges, researchers have, over time, gained considerable insight into how to improve worker motivation. This chapter is divided into two sections: The first deals with content and process theories of motivation, and the second focuses on ways in which organizations can improve worker motivation. Before discussing the theories, however, let's begin by defining motivation and identifying its basic properties.
What Is Motivation?
Motivation is one of the most basic and important drivers of human behavior, especially when we work. Traditionally, motivation has been viewed as a goal-oriented process that starts with a need or a deficiency. People have an inherent drive to act or behave in certain ways in order to meet a goal or alleviate a deficiency.
The three basic elements of motivation are intensity, persistence, and direction. Each of these elements is required in order for a person to perform a job well. People most commonly think of intensity, or the amount of effort an individual puts into achieving a goal, when they think about motivation. However, the direction of the effort also matters: Workers must direct their efforts toward behaviors that lead to positive outcomes for the organization. Finally, workers must demonstrate persistence—that is, they must be able to continue working until they achieve the desired outcome. A motivated worker, then, will apply effort (intensity) as long as it takes (persistence) in such a way (direction) as to achieve the desired goal.
7.2 Theories of Motivation
Concepts in Motion:
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
In general, the various theories and writings on motivation can be described as focusing on either content or process. Content theories of motivation try to comprehensively identify what motivates people, whereas process theories of motivation attempt to discover how motivators trigger the drives that can lead to behavior. Both types of theories are important and informative for people interested in motivating themselves and others by managing the antecedents and conditions that can facilitate desirable behaviors. To begin, let's look at four content theories: Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Herzberg's twofactor theory, Alderfer's existence-relatedness-growth (ERG) theory, and McClelland's needs theory.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Some content theories of motivation deal with needs, or the physiological and psychological wants or desires people attempt to satisfy by achieving particular goals. These theories aim to identify not only the different needs people have but also the conditions under which they will be motivated to satisfy these needs in a way that contributes to performance. American psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, developed in 1943, is the most influential of the needs-based theories of motivation.
Photo of man and a woman smiling and hugging while outside.
Belonging—the need for love, affection, and affiliation—is the third level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
According to Maslow, needs can be organized hierarchically, from the most basic to the most advanced. Maslow defined five levels of needs, beginning with (1) physiological needs, such as the need for food, water, and shelter. After satisfying the primary needs, human motivation progresses sequentially through higher levels of needs, including (2) safety, or the need for physical and emotional security; (3) belonging, or the need for love, affection, and affiliation; (4) esteem, or the need for admiration and respect from others; and (5) self-actualization, or the striving toward the achievement of one's full potential.
Maslow emphasized the importance of fulfilling each level of needs sequentially. According to his theory, a given level of needs will not motivate a person's behavior until the needs from preceding levels have been met. For example, people will not be motivated to meet their needs to belong (level 3) until they have met their basic physiological and safety needs (levels 1 and 2, respectively). Moreover, Maslow argued that once a need has been satisfied, it ceases to be motivating. Further motivation requires moving to the next level in the motivational hierarchy. Finally, in order to achieve self-actualization, a person must have opportunities for growth and responsibility. This striving toward personal growth and self-actualization is what creates long-term worker motivation.
Because it is intuitively logical and easy to use, Maslow's theory has been highly influential in the workplace. However, research indicates that the hierarchy of needs is limited, and some of its precepts can be refuted (Rauschenberger, Schmitt, & Hunter, 1980). For example, many people pursue higher-level needs such as esteem and self-actualization even when they seem not to have met their most basic needs. Additionally, a person's need for self-actualization does not ever seem to reach satiation. In fact, highly accomplished individuals seem to have a stronger need for self-actualization than other people. Despite some limitations, however, Maslow's theory offered a significant contribution to the thinking and practice in the fields of psychology and organizational sciences, as it clearly demonstrated that workers are motivated by a wide range of needs, not simply the traditional rewards (such as wages and financial incentives) and punishments (such as job termination).
Consider This: Your Needs and Motivation
•Which level of Maslow's needs applies the most to you right now?
•In relation to Maslow's hierarchy, have your lower-level needs been satisfied?
•Do you agree with the sequence of needs in Maslow's hierarchy? Why or why not? How would you change the sequence based on your own needs and experiences?
Find out for Yourself: More on Maslow
Visit the website below, which lists publications by and about Maslow, to expand your knowledge about Abraham Maslow's seminal work.
http://www.maslow.com/ (http://www.maslow.com/)
Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory
In the 1960s, another American psychologist, Fredrick Herzberg, developed a different model. Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation, also known as motivation-hygiene theory. The basis for the two-factor theory stemmed from studies in which Herzberg asked professionals to report incidents at work that exceptionally motivated them as well as those that exceptionally discouraged them. The professionals' responses showed consistent themes. The factors related to positive feelings about work, which Herzberg called motivators, tended to be associated with the job itself, such as job content, responsibilities, and achievements. On the other hand, the factors related to negative feelings, which Herzberg called hygiene factors, tended to be associated with the job context, such as pay, working conditions, and the manager's style. Although hygiene factors can, according to Herzberg's theory, prevent job dissatisfaction, only motivators can lead to motivation and job satisfaction. Examples of motivators and hygiene factors are displayed in Table 7.1.
Table 7.1: Examples of Herzberg's motivation and hygiene factors
Motivator Factors
Hygiene Factors
•Achievement
•Salary and benefits
•Recognition
•Work conditions
•Job characteristics
•Quality of supervision
•Advancement opportunities
•Coworker relationships
•Growth opportunities
•Job security
•Responsibility
•Company policies
The most significant contribution of the two-factor theory is the notion that job content is a powerful motivator, necessary for the development and retention of the right talent within an organization. At the time of the theory's inception, the primary emphasis of management was on hygiene factors such as pay, benefits, and working conditions. Although these peripheral factors are important in attracting new employees, Herzberg found that they are unlikely to create motivating and satisfying jobs unless complemented with interesting and challenging work.
More recently, researchers have studied the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. As with the two-factor theory, these studies differentiate between motivation generated by workers' interest in the job for its own sake (intrinsic motivation) and motivation triggered by tangible, externally generated rewards and/or punishments (extrinsic motivation). Much debate surrounds the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. One side views the two as additive, overlapping, and complementary. For example, a promotion might be both intrinsically and extrinsically motivating: the former because the employee desires interesting new work that makes better use of his or her skills; the latter because the employee needs a larger income. Conversely, some studies suggest that extrinsic motivation can adversely affect intrinsic motivation. A hobby, for example, might be interesting and engaging as long as a person does it for fun (intrinsically motivating), but should it become a paying job (motivated by external factors such as money), it can become yet another chore to complete and thus lose much of its motivational power (Wiersma, 1992).
Consider This: Your Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
•What are your most intrinsically motivating activities? List 3–5 activities that you really enjoy spending time on. These are the types of activities you get fully absorbed in, those that make you lose track of time and feel really good afterward.
•What are some shared characteristics of those activities?
•How are those activities a reflection of your current needs?
•How would you feel about those activities if you could find a job that would pay you to do them on a regular basis?
•Do you believe that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are complementary or contradictory? Explain.
Existence Relatedness Growth (ERG) Theory
ERG recognizes several basic needs including growth, which deals with self-actualization and esteem needs.
Clayton Alderfer's existence relatedness growth (ERG) theory, first published in 1969, continued to build upon the work of Maslow and Herzberg. ERG recognizes various types of needs, falling between Maslow's hierarchy and Herzberg's two-factor theory with three basic categories: existence, which includes basic survival needs; relatedness, or the desire for support, relationships, and recognition; and growth, which deals with self-actualization and esteem needs. Although the categories are hierarchical (existence needs have priority over relatedness, for example), Alderfer did not necessarily agree with Maslow's notion that each level must be attained in sequence before moving on to the next. Rather, ERG theory holds that individuals may work on meeting different categories of needs simultaneously. Furthermore, Alderfer recognized a potential regression mechanism, the frustration-regression principle, in which existence and/or relatedness needs resurface when growth needs are frustrated. In practice, managers can use this knowledge both to help frustrated employees by meeting their existence and/or relatedness needs until they are ready to move forward and to try to avoid regression in the first place by providing employees with growth opportunities. Because according to ERG theory, needs fluctuate and evolve, the theory can help to explain some of the exceptions that arise in older motivational models, such as needs that do not ever seem to reach satiation or the pursuit of higher-level needs when lowerlevel needs have not been met.
McClelland's Needs Theory
Building on Henry Murray's (1938) seminal theories of psychological needs, David McClelland began his investigation into the realm of motivational needs theory in the late 1950s. Unlike Maslow, Alderfer, and Herzberg, McClelland developed a nonhierarchical model. His theory identified three needs that are developed by individual experiences and shared in varying degrees by all people. These needs motivate specific behaviors:
•Need for achievement (nAch): The drive to excel and achieve results; the desire to gain satisfaction from personal attainment
•Need for affiliation (nAff): The desire to form close personal relationships and to be liked by others
•Need for power (nPow): The drive to influence or control others; the desire to be responsible for others
McClelland predicted that people would be motivated to seek out and perform well in jobs that matched their needs. For example, high achievers will be motivated by tasks or jobs that require moderate levels of risk-taking and high levels of responsibility and feedback, because such work bestows not only a certain level of autonomy and challenge but also a good chance of success. Consequently, high achievers should perform well in entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, high achievers often make poor managers, as they tend to care more about personal success and less about directing other people's efforts (Miner, Smith, & Bracker, 1994). Individuals with high needs for affiliation or power have been shown to be more successful managers (Miner, 1965). Team settings may be more appealing to those with high needs for affiliation than to those with high needs for achievement or power.
Figure 7.1: Overview of need theories
From Levy, P. E. (2010). Industrial Organizational Psychology: Understanding the workplace. (3 ed). New York: Worth. p. 233, Fig. 9.2. Reprinted by permission.
7.3 Process Theories of Work Motivation
As you have learned from the content theories of motivation, people are driven to meet a variety of needs within their lives. Some needs are more basic and trigger the need to survive. Others are intrinsic and drive people to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment or self-actualization. Content theories address what motivates people, but this is not enough to fully explain motivation. Managers cannot simply peruse a list of needs (content) and then somehow extrapolate how to motivate their employees (process). This is where process theories of motivation come in. These theories aim to describe the actual process of motivation, that is, how a person becomes interested in moving from a state of complacency or satisfaction to a state of motivation and change. We will discuss three major process theories in this section: goal-setting theory, expectancy theory, and equity theory or organizational justice.
Goal-Setting Theory
We have goals in every facet of our lives. People set goals related to personal health, relationships, and financial status. Similarly, organizations set goals concerning work productivity, efficiency, and quality. We live in a goal-oriented society. With all of this goal setting going on, have you ever wondered if goals actually improve performance? The research is clear: Goals do positively influence performance—as long as they are designed properly.
Starting in the 1960s, Edwin Locke and his associates have been examining how to design goals that will motivate workers. Goal-setting theory states that specific, difficult goals lead to greater performance than vague goals, such as encouraging a person to do her best (Locke & Latham, 1990). These findings have been supported in both laboratory and field studies and have been shown to affect the performance of individuals, teams, and organizations.
Photo of a business man aiming a bow and arrow at a cloud shaped like a target.
Specific and difficult goals increase the level of focus and motivation required to achieve a goal, which leads to greater performance.
Why might specific goals be better than vague ones? In addition to focusing an individual's attention onto precise objectives, specific goals reduce ambiguity about expected levels of performance. To enhance a goal's specificity, managers should include a measurable outcome and set a clear completion date. As an example, let's examine a familiar goal: the New Year's weight loss resolution. People who vow simply to lose weight will lack the focus needed to make a plan and achieve their goal. On the other hand, people who set a specific goal with due dates (e.g., lose 20 pounds by June 1) will give themselves a clear objective they can work to achieve.
Now let's look at the second finding of goal theory, which states that difficult goals lead to greater performance than easy ones. As when they are specific, goals that are difficult focus an individual's attention onto goal-relevant activities and away from distractions. They also motivate people to work harder to achieve the goal. Think about your own work habits. Do you exert the same amount of effort on an easy assignment as you do on a challenging one? Probably not. Finally, hard goals encourage greater persistence. Researchers found that when people are allowed to control the amount of time they spend on a task, they will work longer when the goal is difficult (LaPorte & Nath, 1976). Keep in mind that in order to be effective, a goal must be challenging but not so difficult that it is unattainable. People must believe they can attain a goal, or they will become frustrated and demoralized to the extent that the goal will serve only to reduce their effort or inspire them to give up altogether.
A specific, difficult goal is most beneficial when accompanied by ongoing feedback. Feedback allows people to compare their current performance with that set by the goal, identify discrepancies, and then make modifications to get back on track. Different types of feedback vary in terms of impact. Feedback that comes through completing the job, as is typical of production jobs, has been shown to be a more powerful motivator than feedback received from an external source, such as the manager (Ivancevich & McMahon, 1982).
No matter how specifically worded, appropriately difficult, and feedback-supported they are, goals, in the end, are not really goals unless people want to achieve them. Therefore, determination to reach a goal, or goal commitment, is another important facet of effective goal setting. A meta-analysis of 83 studies found that goal commitment is a critical link in the connection between goals and successful performance, especially when goals are difficult (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, & Alge, 1999). I/O psychologists have proposed two ways to increase goal commitments: increasing the perceived importance of the goal and fostering the goal setter's self-efficacy (Locke & Latham, 2002).
One way to convince people of a goal's importance is to have them make a public commitment to the goal, because going against such a visible promise would presumably make goal setters feel hypocritical (Cialdini, 2001). For example, sharing the goal with others and asking them to hold you accountable is a way to make a public commitment to a goal. Goals can also gain importance if leaders communicate them as inspiring visions of the future around which followers can rally. An inspirational vision also serves to enhance excitement about the goal and generates the energy needed to persevere until the goal is accomplished. Finally, monetary incentives can improve a goal's prestige and workers' commitment to it. With this last approach, however, managers must be extremely careful. Financial rewards can discourage risk-taking and creativity, splinter relationships, and create limited short-term thinking (Kohn, 2003).
The second way to improve goal commitment is to increase the goal setter's self-efficacy. In other words, if a person believes he or she can accomplish a goal, he or she will be more committed to it (Wofford, Goodwin, & Premack, 1992). Leaders can raise self-efficacy by providing training and experiences that improve workers' knowledge, skills, and abilities in goal-related areas; by role-modeling successful performance; and by conveying confidence that workers can achieve the goal (Bandura, 1986; White & Locke, 2000).
In conclusion, then, setting goals is one of the most practical tools available to help leaders motivate workers. Intentions, in the form of specific and difficult goals, are a very powerful motivating force and have been found to increase worker output significantly. The broad range of effects of goal setting can be generalized across a wide variety of organizations, jobs, and tasks.
Find out for Yourself: Practical Approaches to Goal Setting in Organizations
The two links below introduce you to two commonly used approaches to goal setting in organizations. Read the two articles below, and then think about the applications of these approaches for more effective goal setting in your current organization if you are employed.
•Management by Objectives: http://www.economist.com/node/14299761 (http://www.economist.com/node/14299761)
•What Is the Balanced Scorecard? http://www.balancedscorecard.org/BSCResources/Aboutthe-BalancedScorecard/tabid/55/Default.aspx (http://www.balancedscorecard.org/BSCResources/AbouttheBalancedScorecard/tabid/55/Default.aspx)
Photo of an unevenly balanced scale.
According to equity theory, motivation is influenced by the perceived fairness of treatment at work. People seek an appropriate balance between what they put into their job and what they receive in return.
Equity Theory and Organizational Justice Theory
Equity theory states that motivation is influenced by our perception of how equitably or fairly we are treated at work (Adams, 1965). The creator of this theory, John Stacey Adams, concluded that employees compare the ratio of inputs (effort, experience, education, and competence) they invest in a job and the outcomes (pay, benefits, recognition, and promotions) they receive with another person's or group's ratio of inputs and outcomes in the same or a similar job. If the person's ratio of outcomes and inputs is unequal to that of the other person or group (called the referent), he or she perceives the situation as unfair (see Figure 7.2). In other words, people seek a fair balance between what they put into their job and what they get back in return. Tension arises when there is a perception of imbalance: If people feel underrewarded, they can experience frustration or anger; if they feel overrewarded, guilt.
According to equity theory, people are highly motivated to maintain equitable exchange relationships and will therefore devote considerable energy toward making their situations fair. Carrell and Dittrich (1978) proposed a number of ways people reduce their feelings of unfairness. First, they can actually change their inputs (reducing effort or taking classes, for example) and/or outcomes (asking for a raise or applying for a higherlevel job). Second, they can distort their own perceptions of inputs and/or outcomes so as to make things seem more equitable in their own minds (called cognitive distortion). Finally, they can simply quit and flee the situation.
Figure 7.2: Equity theory ratios
Research on equity theory supports the notion that people evaluate the fairness of their inputs and outputs, especially when inequity is due to undercompensation. Underpaid hourly employees, for example, tend to lower their inputs by producing less work, and underpaid piece-rate workers tend to produce a high volume of low-quality work. In reducing their inputs, then, underpaid employees are attempting to adjust their performance to a level they feel matches their compensation. Interestingly, when the opposite occurs—imbalance due to overcompensation—research shows that employees tend not to be motivated to balance the input/output ratio. Theoretically, the guilt employees experience when overpaid should motivate attempts to re-establish equity, perhaps by working more or improving the quality of their work, but again, research just does not seem to support this conclusion (Mowday, 1996).
Equity theory examines one form of fairness, that which deals with the way workers judge the fairness of outcomes (also called distributive justice). People, however, evaluate much more than work-reward ratios. They assess almost everything connected to the organization, including decision-making procedures, interpersonal interactions, and information (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). I/O psychologists refer to this broader, multidimensional view of fairness, of which distributive justice is but one part, as organizational justice (see Figure 7.3 for a model). The following sections will include an overview of the other three parts of organizational justice: procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice.
Figure 7.3: Model of organizational justice
Procedural Justice
As we all know, organizations have limited resources (promotions, pay, job opportunities, etc.) to give employees. In addition to judging the fairness of the outcomes of resource allocation (distributive justice), employees also evaluate the fairness of how management decides to give out its resources, especially if the process seems unfair. If your manager gives one member of your team a bonus, you would probably want to know how the manager made his or her decision, and why you were left out, right? Depending on the answers, you may or may not decide the decision was fair. This is called procedural justice.
How can managers improve procedural justice? One way is to give employees a chance to have their opinions heard during the decision-making process. Employees who participate in making decisions are more likely to be committed to those decisions, even if they are disadvantageous. To further improve procedural justice, managers must also demonstrate consistency (across time and people), act ethically and without bias, gather input from affected parties, use accurate information, and remain open to appeals (Leventhal, 1980).
Fair procedures are especially important if a decision results in a negative outcome. This makes logical sense. If a coworker gets the promotion for which both you and he applied, the coworker probably isn't too concerned about how the decision was made, beyond the notion that he feels he deserved it. You, on the other hand, most likely want to know exactly why you were passed over, especially if you feel that you possess the same educational and skill level and work just as hard as your coworker. If you come to the conclusion that the process of determining the recipient of the promotion was fair, you will view your negative outcome more positively. This is known as the fair process effect, and it illustrates the importance of the relationship between procedures and their outcomes. Keep in mind, then, that examining processes and outcomes separately will never yield a complete understanding of fairness. Managers must always consider how procedures interact with outcomes and how the former will influence employees' ultimate perceptions of the fairness of the latter.
Informational Justice
Interpersonal justice deals with the way procedures are explained on an interpersonal level. Employees who feel that they are treated unjustly exhibit lower performance and greater turnover.
The fair-process effect is also exhibited using two additional forms of organizational justice: informational justice and interpersonal (or interactional) justice. The work of Bies and Moag (1986) on informational justice has shown that one way to improve people's perceptions of fairness is to provide them with information about the procedures used and outcomes given before, during, and/or after rewards are allocated. Significant research supports the notion that employees will be even more apt to perceive explanations as having high informational justice if they perceive them to be adequate (Bies, 1987).
Interpersonal (Interactional) Justice
Interpersonal (or interactional) justice deals with the way in which outcomes are presented and procedures are explained on an interpersonal level (Greenberg, 1993). Let's go back to our earlier example in which your coworker received a promotion for which you also applied. Perhaps, as part of your fairness assessment, you ask your manager to explain the decision. If your manager gives what is technically a fair and adequate explanation yet communicates it in an insensitive manner, you will probably still experience feelings of injustice. A study by Mikula, Petri, and Tanzer (1990) asked respondents to describe a recent unjust event in their lives. Many of the reported injustices were related to interpersonally unfair treatment, such as inconsiderate, impolite, or aggressive behavior; treatment that violated personal dignity; or actions that indicated a lack of loyalty from another person. The implication is that, in their daily lives, people are aware of interpersonal treatment and perceive poor interpersonal treatment as unfair.
In the last few sections, we've discussed the ways in which people perceive and judge processes, outcomes, and interpersonal communication. Why are people's perceptions of justice important? Organizationally speaking, employees who feel that they are treated unjustly show lower performance, decreased satisfaction, and greater turnover. Therefore, especially when dealing with negative outcomes, managers should follow consistent and unbiased processes, be transparent about how the decision was made, and treat workers with dignity and respect.
Consider This: Perceptions of Equity and Justice
•Think about a recent unjust event that you personally experienced or witnessed. Try to remember as many of the details of the event as possible.
•Describe the event in terms of distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice.
•If possible, ask someone else who was involved in the event to also describe the event.
•Interpret the other person's description in terms of distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice.
•In what ways were your perceptions similar to the other person's? In what ways were they different?
Expectancy Theory
One of the most widely evaluated process theories of motivation is Victor Vroom's expectancy theory, developed in 1964, which states that motivation is determined by the outcomes that people expect as a result of their actions on the job. Ultimately, Vroom's theory deals with the mental processes of choosing; people will be motivated to choose work activities they both find attractive and believe they can do. This process can be broken into three dimensions: expectancy, instrumentality, and valence (Vroom, 1964), and the theory focuses on the relationship between them:
•Effort-performance relationship (expectancy): The probability perceived by the individual that expending effort on an activity will lead to high performance. The worker asks herself, "Can I perform this activity well?" If the worker perceives the probability of high performance to be low, she will not be motivated to apply the effort.
•Performance-outcome relationship (instrumentality): The degree to which the worker believes that successful performance will lead to the desired outcome. The individual asks, "If I perform well, will this lead to a reward (pay, promotion, recognition, etc.)?"
•Rewards-personal goals relationship (valence): The degree to which an activity's outcomes have sufficient personal value (based on needs, goals, interests) to motivate the individual to behave in a certain way. The worker asks, "Is the reward for performance personally attractive?"
Photo of a businessman holding a trophy over his head with a celebratory look on his face.
Performance-outcome relationship is the degree to which the worker believes that successful performance will lead to the desired outcome.
Expectancy theory includes a method of calculating a task's motivational force (multiplying the expectancy dimension by a composite of the combined valence and instrumentality dimensions). If any one of the factors is 0, the employee will take no action (Donovan, 2001).
Even though people rarely consciously perform these calculations, they are motivated and guided by the interactions of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. For example, imagine you are a highly successful salesperson at a large company. You have always dreamed of being a manager for the company and have just learned that there will be a job posting for a sales leader six months from now. The thought of getting the promotion is very exciting for you (valence). Additionally, you feel you can perform your current job exceptionally well and earn an excellent performance appraisal if you continue to generate high sales numbers and act as a good team player, finish your degree, and complete some management courses (expectancy). Finally, you believe your excellent evaluation will lead your managers to give you the promotion (instrumentality). Taking this information into consideration, you have a high likelihood of being motivated to try for the promotion.
Interestingly, although expectancy theory makes a lot of sense intuitively, evaluative research on this topic has generated mixed results. As you might expect, people will generally expend greater effort toward reaching a goal as their expectations of receiving a reward increase, assuming they perceive the reward to be valuable (Van Eerde & Thierry, 1996). Other research shows some caveats. Equity theory assumes that individuals are looking only for the outcome that is the most personally beneficial. If this is true, organizations would be able to motivate workers as long as they make outcomes sufficiently enticing. However, this is not always the case. For example, even though an individual might find a promotion personally attractive (travel to exotic locations, high pay, increased prestige and respect, exciting job duties, a move to a fantastic city with a great climate, etc.), he might not be motivated to attain it (moving would mean leaving behind friends and family, longer hours would preclude spending time with family or participation in a treasured hobby). Choices, then, often yield outcomes that can be perceived as both positive and negative, and they are not solely motivated by personal considerations.
7.4 Making Work Motivating
Cartoon illustration of an office scene. Employees are working in cubicles and posters in the background read, "Remember you are not indispensable," "Work or die!" and "There are plenty of people who'd do your jobs for less!" In the foreground an employee is talking to the manager saying "Mr. Frimley, sir, can I have a word about the motivational artwork..."
Every day, millions of people go to work. For most of us, it's not a choice: Without a paycheck, we couldn't pay bills, buy food, or shelter our families, let alone indulge in luxuries. It's unfortunate, then, that the majority of us spend so much time and effort earning our income at jobs we find unsatisfying. In 2009, the Conference Board, a market information company, found that only 45% of American workers were satisfied with their jobs. In 22 years of conducting the survey, this percentage is the lowest the survey has ever measured (as cited in Pepitone, 2010). The research cited a number of reasons for the steadily declining levels of job satisfaction, including uninteresting work as well as pay that has not kept up with inflation. As we have already illustrated, each of these elements—job characteristics and rewards—affect workers' motivation and are thus very important in determining an employee's overall success at his or her job. Because organizations control these factors, can managers strategically adjust them to make work more motivating? If so, how?
The Job Characteristics Model
Despite the sobering statistics, there are many people who are satisfied with their jobs and actually enjoy going to work. Often, the positive feelings stem from the inherent characteristics of the job itself. In 1976, Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics model attempted to identify the specific job characteristics that impact workers' attitudes and motivation:
•Skill variety: The extent to which a job provides the opportunity to use a variety of different skills and talents on the job. Managing an office is one example of a job with high skill variety. An office manager is responsible for ordering supplies, coordinating a budget, managing support staff, facilitating team meetings, and interacting with others. On the other hand, a person who works on an assembly line has a job with low skill variety; an automobile assembly-line worker will do a single task, such as attaching front bumpers to assembled cars, eight hours a day.
•Task identity: The degree to which a job requires the completion of a whole or identifiable piece of work, from beginning to end. One example of high task identity is a sales professional who is responsible for the entire sales process from identifying customers to conducting sales meetings to closing the deal. A job with low task identity is that of a cabinet maker whose sole responsibility is to sand cabinet doors.
•Task significance: The degree to which the job has an impact on the lives and wellbeing of other people (i.e., customers and coworkers). An example of a job with high task significance is a medical doctor whose actions impact the lives and physical well-being of patients in his or her care. On the other hand, an office worker responsible for scanning records into an online filing system has a job with low task significance.
•Autonomy: The degree to which the job provides significant freedom and discretion to schedule and organize one's own work activities. An example of a job with high autonomy is that of a bank lender who has the latitude to schedule his or her work day and make decisions as to the most effective sales strategies. A job with low autonomy is that of a bank lender who is given a schedule of meetings and is required to follow a strict set of processes and procedures when making loans.
•Feedback: The amount and type of information received about the effectiveness of one's work performance. An example of a job with high feedback is that of a gun manufacturer who fires each completed gun to ensure proper functioning. A job with low feedback is that of an IT manager who receives feedback from his or her manager just twice a year, during formal performance appraisals.
The job characteristics model proposes that the motivating potential for any job can be calculated. Using the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS), a worker reads descriptions of various job characteristics and, on a scale from 1 (very nondescriptive) to 5 (very descriptive), determines the degree to which each statement describes his or her job. Next, the employee responses are calculated (as shown in Figure 7.4) to determine a score for each of the five dimensions of job characteristics (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback), and scores for each dimension are entered into an equation to determine the overall motivating potential score (MPS) for the job.
Figure 7.4: Calculating motivation potential from the job characteristics model
According to Hackman and Oldham's model, the higher these five job characteristics are in a particular job, the more motivating and satisfying the job will be because it will create and nurture three desired psychological states. In particular, the first three job characteristics in Hackman and Oldham's model (variety, identity, and significance) additively influence the psychological state of work meaningfulness. This allows these three dimensions to substitute for one another. For example, a highly specialized job can still be motivating and satisfying if it is high on identity and significance. Note that in the equation, the subdimensions of skill variety, task identity, and task significance are combined. The higher people rate their job in any or all of the three subdimensions, the more likely they are to perceive their work as important, interesting, and meaningful.
On the other hand, the fourth characteristic, autonomy, affects a different psychological state: responsibility of outcomes. Jobs that score high in autonomy increase workers' feelings of responsibility for their work. Finally, the fifth characteristic (feedback) influences a third psychological state: knowledge of results. Jobs that provide considerable feedback ensure that the worker has a clear understanding of his or her performance.
Studies have shown that people who perceive that their jobs contain meaning, responsibility, and feedback typically feel intrinsically motivated (Gagné & Deci, 2005). Additionally, jobs with high motivating potential positively impact employee motivation, work satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance. Furthermore, as you can see in the equation, the effect of the three psychological states is multiplicative: Deficiencies in one state can be detrimental for the motivational potential of the whole job, because these states cannot substitute for one another. For example, a highly meaningful job is not motivating if it provides no feedback to allow for knowledge of results or if it provides no autonomy to facilitate perceptions of responsibility for outcomes.
Interestingly, there are some situations in which jobs will not be motivating, no matter how high their motivating potential scores are. This often happens when workers become dissatisfied with outside factors, such as pay, policies, supervision, or the work environment. Additionally, workers must possess the skills and abilities needed to perform a job, or they will end up frustrated and angry. Finally, if workers have a high need for growth and development (called growth need strength), they will experience more psychological satisfaction from working in a meaningful job, but if workers do not have high growth need strength, they will not be motivated in the job, even if it should be, according to a job diagnostic survey, highly motivating. Simply put, even if you have the best job in the world, it's hard to be motivated if you can't do the job, dislike your manager, or have no desire to meet the demands of highly meaningful, challenging jobs.
Figure 7.5: The job characteristics model
From Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). The job characteristics model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 16, 256. Reprinted by permission of Elsevier.
Redesigning Jobs
Consider the following scenario: Zach S., an e-business development specialist, sits slumped at his desk. "I can't wait to quit this job," he thinks to himself. "I'm so bored. Every day is the same: review some reports, find some information, enter it into the computer. Any monkey could do this job. I don't care how much they pay me, I need some challenges! And my boss needs to stop micromanaging me; I'm sick of having to ask for his approval every time I need to make a change to my data entries." Zach sighs, frustrated. Then he sits up straight in his chair, a smile playing about his lips. "That's it . . . I'm going to make my idea for a lawn care business a reality! Sure, it'll be tough, especially at first, plus I know I won't make as much money . . . but the work will be challenging and will change every day—and, best of all, I'll be my own boss." His mind made up, Zach stands, sets his shoulders, and strides purposefully out of his cubicle to speak with his manager about his decision to quit his job.
As we can see from this example, Zach's job as an e-business specialist involved unchallenging, repetitive tasks for which he perceived little meaning. To make matters worse, he had very little autonomy to make his own decisions, even in minor situations. As the head of his own lawn-care business, however, Zach would not only be constantly challenged with a variety of meaningful tasks, he would also have the autonomy to meet each challenge with actions that directly affected the business. Zach's actions illustrate the basic tenet of the job characteristics model: that work needs to contain the right combination of meaning, autonomy, and performance feedback in order to be motivating. Let's look now at how organizations can use the job characteristics model to maximize a job's motivating power.
Job Rotation
Job rotation involves workers periodically moving from one job or task to another. The goal of job rotation is twofold: first, to keep workers challenged and stimulated when the original job has become routine and second, to help workers learn new knowledge, skills, and abilities they can use later in their career. For example, large companies like GE and PepsiCo adopt rotation programs in which high-performing leaders rotate through the major functions of the business as a way to increase their business knowledge and leadership skills. Factories may train employees on all segments of the assembly line so they can be moved as needed. Giving workers the opportunity to perform a larger number and variety of tasks improves job interest while reducing boredom and stagnation. Job rotation also helps workers better understand how their job contributes to the organization as a whole, which improves perceptions of the job's significance.
Job Enlargement
Job enlargement involves increasing a job's diversity by expanding the number and variety of tasks workers perform within that job. For example, a customer service position might require a representative to address incoming customer questions. However, the job could be enlarged if representatives were also instructed to cross-sell products during calls. The differences between job rotation and job enlargement are subtle but important. Unlike job enlargement, job rotation does not involve redesign, because the worker simply moves from one established job to another. Although job enlargement often leads to enhanced work motivation and satisfaction, the additional activities can be viewed negatively if they result in stress and burnout.
Job Involvement
Photo of two business colleagues seated at a table having a conversation.
Participative management is a form of job involvement in which the employee and supervisor work jointly to make decisions and share the decision-making power equally, thus boosting employee enthusiasm and work commitment.
Although not a job-redesign mechanism per se, increasing job involvement—or the degree to which workers are involved in decisions that affect their work—does have a positive impact on workers' motivation. One form of job involvement studied extensively in organizations is participative management, in which the employee and supervisor work jointly to make decisions and thus share the decision-making power equally. Participative management has garnered considerable support in organizations due to the belief that it boosts employees' enthusiasm and work commitment. The job characteristics model also supports the idea of job involvement, because greater involvement in one's job should increase a worker's feelings of responsibility (autonomy) and job meaningfulness, which should then go on to improve the worker's satisfaction and motivation. For example, a loan officer who was required to obtain manager approval for all new loans entering the bank would feel less involved with her job than she would if she were part of a committee that worked together to make final loan decisions.
Although job involvement seems to be an important part of stimulating worker motivation, research on the subject is mixed. Miller and Monge (1986) have shown that job involvement has a moderate relationship with motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. It is possible that the impact of participation on these outcomes may depend on the amount of responsibility workers want to have. For example, people who are uncomfortable making decisions yet good at following directions may be better suited to work in positions that require little job involvement.
Money As a Motivator
At the beginning of this chapter, you were asked to think about what motivated you at work. Did money make the list? If not, you're not alone. As an extrinsic motivator, pay is not usually the driving factor in job satisfaction. However, compensation does have an important role in how organizations attract and retain top performers. As you learned earlier in Herzberg's model, although pay may not be a motivator that promotes job satisfaction, adequate pay can be considered a hygiene factor that prevents job dissatisfaction. A survey asked high performers in many large companies to consider what would cause them to leave their jobs, and 71% of respondents indicated that compensation would play a role (White, 2006). As you can see, pay can be very important to workers. If designed properly, compensation systems can be a strategic tool used to motivate employees.
Pay for Performance
Photo of a woman holding several hundred dollar bills to her face.
Piece-rate pay systems compensate workers for each unit they complete, which may lead to increased productivity but at the expense of overall quality.
Unfortunately, compensation systems are frequently not designed to motivate workers. Take the example of school teachers. Very often, their compensation is based strictly on seniority and not on teaching style or effectiveness. These teachers may be tempted to think that putting in extra effort is needless, because they will be paid the same regardless. Indeed, most workers do not see a strong link between their pay and their performance; one survey found that only 29% of American workers believe they are rewarded for doing good work (Compensation and Benefits Report, 2003).
Two types of pay-for-performance programs are piece-rate pay and merit-based pay. Piece-rate pay is the most effective method of linking pay to performance on production jobs. Under a piece-rate system, workers do not typically get a base salary. Instead, they receive a set amount of money for each unit they complete. A data processor could be paid this way, perhaps receiving $1 for each page he entered into the system. The better he performs, the more pages he would complete and the more money he would receive, resulting in a strong link between job performance and compensation. Commission-based pay for sales jobs is another example.
Piece-rate pay systems have a number of limitations. First, they can sometimes increase productivity at the expense of quality. When production is the sole measure of performance, workers are likely to focus their attention solely on producing as many pieces as possible in order to maximize their reward. Organizations can counter this either by implementing appropriate control mechanisms to monitor quality or by including a quality metric as part of the payment criteria. Our data processor, then, might be paid only for each page that contained zero errors. Another limitation of piece-rate systems is that they reward individual productivity, which can decrease cooperation among workers. Finally, these systems are simply not feasible for many professional-level workers, such as managers, customer service representatives, and marketing professionals. Although piece-rate pay is motivating for and relevant to some jobs, it is not the only way to pay workers based on their performance.
Merit-Based Pay
Compared with production jobs, white-collar jobs have fewer objective performance criteria, making them more difficult to compensate according to a pay-for-performance system. Attempts to link pay with performance in white-collar jobs are called merit-based pay plans. In these systems, managers are required to periodically evaluate their employees' performance on pre-established dimensions. Based on these evaluations, managers then recommend whether employees should be rewarded some amount of merit pay over and above their base salaries.
In addition to a positive relationship with job performance, merit-based pay plans (also called variable-pay plans) have the support of managers, who readily appreciate the value of rewarding high performers and recognize that merit pay is one way to keep their most valuable workers from being recruited and hired away by a competitor. Variable-pay programs allow top employees to be recognized and compensated for their hard work and effort, which increases their overall pay satisfaction (Williams, McDaniel, & Nguyen, 2006). Additionally, with these systems, higher pay is no longer simply a form of entitlement.
Although most companies employ merit-based pay, the plans are usually poorly executed. Unfortunately, a merit system is only as good as the performance evaluation upon which it is based, and as you recall from chapter 5, managers tend to have a difficult time accurately describing and measuring superior performance. As a result, managers might be unable or unwilling to discriminate between excellent, average, and poor performers, resulting in unfair distribution of merit pay. Additionally, depending on the company's financial situation, the size of the incentive pool might be quite small, which would not serve as an effective motivator.
Executive Compensation
Photo of a businessman gripping a cluster of hundred dollar bills.
Because CEOs get paid more than the average worker, there is a perceived inequality between executives' pay and that of the average employee.
Compensation for top executives has received quite a bit of attention from both researchers and the media, possibly because of the perceived inequity between executives' pay and that of the average worker. In 2010, CEOs of publicly traded companies earned an average of $11.4 million, 343 times more than the average worker (AFL-CIO, 2011). With all the scandals and bailouts and turmoil in which companies are currently involved, many people are asking whether large salaries and lavish perks are truly justified.
It may come as a surprise that research has found the statistical link between CEOs' pay and their organizations' performance, for the most part, to be significant (Jensen & Murphy, 1990). For example, a study examined the relationship between CEO pay and company performance for 280 companies between 2006 and 2009. Again, CEO pay was positively related to company performance, as measured by return on equity (Sigler, 2011). However, work by Wallsten (2000) indicates that this relationship may be more complex than it appears. Wallsten found that when companies do well, the top executives receive large salary increases in proportion to the high performance. On the other hand, when the companies perform poorly, there is very little change in the executives' pay, upward or downward. This suggests that executive pay is insulated from the negative impact of poor organizational performance, making it less effective as a motivational tool. For executive pay to be truly motivational, boards of directors may need to be willing to adjust compensation downward when the company's performance is low.
Alternative Work Arrangements
Concepts in Motion:
Motivational Strategies
Beyond job redesign and pay, organizations are using alternative work arrangements to satisfy and motivate workers. The typical American employee works 40 hours, five days a week. With the advent of an increasingly diverse workforce and constantly advancing technology, however, companies are experimenting with ways to modify the traditional work schedule. Common forms of alternative scheduling include flex-time, the compressed work week, and telecommuting.
Flex-Time
Flex-time, short for flexible work time, is an alternative work schedule in which the worker has the discretion to determine his or her arrival and quitting times. Typically, employees on flex-time are expected to work eight hours a day and to be in attendance during core hours (usually 9 a.m.–3 p.m., with a lunch break at midday), but they are free to structure their remaining hours any way they wish. For example, if an office is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., a worker on flex-time could choose to work from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. with an hour for lunch.
These flexible work schedules have become popular with both organizations and employees. A study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) in 2011 found that 63% of American employees have access to flex-time. Organizations appreciate the value of flex-time because it helps attract new workers, such as stay-at-home mothers and retired workers, who require greater flexibility and would not otherwise be willing to work. For the worker, flex-time allows for easier, more effective management of work and personal schedules, and has a positive effect on productivity, job satisfaction, satisfaction with work schedules, and lower employee absenteeism (Baltes, Briggs, Huff, Wright, & Neuman, 1999). A major drawback is that flex-time is not feasible for every job, which can sometimes reduce morale for workers who believe they are missing out on a benefit that others are receiving, leading to perceptions of inequity. For example, jobs that require availability to and personal contact with customers do not lend themselves to flex-time.
Compressed Work Week
Another work schedule option is the compressed work week, in which an employee works the same number of hours as a typical work week (usually 40 hours) but in fewer days. Most commonly, employees do this by working 10 hours a day, four days a week. Organizations or departments following compressed work schedules may then choose either to operate just four days a week or to institute a system of rotation to cover more days of the week. As with flex-time scheduling, compressed work weeks provide employees with greater scheduling flexibility, and despite the longer days, they appreciate the added free day and use it for personal activities, errands, and tasks and to spend more time with friends and family. Research supports a positive relationship between compressed schedules and productivity and job satisfaction (Baltes et al., 1999). However, compressed work schedules can also increase fatigue and error rates, reducing productivity, especially when employees work over 12 hours in one day (Monk & Folkard, 1992; Rogers, Hwang, Scott, Aiken, & Dinges, 2004; Scott, Hwang, & Rogers, 2006).
Telecommuting
Cartoon illustration of a rancher talking on a phone while surrounded by a herd of sheep and a large telephone. The caption reads "Henry, a ranch hand can't telecommute no matter the size of his phone."
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to work from home? There would be no dreary commute, you could work in your pajamas, and you wouldn't have to worry about many of the usual work distractions (coworkers' voices, machine noise, unscheduled interruptions, etc.). This option, also referred to as telecommuting, lets employees work at home while staying in touch with their office.
Organizations that utilize telecommuting experience a number of advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, offering a telecommuting option makes organizations more attractive to job candidates, which serves to increase the labor pool. It also lowers organizational expenditures, because it reduces turnover as well as the need for as much office space and equipment. On the other hand, managers often struggle with the telecommuting option because they are unable to supervise workers directly. Additionally, telecommuting can interfere with managers' attempts to foster teamwork within a highly collaborative and team-oriented work environment.
For employees, as with other forms of alternative scheduling, telecommuting is beneficial in that it offers greater flexibility and work-life balance. For some people, however, going in to work addresses an important social need. Telecommuting interferes with the satisfaction of this need because it can be isolating, which can lead to job dissatisfaction. Additionally, although traditional work distractions are minimized at home, new distractions can arise. Children, daily chores, television, and Internet surfing can easily compromise a telecommuter's overall productivity. Telecommuting, then, is not an optimal option for all workers.
7.5 Special Issues in Motivation
As you may have noticed, motivation is not a new topic to I/O psychology. In fact, interest in human motivation can be traced to centuries of writing and research in a wide range of fields such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, education, and more recently management and organizational sciences. However, new perspectives have emerged on how organizations can build on those traditional approaches to increase the motivation of their managers and employees, leading to higher productivity and yielding desirable financial outcomes at the organizational level. In this section, we introduce three of these new perspectives, namely, motivation across cultures, behavioral management, and positivity.
Motivation Across Cultures
With globalization, organizations often must motivate managers and employees from different cultural backgrounds. In the last chapter, you were introduced to some recognized cross-cultural differences. These differences may affect not only communication but also motivation across cultures. For example, Citigroup managers from different cultures were found to vary in their perceptions of whether their employees were intrinsically and/or extrinsically motivated, which affected their appraisals of their employees' performance (DeVoe & Iyengar, 2004).
As a result of cross-cultural differences, motivation theories designed primarily for Western cultures may not always lend themselves to application in other cultures. This is because, although many motives, such as need for achievement, seem to be universal, the factors that drive these motives are not generalizable across cultures. These factors include goals and aspirations, feedback mechanisms, reward systems, job and organizational characteristics, and job satisfaction (Gelfand, Erez, & Aycan, 2007). Thus, motivation theories should be fitted with and adapted to the cultural context in which they are applied in order to successfully leverage employee motivation.
Behavioral Management: Which Rewards Will Produce the Desired Performance Outcomes?
Have you ever tried to train a pet to behave in a certain way? What did you do? You probably rewarded the desired behavior to reinforce it and punished the undesirable behavior until it disappeared. The same behavioral management foundations have been applied to motivation in the workplace. Unlike the process theories of motivation you studied earlier, behavioral management is not too concerned with why people are motivated by certain rewards or the mental processes that explain their motivation. Behavioral management emphasizes observable behavior and how it can be predicted using specific environmental cues and tangible or measurable reward systems.
The foundations of behavioral management date back to Pavlov's 19th-century experiments, in which he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell that was associated with the presence of food, and Skinner's early-20th-century operant-conditioning experiments, in which he manipulated the behavior of lab rats and pigeons by varying the consequences he administered for various types of behavior. Thorndike's law of effect, published in 1905, captured the essence of behavioral management, which is that behaviors followed by positive consequences tend to increase in frequency, whereas those followed by negative consequences tend to decrease in frequency.
Interest then shifted to conditioning human behavior. The question became, Can we shape people's behavior by managing the consequences of that behavior? Studies support that indeed this is possible and can yield many desirable outcomes in many settings, including the workplace. In fact, behavioral management principles are the foundation for many reward systems today; the entire process has become known as organizational behavior modification. In the workplace, behavioral modification can be achieved in five steps: (1) identifying critical performance-related behaviors, (2) measuring the current frequency of those behaviors, (3) analyzing the antecedents and consequences of the behaviors, (4) intervening with positive reinforcers contingent upon the desired behaviors, and (5) evaluating the results (Luthans & Kreitner, 1975).
Three decades of extensive research studies consistently support this approach (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1997, 2003). Specifically, three types of reinforcers have consistently emerged as effective in the workplace: money, feedback, and recognition (Luthans & Stajkovic, 1999). Interestingly, although feedback and recognition can be used at no cost to the organization or the manager, they have been found to result in similar (and sometimes higher) performance outcomes than money. However, the key to the motivational potential of those rewards is that they have to be administered contingently upon the desired behaviors rather than just being given randomly (e.g., a manager who praises or berates employees depending on whether he or she is having a good day or a bad day), being spread equally (e.g. companywide bonuses or layoffs), or becoming an entitlement (e.g., a fixed paycheck or seniority based promotion instead of merit-based pay).
Meta-analytical research findings show that behavioral modification and management interventions in the workplace, comparable to the five-step process described above, can increase performance by about 17% on average and have a success rate of about 63% (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1997, 2003). Although people have different needs and different motivators, the motivational potential of money, feedback, and recognition, when administered contingently, tends to generalize across most worker populations not only in the United States but in other cultures as well (Welsh, Luthans, & Sommer, 1993).
7.6 The Heart of Motivation: Applying Positive Psychology
An interesting development in the recent positive psychology movement that can be directly applicable to motivation is the concept of flow, developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is one of the founders of the movement. Earlier in this chapter, you considered the motivational effect of activities that you really enjoy; certain activities are so fully absorbing, we tend to lose track of time when we engage in them. At the end of these activities, we feel good. These thoughts and feelings describe the state of flow. When we are in flow, activities are so intrinsically motivating and rewarding that time may seem as though it is standing still (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Now think for a moment. Wouldn't it be wonderful if employees could experience flow on the job? What would it take for people to experience flow in the workplace on a regular basis?
The key is to understand when and how flow takes place. Flow occurs when one's experienced level of challenge in a given situation is perfectly balanced with one's perceived ability to meet the demands of that situation. When challenges are perceived to be higher than skills, this can lead to stress and anxiety. When challenges are perceived to be lower than one's skill level, this can lead to boredom and apathy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Even when challenges and skills are matched but are both at a low level (unchallenging task that one has skills to accomplish), this is not conducive to flow. Flow is most likely to take place when challenges and skills are balanced at a high level, because it immerses the person in an exciting state of pursuing something that is difficult and worthwhile enough to warrant attention and energy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
