INTRODUCTION. Knowing how and why to motivate employees is an important managerial skill.
THE NATURE OF MOTIVATION IN ORGANISATIONS. Motivation is the set of forces that cause people to choose certain behaviors from among the many alternatives open to them. Motivation And Performance In Organizations. An employee's performance typically is influenced by motivation, ability, and the work environment. Some deficiencies can be addressed by providing training or altering the environment, motivation problems are not as easily addressed. Motivation is important because of its significance as a determinant of performance and its intangible nature.
HISTORICAL VIEWS OF MOTIVATION. Evolution can be traced from scientific management, through the human relations movement, to the human resource approach.
o Scientific management: The assumptions of scientific management were that work is inherently unpleasant for most people and the money they earn is more important to employees than is the nature of the job they are performing.
o Human relations movement: This school of thought emphasized the role of social processes in organizations and assumed that the need for belongingness and the need to feel useful are more important than money in motivating employees. o Human resource approach: This view assumes that people want to contribute to organizational effectiveness and are able to make genuine contributions. The organization's responsibility is to create a work environment that makes full use of available human resources. The human resource approach guides most thinking about motivation today, but three integrative approaches conceptualize motivation more completely: need-based, process-based, and reinforcement-based approaches.
NEED-BASED APPROACHES TO MOTIVATION. Need-based approaches to motivation focus on what motivates employees to choose certain behaviors as shown on the following diagram.