The Human Need Theory - Essay Example

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF HUMAN MOTIVATION Introduction Motivation has an important role in life. At home or at work, motivations determine how things are accomplished, or how successful a human activity may be. When people are motivated, they accomplish many things; for example, in the workplace workers can be very productive when they feel they are a part of a team or part owner of a business or organisation. A striking definition of motivation is provided by Pettinger (1998, p. 36) that says, “Motivation is a reflection of why people do things.” This definition tells the reason or the “why” of our everyday activity. When we do things without enough reason, we are not motivated and the result of that activity is not pleasant and successful. Kanfer (1990) also argues that motivation cannot be seen or felt, that’s why it is termed a hypothetical construct and we see its effects and by-products. An analogy for this is gravity which cannot be seen or felt but we see its effects if we jump from a high building. (Jex, 2002, p. 210) Motivating employees is a challenge to managers; it is a part of effective management. There are various theories of motivation and there are many ways to motivate employees. One way is to demonstrate trust to employees. This may include removing some controls or asking an employee to create a plan or schedule and be creative, putting subordinates in charge of something one would not normally handle, or giving incentives and raising salaries, and so on. Motivation is also related with work-life balance – it is a balance for life and what people do. Managers motivate people in order to have blending between work and family life. Work and family with pleasure and fulfilment are impacted by effective motivation. A productive employee can have a balance of life and work – he cannot be productive at work if he has a problem at home. Satisfaction in work and feelings and satisfaction in life and happiness with the family are interrelated. Moreover, motivation is an important factor in the efficiency of people in an organization. Performance management emphasizes much on motivation. Studies have found that successful managers have stronger power motives than less successful managers. The human need theory asserts that people have urges relative to the three needs which are the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power. Much has been written on motivation and the literature has supplied us with theories of human motivation. These theories are categorized into several types like: 1.) the need-based theories which pertain to work and how employees satisfy their needs in the workplace; 2.) the job-based theories which pertain to the source of motivation related to the content of jobs that employees work on; 3.) the cognitive process which refers to the decisions and choices employees have and focus their efforts on; and, 4.) the behavioral approach which refers to the principles of learning. (Jex, 2002, pp. 210-211) This essay will discusses the different psychological theories of motivation and how these theories affect life and work. The Human Need Theory The first theory is a constant feature in the literature on motivation, the human need theory whose originator is Abraham Maslow (1943). One important feature and explanation to this theory is the pyramid concept: Maslow arranged man’s basic needs like a pyramid or ladder. The basic needs are at the bottom of the pyramid and as one set is met, the need moves up the ladder, then up to the next. The basic needs are food, water, oxygen and sex. Human beings primarily need these basic needs, and of course even animals. This is at the bottom of the pyramid because we have to satisfy these basic needs of our physical bodies before we go up to the next needs. This is followed by the safety needs, e.g. security, stability, dependence, protection, freedom from fear, anxiety and chaos. Next are the need for structure, order, law, limits, and the need for strength in the protector. The next in the ladder is belongingness and love needs that include the need for recognition, acceptance and approval of others. (Maslow, 1943, p. 233) Self-esteem needs include how we value ourselves and our love and respect for ourselves and for others. Then we have the desires to know and to understand (Maslow, 1943, p. 236). This refers to man’s quest for acquiring knowledge and systematizing the universe, or what Maslow calls expressions of self-actualization. Self-actualizing people focus on problems outside of themselves, have a clear sense of what is true and what is sham, are spontaneous and creative, and are not bound too strictly by social conventions (Firth, 2002, p. 85). Self-actualizing needs are those where we place our goals for our career. Management in the organization has to look how it has met the needs of its employees before they can go on and be effective in their job. The need theory is focused on the acquired needs that people learn in the process of acquiring new life experience over their lifetime. The three major groups of needs that people acquire include achievement, affiliation, and power (Kopelman et al., 2006, p. 233). It is the motivations that people have for certain attitudes towards their work and their relations with their employers. The human need theory asserts that people have urges relative to the three needs: the need for achievement (the desire to accomplish a goal more effectively than in the past); the need for affiliation (the desire for human companionship and acceptance); and the need for power (the desire to be influential in a group and to control one’s environment (Firth, 2002, p. 86). Affiliation is the need that people try to satisfy in the work place as well, and organizations must provide their employees with favorable conditions for professional and personal development in the work place, encourage growth of the employees for the mutual benefit of the whole organization (Duxbury & Higgins, 2001, p. 13). The need for power is the moving force of the career development and professional progress of an employee (Kopelman et al., 2006, p. 233). Frederick Taylor who is known as the father of scientific management defined work in terms of the specified tasks designed for the workers to follow. The workers have no independence and they cannot judge between what is right and what is wrong in the workplace. (Luecke & Hall, 2006, p. 18) Application Maslow divided our needs into five with each one belonging to the different steps in the ladder: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization. We all have basic needs that have to be fulfilled. There are five different categories and each one has to be satisfied. There are many examples in our daily life that are referred to in this theory. For example, if someone has a talent for singing or has a good voice, he/she cannot go on to be a good singer if he/she is poor or hungry because she has no money to buy food. Aspiring Mozarts cannot play good music with a hungry stomach. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y McGregor’s theory x and theory y are about workers’ behaviour in the workplace. Theory x assumes that workers regard work as distasteful. Work is regarded as an obligation or punishment. Managers in companies that accept theory x build a top-heavy organisation with many levels of managers who are planning, deciding, and policing what everyone is doing. (Fournies, 1999, p. 33) Theory y, on the other hand, assumes that when people are motivated, they accomplish goals. Workers become productive when they are motivated and money is not a motivating factor. Managers in organisations that accept Theory Y push information and responsibility downward, explaining to workers the reasons why things should be done, assuming they have an interest in doing them and a willingness to do them. (Fournies, 1999, p. 34) Theory x and theory y are two contrasting views. The first holds that managers do not have trust on the workers; that’s why they impose rules upon employees and even to themselves. There is a heavy burden on employees and careers cannot be nurtured. Workers also regard work as some task hard to accomplish. The contrasting view is that employees can be motivated by letting them understand the intricacies in work. Managers want to motivate employees who in turn are inspired to do the job. Application We can find this kind of application in many global organisations nowadays. Because of the availability of the Internet and fast and effective communication, organisations delegate much of top management’s power and prerogatives to middle and lower managers. An example is an organisation with subsidiaries in the different parts of the world. Country managers are more independent and given leeway in decision making with respect to many aspects of operations and business functions. This way, managers and employees are motivated and organisational objectives are attained. The Hawthorne Effect The Hawthorne effect theorizes that productivity benefits and treating employees with dignity and as equal partners motivate them to work for the success of organisational objectives. David Garvin and Norman Klein made a study on this phenomenon and found that work output was not simply a function of a job’s scientific design, but was also influenced by social norms, management-employee communications, and the level of employee involvement in workplace decisions. (Luecke and Hall, 2006, p. 19) The Hawthorne studies view that individuals are part of society and that performance of employees is affected by the environment or the surroundings, by co-employees and by their own talents and innate abilities. The experiment was conducted in the 1920s to 1930s in Hawthorne, a suburb in Chicago. The primary objective was to study the effects of the physical environment in the workplace and how this has to do with productivity. In the course of the experiment, several inter-related realities in the workplace were discovered. Elton Mayo, who supervised the Hawthorne studies, indicated that workers are motivated with recognition, approval and attention or being a part of a “cohesive group” (Firth, 2002, p. 86). Two groups of workers participated in the experiment. The experimenters introduced changes in the workplace by changing the lighting in the work area of one group of participants while no changes were introduced in the other group’s work area. The experiment found that there was increased productivity from the group of workers whose lighting in the work area was improved than from the workers where there was no change in lighting. There were other changes introduced and it was noted that in those cases productivity improved. There was also a time when the lighting was dimmed and productivity also changed, and when it was returned back to normal, productivity improved a lot. (Hindle, 2008, p. 99) The conclusion of the experiment was that the reason why productivity improved was not because of the physical changes in the work area but because the workers felt that someone was concerned of their workplace. The workers also felt motivated when they were given the opportunity to discuss the changes. Application As a conclusion of the experiment, Elton Mayo wrote: “The desire to stand well with one’s fellows, the so-called human instinct of association, easily outweighs the merely individual interest and the logic of reasoning upon which so many spurious principles of management are based.” (Hindle, 2008, p. 100) Elton Mayo further noted that it was the working group that influenced the output of the individual workers, on how they felt and their conceptions in the workplace as influenced by the working conditions, and not the management’s way of managing the group. The motivational factor was the concern for the workplace. The Hawthorne studies were conducted at a time when technology was not at its height and the industrial revolution was still fresh and ongoing. Today, there are many ways to motivate workers, not just improving the working conditions. Workers are more demanding of the workplace in this age of globalisation and there are still many complaints and grievances from workers. Globalization has changed the working environment, but we still see a lot of displayed apathy by management with respect to working conditions. In the developing countries and even in many parts of the developed world, there are so-called sweatshops where working conditions are at its worst and workers’ health is at risk. There are reports of abuse and workers are forced to work beyond the legally required working hours. Conclusion Our experience of work is conditioned largely by how we think about it. When we think of work as a mere tool for us to live, we can hardly be motivated. We will continue working for the sake of the salary we get from the company we work for, but if we look at work the other way, we concentrate our life on what we do and become creative in the process. In the twenty-first century, various strategies and styles have been introduced by management to motivate employees to work “harder” and to produce more. While there are many who adhere to the tenets of good management, there are as many that are motivated by profits. But educated employees know their rights and their responsibilities. Motivation sometimes is a matter of survival. In the workplace, employees have to be encouraged and given resources to do their job and manage themselves. They should be allowed to oversee their own processes and set their strategies. Managers should allow employees to be free. If they are dictated of what they have to do, chances are they become like robots and they don’t care if business is successful or not. The three psychological theories of motivation discussed above all point to the advantages of motivation in the workplace and in daily life. The “modern” employee is motivated by many things but the basic needs have to be satisfied first before anything else. This is the gist of the three theories. References Firth, D. (2002). Life and Work Express. United Kingdom: Capstone Publishing. Fournies, F. (1999). Coaching for Improved Work Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill. Goble, F. (2004). The third force: the psychology of Abraham Maslow, Publisher: Reinventing Yourself.com. Hindle, T., 2008. Guide to management ideas and gurus: London: The Economist and Profile Books Ltd. Jex, S., 2002. Organizational psychology: a scientist-practitioner approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Knights, D. & Willmott, H., 2007. Introducing organizational behaviour & management. London: Thomson Learning. Kopelman, R., Prottas, D., Thompson, C. and Jahn, E. W., 2006. A Multilevel Examination of Work-Life Practices: Is More Always Better?. Journal of Managerial Issues, 18(2), 232+. Luecke, R. & Hall, B., 2006. Performance management: measure and improve the effectiveness of your employees. United States of America: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Maslow, A. H., 1943. A theory of human motivation. In G. Goble, The third force: the psychology of Abraham Maslow. USA: Zorba Press. Pettinger, R., 1998. Managing the flexible workforce. London; Virginia: Routledge. Randall, J., 2004. Managing change, changing managers (4th edition). London: Routledge Page Limited. Read More