An Instrument for Measuring Work-place Motivation - Essay Example

Evaluation of JDS and Maslow’s questionnaire for measuring motivation In the present day competitive environment, people are viewed as an organization’s most valuable resource. Human resource strategies within an organization are difficult to imitate because of path dependency, i,e, they are based upon organizational policies that have evolved over time. This is the reason why human resource management and its associated practices have come to be recognised as one of the most important factors that could impart a strategic advantage to an organization in competing in the global marketplace.(Boxall and Purcell, 2003). In order to survive in today’s global economy, many Companies are re-organizing and downsizing their workforces, but this could impact negatively upon the motivation of employees, because they may be assigned to jobs they do not find challenging. Several instruments have been devised to measure motivation at the workplace. This report compares and contrasts the application of two such instruments (a) Maslow’s needs hierarchy, which assesses general motivation on four important dimensions (b) the Job Diagnostic Survey, which measures employee satisfaction in specific relation to their job design. Maslow’s needs based model to measure motivation at the workplace is based upon the underlying premise that individual behaviour at any particular moment is conditioned by their strongest need. Based upon this, he sets out a hierarchy of needs, in the order of their strength. At the outset, individuals need to feel a sense of security on the job, not only in terms of physical security but also job security. Since individuals are social beings, they feel a need to belong to and be accepted by various groups which will make them strive to have meaningful relations with others. Esteem needs of an individual lie in the need to evaluate themselves highly, based upon the reality evident in recognition and respect from others and self actualization is the need to maximize one’s potential. As Maslow clarifies however, it is not necessarily true that one level of needs has to be completely satisfied before other needs emerge as dominant; rather people tend to be partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied at each level with greater satisfaction occurring for elements such as external security. Applying this theory at the workplace through circulation of the Maslow needs questionnaire among employees, may be a useful way to predict behaviour patterns of employees on a low probability basis. For example, individuals are likely to have low motivation if their needs for esteem and self actualization are not realized; hence providing opportunities for employees to maximize their potential on the job, or providing reward and recognition schemes are likely to improve motivational levels. The organizational changes necessary to improve productivity may therefore involve measures to improve motivational levels by addressing items revealed through the questionnaire. The job diagnostic survey devised by Hackman and Oldman (1980) however is premised upon the belief that increasing employee alienation necessitates redesigning work patterns as a strategy for bringing about organizational change. The questionnaire that is circulated among employees in this instance would involve diagnosis of the characteristics of jobs before they are re-designed. The questionnaire would also aim to evaluate the effect of the re-designed jobs upon the employees who perform them. This instrument measures jobs to ensure whether three critical psychological states are present based upon employee experience on the job, i.e, meaningfulness of the work, responsibility for its outcomes and a knowledge of the results of activities associated with the work (Hackman and Oldham, 1974). The JDS Theory states that these three critical states can be created when five core dimensions are present in the job. These are (a) task identity (b) task significance (c) skill variety (d) high autonomy and (e) high feedback (Hackman and Oldham, 1974). Using these specific job components, the motivational potential score of the job is addressed through the formula: (Skill Variety + Task identity + Task significance) / 3 X (Autonomy) X (Feedback) This may work especially well in the case of employees who place a strong value on personal feelings of growth and accomplishment. It may not be so effective in the case of individuals who do not place a value on growth and accomplishment, because it may generate anxiety instead. Analysis of survey instrument results: In administering the JDS survey, the participants were separated into two groups. The first group was informed that their motivation to work was being examined, while the second group was not. The different elements examined in this survey were (a) general work satisfaction (b) supervisory satisfaction (c) growth satisfaction (d) internal work motivation (e) pay satisfaction (f) work security satisfaction (g) social satisfaction and (h) individual growth needs strength. The significant aspect about the results obtained is that in general, in the case of each element, Group 1 or the group that has been informed motivation is being tested, scores higher than group 2 on motivational dimensions. Scores for group 1 range from 5.2 to 5.8, while with group 2, scores ranged from 4.2 to 4.7. For the general work satisfaction dimension, the mean value for group 1 was 5.58 while for group 2, it was 4.47. This difference suggests that participants rank it higher when they are aware that it is their motivation levels which are being questioned. The analysis of variance thus reveals that there is a significant effect of the condition of the group on the answers to the work satisfaction dimension. The t-test results however, would serve to establish whether this difference is statistically significant and the value obtained in this instance is 2.72 with a significance level of 0.01. Since the value of 2.72 is far from zero, this would mean that the result is statistically significant in a sample size of 31, although not overwhelmingly so. Moreover the p value in this instance is 0.01, which means that if the knowledge about being tested on motivation has no impact upon the motivation potential, then the probability that there could be a gap of 2.72 between the results of the two groups is remote. Similarly, mean value for supervisory satisfaction is higher in group 1, i.e, 5.26, while in group 2, it is 4.26. The analysis of variance is 8.20 for a significance level of 0.01, which yet again, suggests that there is a significant impact of the condition of the group upon the responses to this element. The t-test further confirms that this result is statistically significant, i.e, 2.86, for a very small p value of 0.01. There were similar differences obtained in the case of all other elements tested as well, which leads to the conclusion that a knowledge of being tested for motivation is likely to generate more favourable responses from employees on the existing job design. To some extent, this could indicate that respondents may not be completely happy with the status quo on the job as indicated by responses from group 2, but their anxiety about potential changes to their jobs, i.e, downsizing or restructuring, could be leading them to provide a more favourable rating on various job elements. The results for mean values on the Maslow’s test for the four elements of security, acceptance, esteem and self actualization showed a low standard deviation value. Since standard deviation is low, this indicates that the mean values for the group with no knowledge about the motivation testing fall closely within the range of the mean values obtained for those with knowledge. As a result, this is not statistically significant. On the ANOVA test, in terms of analysis of the variance between means, the null hypothesis which will be assumed is that the group means are all equal and the alternative hypothesis is that they are not equal. In the case of security the F value is high, i.e, 3.49 and the significance level is low,i.e., 0.72. This suggests that the null hypothesis is discredited and the means could be significantly different; hence those who are informed the survey is for testing their motivation may have reported different values from those not so informed. For all the other variables however, the F values are smaller while the p values are bigger, thereby suggesting that the means between the two groups are not significantly different. On this basis, it may be concluded that where esteem, self actualization and acceptance are concerned, there is not much difference between the two groups. On the basis of the above results, where job redesign is concerned, it appears that in view of the sharp differences between the group aware of the motivation test and the group not aware of it, motivation may need to be enhanced. The positive values expressed by the group aware of the motivation test, suggests that this could be driven by anxiety about restructuring or downsizing of jobs. But the true results on the job constructs may be held to be those stated by those unaware of the motivation test. Maslow’s test reveals that levels of motivation may not be very high among the participants in this survey, because the general trend in the responses is towards the lower scale. References: Boxall, P. and Purcell, J, 2003. “Strategy and human resource management”, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hackman, Richard J and Oldham, Greg R, 1974. “The job diagnostic survey: An instrument for the diagnosis of jobs and the evaluation of job re-design projects”, EDRS Document no: ED 099 580 Hackman, J. R., Oldham, Greg R.,1980. “Work Redesign”, Addison-Wesley. Maslow, Abraham. “Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs: personal needs survey instrument”. Read More