Motivating Employees and Self-Managed Teams - Essay Example

As a state of mind, Bruce and Pepitone described this as the attitudes and perceptions of individuals manifesting in the willingness to contribute greater effort towards the achievement of organizational goals with the willingness conditioned by expectation of satisfying individual objectives (2). State of mind depends on various factors. Nickels and McHugh identified these factors as scientific management (260) in organizations, the Hawthorne effect with perceptions of organizational concern towards employees linked to positive outcomes (262), a work environment meeting an individual's hierarchy of needs (263), existence of positive incentives and challenges (269), and intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing job satisfaction (265).

As a process, Bruce and Pepitone described motivation as the process of arousing, directing and maintaining attitudes, behavior and perceptions towards the attainment of organizational goals (2). Nickels and McHugh discussed motivation as the facilitation of the interaction between individual and organizational goals (273) in a manner that ensures the achievement of individual and organizational expectations (274) and perceived as fair (275). . Motivating individual employees is important to the business environment because this creates a number of benefits.

First benefit is job satisfaction (Nickels and McHugh 260), which refers to the positive emotional condition of employees that comes from their personal appraisal and/or organizational performance assessment of accomplished tasks. Job satisfaction means employees feeling better about the value of their work contribution to the organization, going beyond minimum expectations, and positive response to task completion. This is important in the contemporary business environment because of its link to customer service and satisfaction.

Satisfied employees are likely to do better in their work. This spills over to their treatment of customers. Customers then receive better service and improved experience of the products and services of the firm (Nickels and McHugh 260). This could lead to repeat purchases and even loyalty. Second benefit is improved individual performance, which when combined translates into improved organizational performance (Bruce and Pepitone 38). This links employee performance and organizational performance.

Employee performance refers to both work outcomes and task completion processes. Measurement of work outcomes could include task completion based on quotas or other standards applied by the organization. Efficiency in task completion by working with errors at a minimum level, targeting more than the minimum expectations, and better disposition towards work also reflect the performance of motivated employees. Improved individual performance is important to the contemporary business environment because