Motivation Theory

There are three craftsmen building a house together. Passers-by asked what they were doing.

The first craftsman said blankly, can't you see I'm busy? The foreman arranged for me to lay bricks.

The second craftsman said excitedly, I am building a big house. After the house is completed, many people can live there.

The third craftsman proudly said, "I want to make this city more beautiful." I will strive for more and more beautiful buildings in the future, so that everyone who comes to this city will praise our city as the most beautiful. This is what I have to do in my life! "

in ten years ......

The first craftsman was an ordinary craftsman, burying his head in bricks.

The second craftsman became an engineer, directing everyone to build houses on the construction site.

The third craftsman became the designer of this city. Under his planning, the city has become more and more beautiful.

Why is the starting point the same, but there are different results ten years later? Although everyone's ability is different, why you work is very important for your career development. The first craftsman's motivation was to make money and complete the foreman's task. He didn't know the meaning behind the work, so he didn't have the motivation to work, so he made a low-level repetition of 10 years and could only be an ordinary craftsman. The third craftsman's work motivation is to build a beautiful city. In order to realize this mission, he made continuous efforts to discover the value and significance behind his works, and made progress every day, so he became the designer of this city after 10 years. Won a wonderful life.

The above story tells us why you work and what your motivation is, which determines your future. Because of different motives, some people are enthusiastic about their work, while others are lazy about their work. Jobs said that you live to change the world, so no matter what difficulties you encounter, you will never give up, and eventually you will create a great Apple company. Elon Musk's dream is to immigrate 1 10,000 people to Mars, so he founded space P, becoming the only private rocket company that can recycle rockets. It can be seen that motivation plays an important role in our success.

Motivation refers to an individual's efforts to achieve any goal. Motivation is a process, which reflects the intensity, direction and persistence of individual efforts to achieve goals.

Effort factors are measures of strength, driving force and vitality. Self-motivated people will work hard and will work hard. However, we need to consider not only the intensity of efforts, but also the quality of efforts. High-intensity efforts may not bring excellent work performance, unless such efforts are in a direction beneficial to the organization. Finally, motivation also includes the dimension of persistence, and employees can make unremitting efforts to achieve their goals.

Abraham and Maslow put forward the hierarchy of needs theory in 1943. Maslow divides the needs into five categories, which are like a ladder from low to high: physiological needs, security needs, social needs, respect needs and self-realization needs. Maslow pointed out that before the next goal is activated, the needs of each level must be substantially met. At the same time, once a certain level of demand is substantially met, it no longer has an incentive effect. In other words, when a demand is met, the demand at the next level will become the dominant demand.

The five needs can be divided into two levels, among which physiological needs, safety needs and social needs belong to the lower level, and these needs can be met by external conditions; The need for respect and self-realization is an advanced need, which can be met by internal factors. A person's need for respect and self-realization is endless. At the same time, a person may have several needs, but there is always one demand that plays a leading and decisive role in behavior in each period. Any kind of demand will not disappear because of the development of higher-level demand. The needs at all levels are interdependent and overlapping. After the development of high-level demand, low-level demand still exists, but its influence on behavior is greatly reduced.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory has been widely spread and recognized because of its intuitive and simple logic, but Maslow did not provide empirical support for his theory, and its scientific nature is unconvincing.

Douglas and McGregor put forward X theory and Y theory in 1957.

Theory X mainly represents a negative view of human nature. X theory holds that:

Theory Y mainly represents a positive view of human nature. Y theory holds that:

Motivational human nature hypothesis based on X theory and Y theory

Economic man hypothesis: this hypothesis holds that all human actions are to satisfy their own interests to the maximum extent, and the motivation of work is to obtain economic rewards. Therefore, leaders should use power and control system to protect the organization itself and guide subordinates, and use economic rewards to make people obey and make achievements.

Social Man Hypothesis: This hypothesis holds that the satisfaction of social needs often motivates subordinates more than economic rewards. Therefore, leaders should pay more attention to the satisfaction of subordinates' social needs, attach importance to the relationship between subordinates, cultivate and form their sense of belonging, and advocate the collective reward system.

Self-realization hypothesis: This hypothesis holds that besides material and social needs, people also have a desire to make full use of their abilities, exert their potential and realize their self-worth. Therefore, leaders should create conditions to satisfy the desires of subordinates and achieve the goals of the organization.

Complex person hypothesis: This hypothesis holds that no hypothesis can be applied to everyone. Because people are complex, people's needs change with various changes. Therefore, leaders are required to take different leadership measures flexibly, that is, under the guidance of contingency theory, to achieve the purpose of motivating subordinates.

David mcclelland and his assistant put forward three demand theories. According to the theory of three needs, there are mainly three acquired needs to promote people's work. They are:

Locke put forward the theory of goal setting in 1967.

The main contents are:

The factors that affect the realization of the goal are:

Goal commitment: Commitment refers to the degree to which individuals are attracted by goals, think goals are important, and make unremitting efforts to achieve them. When a person wants to solve a problem most, he can best generate a commitment to the goal and then really solve the problem.

Self-efficacy: Self-efficacy is a psychological concept put forward by Bandura, which refers to people's self-awareness of whether they can effectively achieve specific behavioral goals. Evaluation is based on individual's perception of various resources, such as ability, experience, past performance and information related to mission objectives. When the task has a strong sense of self-efficacy, the commitment to this goal will increase. This is because high self-efficacy helps individuals stick to an activity for a long time, especially when such activities need to overcome difficulties and obstacles. People with high self-efficacy persist in their efforts for longer than those with low self-efficacy. Another aspect that goals affect self-efficacy is the difficulty of goal setting. When the goal is too difficult, it is difficult for individuals to achieve it, and then self-evaluation may be lower. Repeated failures will weaken a person's sense of self-efficacy and reduce the level of effort.

National culture: Goal setting theory is limited by culture. In countries like the United States and Canada, goal-setting theory is easily accepted by people, because managers and employees will seek challenging goals. However, different countries and regions have different cultures, which may not be applicable in some countries.

Reinforcement theory is a behaviorist view that behavior is a function of results. Reinforcement theory does not consider goals, needs, expectations and other factors, but only pays attention to the consequences when individuals do something.

Reinforcement theory holds that behavior is caused by environment. The theory claims that you don't have to consider internal cognitive activities, and the factor that controls behavior is reinforcement. If positive reinforcement is given immediately after the behavior occurs, the possibility of behavior repetition will increase.

According to Skinner's point of view, if an individual is rewarded after showing a certain behavior, then the individual is likely to show this expected behavior again. If it is most effective to reward immediately after the expected behavior, it is unlikely to happen again if the behavior is not rewarded or punished.

The job characteristic model holds that the design of incentive work has an impact on employees' opportunities. Through research, five core work dimensions and their relationships are determined, as well as their impact on employee productivity, enthusiasm and satisfaction. The five core work dimensions are.

If a job contains these three characteristics (skill diversity, task integrity and task importance), we can predict that the job is very important, valuable and worth doing. At the same time, a job with the characteristics of work autonomy can make employees feel personally responsible for the results. If a job can provide work feedback, employees can know how their work performance is. In the end, employees will show high internal work motivation, high-quality work performance, high job satisfaction and low absenteeism and turnover rate.

Stussi Adams put forward the theory of fairness in 1965. He believes that people's enthusiasm for work is not only related to the actual amount of personal remuneration, but also closely related to whether people feel fair about the distribution of remuneration. People will always consciously or unconsciously compare their own labor costs and rewards with others to judge whether they are fair or not. The sense of fairness directly affects employees' work motivation and behavior. Therefore, in a sense, the process of motivation is actually a process of comparing people, making fair judgments and guiding behavior accordingly. Adams believes that organizations have the following three kinds of fairness.

Fair distribution: people feel the fairness between individuals in the amount and distribution of remuneration.

Procedural fairness: perceived fairness of procedures used to determine salary distribution. Procedural fairness requires consistency, impartiality, accuracy, openness and fair competition of decision-making information of managers.

Interactive justice: individual's perception of dignity, care and respect.

Victor Fromm, a famous psychologist and behavioral scientist in North America, put forward the expectation theory in 1964. Expectation theory holds that individuals' perception of job performance, reward and goal satisfaction determines their motivation level (degree of effort).

Expectation theory holds that in order to motivate employees, it is necessary to make them clear:

The relationship between employees' needs and goals is expressed as follows: motivation = expectation × potential.

Expectation-work confidence: it is the subjective probability that people judge the possibility of achieving a certain goal or meeting their needs. The target value directly reflects the strength of people's needs and motives, and the expected probability reflects people's confidence in realizing their needs and motives.

Effectiveness-work attitude: refers to the value of achieving goals to meet his personal needs. For the same goal, because everyone's environment and needs are different, they need different target values. The same goal may have three valences for everyone: positive, zero and negative. If the individual likes the available results, it is the proof titer: if the individual ignores the results, it is zero; If you don't like the available results, it's a negative titer. The higher the titer, the greater the incentive.

Expectation theory predicts that if an employee feels that there is a close relationship between effort and performance, performance and reward, reward and personal goal satisfaction, he will work hard. In turn, each connection is influenced by other factors. An individual's performance level depends not only on his efforts, but also on his ability to complete the work and whether the organization has a fair and objective performance evaluation system. If a person feels that he is rewarded according to performance factors rather than other factors, such as qualifications, personal hobbies or other standards, then the relationship between performance and reward will be stronger. In expectation theory, the last link is the relationship between organizational compensation and personal goals. If the individual's reward for work performance can meet the explicit needs consistent with personal goals.

Ask him, and he will show great work motivation and enthusiasm.

The integrated incentive theory model also considers achievement demand, job design, reinforcement theory and fairness theory. The motivation of high achievement demanders is not from the performance evaluation of the organization, nor from the rewards provided by the organization. For them, efforts have the most direct relationship with personal goals. They will have their own internal driving force to finish the work. Therefore, these people do not care about the relationship between hard work performance, performance reward and personal goal reward.

Reinforcement theory is also included in the model, which is reflected by the reinforcement of individual performance by rewards provided by organizations. If employees think that the reward system is compensation for high performance, then this kind of reward will further strengthen and encourage the continuous high performance level. Reward is also a key part in the study of organizational justice. Employees will judge whether they are satisfied with the salary by comparing with others' income, and will also consider whether they are treated fairly.

Through the above theory, we find that there is no universal incentive criterion, and we can motivate employees from the following aspects.

1, identifying individual differences.

Almost all contemporary incentive theories admit that employees are not homogeneous. They have different needs. They are also different in attitude, personality and other important personal variables.

2. Match people with jobs.

A large number of studies show that the careful matching between people and work can motivate employees.

Step 3 use the target.

You should ensure that employees have difficult and specific goals, and in the process of pursuing these goals, you can get feedback on the completion. It is best to involve employees in the process of setting these goals.

4. Ensure that employees think that the goal can be achieved.

Regardless of whether these goals can actually be achieved, once employees think that these goals cannot be achieved, they will reduce their efforts. Therefore, managers should ensure that employees are confident that they can achieve their performance goals as long as they keep working hard.

5. Personalized rewards.

Because the needs of each employee are different, the reinforcement that works for one employee may not work for another employee. Use your knowledge of employee differences to reward employees within your control.

6. Reward is linked to performance.

You need to determine the reward according to your performance, salary increase and promotion.

7. Check the fairness of the system.

Employees should think that their efforts and rewards or achievements are fair. In short, experience, ability, effort and others.

Obvious efforts should be made to explain the differences in obvious results such as salary and responsibility.

8. use money.

It is easy for us to focus too much on setting goals, creating interesting jobs and providing opportunities for participation, so that we forget that money is the main reason why most people work. Therefore, salary incentives based on work performance, such as salary increase, piece-rate bonus and employee stock ownership plan, are very important in determining employee incentives.

Under the uncertain economic situation, managers must use various incentive theories to maintain the intensity, direction and persistence of employees' efforts, so as to achieve their goals. Because most contemporary incentive theories are developed in the United States, they have some American cultural tendencies. Because each country's culture is different, everyone's needs are different, and everyone's work motivation is different. Managers must effectively analyze the needs of employees, master the advantages and disadvantages of various incentive theories, and give employees targeted incentives to ensure their continuous efforts.