Chapter 12

Theory Z

A contemporary approach that focuses on increasing productivity through participatory management: it assumes that increased satisfaction and productivity and reduced turnover result from using collective decision making with long-term employment, slower promotions, and an emphasis on developing all aspects of employees.

Goal Setting Theory

Contemporary theory grounded on research that suggests a person's efforts are expended because the focus is on the goal itself rather than the expected reward or equity of outcomes: It says: specific goals lead to higher performance more than general goals, specific difficult goals, when accepted, lead to higher performance more so than do easy goals, and incentives and rewards help individuals accept a goal or set a more specific, difficult goal.

Motivation

Degree of readiness or desire or willingness within an individual to pursue a goal.

Equity Theory

Describes the relationship between the individual effort and reward and employee's perceptions of the effort and reward received by others. When an employee subjectively determines that the ratio of input to reward/outcomes is comparable to that of other employees. Imbalance exists, the tension that is created causes the employee to be motivated to reduce the inequity and to achieve fairness so when staff feel over worked and underpaid, they are likely to decrease their productivity.

McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y

Examine how managers handle people based on their assumptions about workers. Theory X assumes that some workers dislike their works, avoid responsibility, lack initiative, and prefer strong direction and that motivation is derived from satisfaction of lower level needs. Theory Y is based on higher levels of need satisfaction. Managers assume people like to work and seek independence. Managers create opportunities for self-control, self-direction, and self=esteem building to motivated employees who like to work.

McClelland's Three Needs Theory

Identifies three acquired needs that motivate people to work: achievement, affiliation, and power, so the manager identifies these three needs in their employees and designs motivational strategies to meet these needs.

Intrinsic Motivational Factors

Inherent in a job and are associated directly with job tasks and responsibilities that create personal drive.

Extrinsic Motivational Factors

Satisfy staff needs and are tied to employee behaviors, skills, and roles in the organization so money, praise, awards, and incentives support employee performance yet may be valued differently by each employee.

Vroom's Expectancy Theory

Suggest an employee is motivated by expectations about future outcomes and by the value placed on those outcomes: Three factors interact to form expectation; expectancy/effort-performance linkage-employee's perception that effort will lead to certain level of performance, instrumentality to performance-reward linkage-employees' perception that certain performance levels result in desired outcomes, and valence/attractiveness of reward- the importance or value placed on the potential outcome or reward- the net effect of these three factors determines an employee's effort.

Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory

Suggest motivation or job satisfactory are present in work itself and they give people the desire to work and work well, and on the other hand, there are elements in the environment like working conditions and the need to meet organizational goals, hygiene or maintenance factors, that act to satisfy but not to motivate employees. Factors that lead to job satisfaction are separate and distinct from those that lead to dissatisfaction; as a consequence, when managers eliminate factors that create job dissatisfaction, they may only be assuring satisfied employees rather than actually motivating their employees.

Argyris' Maturity-Immaturity Continuum

Suggests individuals vary in their level of maturity along a relative continuum from total immaturity to total maturity and people will exert more energy to meet their own needs than those of organizations; thus, a manager creates a satisfaction by taking advantage of employee interests and helping personnel meet their needs for self-actualization by identifying where on the maturity continuum the employee is functioning.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Suggests people are motivated to satisfy needs ranging from basic survival to complex needs; when the lower level needs are satisfied, people seeks to meet higher level needs; and once the lower level needs are met, they no longer motivate us.

Skinner's Positive Reinforcement Theory

Suggests that people may be conditioned to behave in certain ways' rewarded behaviors are repeated and with positive praise and reinforcement these behaviors increase in frequency.

Clayton Alderfer's Modified Need Hierarchy (ERG)

Three-level need hierarchy that collapsed Maslow's five levels and suggests that the frustrated higher-level needs cause regression to next lower-level needs in the hierarchy with one of the three needs- existence, relatedness, and growth operating at any point in time to motivate behavior.