Why is motivational theory important

In other words, need for achievement is a behaviour directed toward competition with a standard of excellence. Through his research, McClelland identified the following three characteristics of high-need achievers:. High-need achievers have a strong desire to assume personal responsibility for performing a task for finding a solution to a problem. The need for power is concerned with making an impact on others, the desire to influence others, the urge to change people, and the desire to make a difference in life.

People with a high need for power are people who like to be in control of people and events. This results in ultimate satisfaction to man. They tend to conform to the wishes of those people whose friendship and companionship they value. Figure The chart shows the parallel relationship between the needs in each of the theories.

Maslow refers to higher- lower order needs, whereas Herzberg refers to motivation and hygiene factors. Douglas McGregor formulated two distinct views of human being based on participation of workers.

The first basically negative, labeled Theory X, and the other basically positive, labled Theory Y. What McGregor tried to dramatise through his theory X and Y is to outline the extremes to draw the fencing within which the organisational man is usually seen to behave.

The fact remains that no organisational man would actually belong either to theory X or theory Y. What actually happens is that man swings from one set or properties to the other with changes in his mood and motives in changing.

Much after the propositions of theories X and Y by McGregor, the three theorists Urwick, Rangnekar, and Ouchi-propounded the third theory lebeled as Z theory. It must be noted that Z does not stand for anything, is merely the last alphabet in the English Language.

In other words, personality of individual develops. Argyris views that immaturity exists in individuals mainly because of organisational setting and management practices such as task specialisation, chain of command, unity of direction, and span of management. In order to make individuals grow mature, he proposes gradual shift from the existing pyramidal organisation structure to humanistic system; from existing management system to the more flexible and participative management.

He states that such situation will satisfy not only their physiological and safety needs, but also will motivate them to make ready to make more use of their physiological and safety needs. But also will motivate them to make ready to make more use of their potential in accomplishing organisational goals.

Valence, according to Vroom, means the value or strength one places on a particular outcome or reward. Being the model multiplicative in nature, all the three variables must have high positive values to imply motivated performance choice. If any one of the variables approaches to zero level, the possibility of the so motivated performance also touches zero level.

Critics like Porter and Lawler lebeled it as a theory of cognitive hedonism which proposes that individual cognitively chooses the course of action that leads to the greatest degree of pleasure or the smallest degree of pain.

But the valence or value people place on various rewards varies. For example, one employee prefers salary to benefits, whereas another person prefers to just the reverse. The valence for the same reward varies from situation to situation. In spite of all these critics, the greatest point in me expectancy theory is that it explains why significant segment of workforce exerts low levels of efforts in carrying out job responsibilities. They posit that motivation does not equal satisfaction or performance.

The model suggested by them encounters some of the simplistic traditional assumptions made about the positive relationship between satisfaction and performance. They proposed a multi-variate model to explain the complex relationship that exists between satisfaction and performance.

The end result is that intrinsic individual needs and external job-related aspects can be concurrently satisfied, leading to satisfied employees who are motivated to perform better.

To ascertain that the results regarding the public and private sectors were indeed a result of the organizational differences mentioned, and not due to the confounding effect of demographic variables, ANCOVA was used to control for these potential effects results not shown but are available upon request.

The results were confirmed for all professional categories and all motivational factors. In Greece, the enforcement of national legislation in , initiated a new era in the healthcare system, in which technical and economic efficiency were set as major targets for improvement.

Hospital administrations would be accountable for balancing the effectiveness of provided services, with the efficient use of resources. The spotlight obviously falls on the health care workers in this labor-intense environment. In today's economically unstable environment hospital managers, particularly in the public sector, are restricted in providing additional financial incentives, which could motivate employees to perform better.

Therefore, it is important to understand what else might satisfy health professionals in the workplace, and motivate them to improve performance. The next step would be to attempt to measure performance before and after the implementation of a motivation strategy, in order to determine if such incentives are indeed related to improving productivity in Greek or other countries hospitals.

The main limitation of this study, which could have implications on the generalizability of the results beyond this group of professionals, has to do with the sample itself. More than three quarters of the respondents worked in public-sector hospitals of the Greek NHS, in which management is limited in its capability of enforcing effective human resource management policies, as was previously mentioned.

The employees themselves, being fully aware of this reality, may have "adapted" their responses towards what they regard as feasible, rather than to what would be actually plausible.

Further studies, particularly ones using qualitative methods, might shed more light in this area. The results of this study are in agreement with the majority of the literature which focuses attention to management approaches employing both monetary and non-monetary incentives to motivate health care workers. Hospital employees report being motivated more by intrinsic factors, implying that these should be a target of effective employee motivation.

Furthermore, existing individual differences should be a concern in the manager's motivational agenda, despite this indeed being sometimes unfeasible. The next best thing is strategies for specific demographic and professional subgroups, exploiting empirical information from studies such as the present. The problems and solutions to motivation issues can be complex, and thus research and the timeless theories of Maslow, Herzberg and others despite not ever having received empirical support from research can offer ideas and solutions to motivation problems.

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Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Nick Kontodimopoulos. Project Kick-off Meeting. Project Lessons Learnt. Project Management Methodologies. Project Management Office. Project Management Processes. Project Management Tools.

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The Make or Buy Decision. The Rule of Seven. The Virtual Team. The author will explain why motivation is important in an organization and how it will impact the organization.

The Maslows Hierarchy of Needs Theory Living beings act, and their behavior is driven by incentives, needs, and drives. Animals act only by their instinctive desires. The behavior of animals is due to instinctive desires rather than by thought. However, where does man 's behavior originate from? Many psychologists have studied this topic with interest. Man 's behavior is also influenced by human desires.

However, how human desires influence human behavior is a very important issue. Motivation can be a key-contributing factor in employee performance. It is of great importance to an organization to recognize ways in which it can use employee motivation to positively affect employee performance. The methods used by organizations to motivate its employees are essential in determining how they affect employee performance.