Jannatun Noor Chowdhury :
Many of us already know that motivation is the driving force which makes people to do things they believe will help them satisfy their needs and result in a positive outcome. For this matter most successful ‘business people and entrepreneurs focus on understanding needs theories and process theories of motivation. They recognize that in order to improve employee productivity and ultimately achieve organizational goals, it is, at first, plausible to understand that there are many ways by which people are motivated and what works for which employee depends on their needs fulfilment stage and how they are encouraged to performance better through reinforcement of desired job behavior.
Needs theories, namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory (1943) and Alderfer’s ERG Needs theory (1969) and process theories, such as Thorndike’s Law of Effect and Reinforcement Theory may sound very overwhelming at first to those who are unfamiliar with these names. However, these theories are extremely important for business success because it is a known fact that motivation has a positive impact on job satisfaction and job performance. According to Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs Theory’, there are five levels of needs which are satisfied sequentially. Only after the lower order needs have been satisfied, an individual will move to the higher order needs. On the other hand, Clayton Alderfer’s ‘Needs Theory of Motivation: ERG Theory’ was formulated on the basis that the five levels of needs in Maslow’s theory had some overlapping features between them. Hence, the “ERG Theory” combined the 5 needs into existence (E) needs which are the lowest level of needs that a person tries to satisfy first, then relatedness (R) needs are addressed to express a person’s desire to obtain value for their existence and growth (G) needs include self-esteem and self-actualization in which a person feels validated and gains self-efficacy. Both of these theories can be used to analyze how job performance is improved by motivating employees. For example, when there is no motivation to work among an organization’s employees due to lack of needs satisfaction, there will be an obvious lack of incentive for them to produce satisfactory job performance. When these same employees are positively reinforced by suppose a performance incentive (training, extra pay, recognition, etc.) through understanding of process theories, such as Thorndike’s Law of Effect and Reinforcement theory, their performance levels are likely to increase. This effect can be reflected through the performance equation: Performance (P) = Motivation (M) x Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (KSAs) x Environment (E) which demonstrates that if motivation is absent then performance will also be zero even if the other factors are present because all three variables- M, KSAs and E- are multiplicative factors. The resulting effect is that having knowledge of needs theories and process theories of motivation influence how an organization is run and implementing these theories in the organizational setting positively impacts employee morale and consequently increases the performance level of employees. With higher performance and motivated employees, the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives, increase profitability and gain business sustainability is made easier and in most cases increase by many folds.
Many of us already know that motivation is the driving force which makes people to do things they believe will help them satisfy their needs and result in a positive outcome. For this matter most successful ‘business people and entrepreneurs focus on understanding needs theories and process theories of motivation. They recognize that in order to improve employee productivity and ultimately achieve organizational goals, it is, at first, plausible to understand that there are many ways by which people are motivated and what works for which employee depends on their needs fulfilment stage and how they are encouraged to performance better through reinforcement of desired job behavior.
Needs theories, namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory (1943) and Alderfer’s ERG Needs theory (1969) and process theories, such as Thorndike’s Law of Effect and Reinforcement Theory may sound very overwhelming at first to those who are unfamiliar with these names. However, these theories are extremely important for business success because it is a known fact that motivation has a positive impact on job satisfaction and job performance. According to Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs Theory’, there are five levels of needs which are satisfied sequentially. Only after the lower order needs have been satisfied, an individual will move to the higher order needs. On the other hand, Clayton Alderfer’s ‘Needs Theory of Motivation: ERG Theory’ was formulated on the basis that the five levels of needs in Maslow’s theory had some overlapping features between them. Hence, the “ERG Theory” combined the 5 needs into existence (E) needs which are the lowest level of needs that a person tries to satisfy first, then relatedness (R) needs are addressed to express a person’s desire to obtain value for their existence and growth (G) needs include self-esteem and self-actualization in which a person feels validated and gains self-efficacy. Both of these theories can be used to analyze how job performance is improved by motivating employees. For example, when there is no motivation to work among an organization’s employees due to lack of needs satisfaction, there will be an obvious lack of incentive for them to produce satisfactory job performance. When these same employees are positively reinforced by suppose a performance incentive (training, extra pay, recognition, etc.) through understanding of process theories, such as Thorndike’s Law of Effect and Reinforcement theory, their performance levels are likely to increase. This effect can be reflected through the performance equation: Performance (P) = Motivation (M) x Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (KSAs) x Environment (E) which demonstrates that if motivation is absent then performance will also be zero even if the other factors are present because all three variables- M, KSAs and E- are multiplicative factors. The resulting effect is that having knowledge of needs theories and process theories of motivation influence how an organization is run and implementing these theories in the organizational setting positively impacts employee morale and consequently increases the performance level of employees. With higher performance and motivated employees, the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives, increase profitability and gain business sustainability is made easier and in most cases increase by many folds.
( Jannatun Noor Chowdhury is a Business Student of North South University)
