Motivational Theories

Organizational behavior studies and motivation theories to account for the need to get the most out of workers in industrial or commercial enterprises is largely a 20th century phenomenon. After the industrial revolution, large concentrations of workers in mills and factories were needed to mass-produce goods on factory sites, replacing farm and craft work hitherto produced in small rural family or communal units. In the early days of industrialization in the West, slave labor, or forced labor, including child labor at poverty wages, could be exploited at the behest of the ruling classes.

After two world wars and a radically changed social, economic and political environment, the owners of capital could no longer treat labor as a disposable commodity. Unions, communism and the demand for universal education by the population in Western and Western-style democracies, together with world markets, meant that the old methods of almost forced and repetitive labor (“the dark satanic factories”) they became a thing of the past. . New disciplines such as psychology, sociology and economics arose. Unlike in the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and even biology, theory-building in the social sciences often followed practice and was uneven, let alone cumulative, reliable, or universally valid and applicable (see Gillespie below). ). Organizational behavior and management science developed alongside advances in the social sciences.

The “carrot and stick” approach to early management theories stems from the writings of Frederick Winslow Taylor. He coined the term ‘scientific management’ for a later theory, simply ‘Taylorism’, which sought to break tasks down into their simplest elements so that an assembly line robot could perform the task without thinking. All mental work was to be removed from the shop and handled only by the managers. This is the principle of separating conception from execution. This approach may have worked with early immigrants to the US without much language (English) skills, but its effectiveness was short-lived. However, in automated plants using very high-tech solutions for 24-hour routine work with little or no human involvement, the principle still applies.

Douglas McGregor called Taylorism and similar top-down command-and-control approaches to work management Theory X, and proposed in its place Theory Y which gives employees more autonomy and discretion at work as long as they comply with the general objectives of the organization. He was appealing to a more skilled and educated workforce as workplace technology became increasingly sophisticated over time. McGregor drew on the work of Elton Mayo in what became known as the Hawthorne Studies conducted between 1927 and 1932 at the Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois.

Gillespie made a comprehensive review of Mayo’s Hawthorne plant experiments and questioned the whole spirit of regarding such work as factual science, although Mayo’s conclusions were widely discussed and accepted in the intervening years. Gillespie believes that ‘there is no such thing as a purely scientific objective methodology’ and that what is agreed upon as ‘scientific knowledge is manufactured and not discovered’ (ibid.). Every type of intervention that Mayo instituted in the factory, including changing the lighting, changing the working hours, and giving more or fewer breaks, ended up with the workers producing more with each intervention by the social scientists. The ‘Hawthorne Effect’ has been summed up as employees becoming more productive because they know they are being watched with sympathy. In other words, by the psychological boost of being singled out, involved, and made to feel important.”

Labor relations have to be based on ‘human relations’, which was the name adopted by the Theory Y School of motivators. Their conclusions were that an informal group life was developing among the factory workers, and the norms they develop affect productivity. In short, the workplace is a social system and managers must ignore the fact at their expense. Workers develop among themselves a sense of responsibility to work well. Such an ethos was embraced by Japanese automakers, and until very recently it worked very well for them as they conquered the global car market.

The Tavistock Institute in London undertook a very similar type of research to study the work of coal miners. The researchers found that job simplification and specialization did not work under conditions of uncertainty and non-routine tasks.’ They advocated semi-autonomous groups. Meanwhile, extensive work had been carried out outside the organizational framework that was to influence motivational theory. This was the seminal work of Abraham Maslow, who identified a hierarchy of human needs that require satisfaction from the lowest level of basic physiological needs moving up the scale to creativity and self-actualization. According to Maslow, ‘a need, once satisfied, no longer motivates. The company relies on monetary rewards and benefits to meet the lower level needs of employees. Once those needs have been met, motivation wears off…employees can be more productive when their work goals align with their higher-level needs.

Although McGregor used Maslow’s theory to reinforce his Theory Y, Maslow’s theory with its much more complex hierarchy has been labeled Theory Z. In brief summary and visualized as a pyramid with its broad base first:

– Physiological needs (Minor)
– Security needs;
– Needs for love/affiliation;
– Esteem needs; Y
– Self-actualization needs (High)

There is a more influential theory of motivation (among many less well known) that needs to be explored. This is Herzberg’s “two factor” theory of motivation. ‘The theory was first drawn from an examination of events in the lives of engineers and accountants. Since then, at least 16 other investigations have been completed, using a wide variety of populations (including some in communist countries), making the original investigation one of the most replicated studies in the field of work attitudes (op. cit.). He hypothesized that the ‘factors involved in producing job satisfaction (and motivation) are separate from the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction… The opposite of job satisfaction is not job dissatisfaction, but rather , lack of job satisfaction; and similarly, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is ‘no job satisfaction, but no job dissatisfaction’.

Herzberg’s lower-level hygiene factors can be listed as safety, status, labor relations, personal life, salary, supervision, and company practices. His higher-order motivators can be listed as growth, advancement, responsibility, self-work, recognition, and, at the top, a sense of accomplishment, which corresponds to self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy.

Having explored the changing nature of motivational theory as a reflection of the changing nature of the global social, political, and economic landscape over the years, this essay also delved into Maslow’s more general Hierarchy of Needs Theory and the theory of Herzberg’s two workplace-oriented factors. motivation. Since all social science theories depend on so many factors, more recent theories such as total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR) have evolved to take current organizational concerns into account.