Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation Essay

819 Words4 Pages

2.1.3. INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Motivation in work is often described as being “intrinsic” or “extrinsic” in nature (Sans one & Harackiewicz, 2000). Thus, it is possible to argue that the variables affecting motivation have intrinsic and extrinsic motivational effects. As the question of how to increase employee motivation focuses on one or more of those variables mentioned above affecting motivation, we can also conclude that any incentive tool, whether it is monetary or non-monetary, is designed to provide extrinsic or intrinsic motivation or both. In the psychology literature, intrinsically motivated behavior is stated to arise from innate psychological needs, such as needs for competence and autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Kasser …show more content…

The intrinsic motivators are likely to have a deeper and long-term effect because they are inherent in individuals. These kinds of incentives are largely a result of the worker's satisfaction with his or her job. To sum up, intrinsic motivation originating from within the person or from the activity itself, affects behavior, performance, and well-being positively (Ryan & Deci, 2000). On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is said to exist when behavior is performed to attain externally administered incentives. Extrinsic motivation is related to “tangible” incentives such as wages and salaries, fringe benefits, cash bonuses, security, promotion, wall plaques, free dinner or movie tickets etc. For example, an employee may be motivated to come to work on time everyday with the desire to gain the monetary reward awarded for perfect on-time attendance for a month. The problem with extrinsic motivation is that it rarely has any useful long-term effect. The use of extrinsic motivators to energize the employees may lead to a situation where those rein forcers -particularly monetary ones- must get bigger and better all of the time just to repeat the same results (McCann, 2000). Luthans and Kreitner (1975) uses the term “contrived rewards” to refer to incentives that may generate extrinsic motivation, and “natural rewards” to refer to intrinsic motivators. According to them, although contrived rewards can be