The Oxford English dictionary (www.oxforddictionaries.com, 2014) describes motivation as ‘A reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way’. Robbins and Judge (2015) describe motivation in the workplace as what drives an employee towards attaining a goal through several processes such as their intensity, direction and persistence of effort. Theories behind workplace motivation originated in the 1950’s, most notably Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1954) which states that within each of us there is a hierarchy of needs. There are many more theories of motivation which are appropriate to the modern workplace and are listed in Table 1. Each of these theories, some developed more than 50 years ago, have relevance in the modern working environment. Different aspects from each theory can be applicable to certain situations and it may be a case that none of them are fully applicable in isolation.

It is not felt that all motivational theories are directly applicable to performance management. To understand which, if any, of the theories sit well with performance management, this first should be defined. So what exactly is performance management? Williams (2007) describes performance management as something ‘that integrates appraisal of employees’ performance with two-way feedback, development and goal setting’. Cardy (2004) defines it as a critical feature of organisational effectiveness and Pratt (1988) states that ‘performance management is designed to make