Two Theories Of Motivation

“Motivation is the cognitive decision-making process through which goals- directed behavior is initiated energized, directed and maintained”(Buchanan and Huczynski 2017, p.283). Motivation is very important for managers to understand as managers use motivation in the workplace to inspire people to work individually or in groups to produce the best results for business in the most efficient and effective manner(Ian Bessell 2016). In this essay, I will give information about two theories of motivation, evaluating them and showing how they are used in the workplace. Listed below are three main types of motivation:

1. Content theories which are theories about the drives and needs of people. An example of a content theory is Maslow’s needs hierarchy(Maslow

H. Maslow 1943) and Goal-setting theory(Locke and Latham 2002).

1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need

Many managers must first understand motivation to then use it effectively. The managers’ goal is to use motivation the right way to then make their employees want to work and then work hard. Managers must understand that each employee may have different needs that would invite them to work harder. Some employees prefer to work in teams or as individuals. From my reading, I understand that the key to motivation for managers is paying attention to needs and fulfilling them to give the employee an incentive to work harder therefore motivating them. The theory that highlights this the most is Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs (A. H. Maslow 1943). Maslow’s model was created to try to understand human behaviour and fulfillment of human needs. One of the first observations Maslow made was that if people are getting paid well and fair, they will not be thinking too much about their salary but they will be happy and motivated to work. Maslow created a pyramid table with five levels each labeled differently, which reminded me much of the

Goal setting theory was invented when they found that people worked harder and were more motivated if they had goals and more challenging activities (Locke and Latham 1990). This theory also suggests that giving people difficult goals leads to better performance rather than urging people to do their best (Locke and Latham 2002). I guess one limitation or exception is that the person must be committed to the goal for the goal-setting theory to work, that the highest performance or commitment to a goal is if somebody has values connected with the goal they have set (Locke, Latham and Erez 1988). Although most people would think harder goals would be harder to keep two studies showed that levels of commitment decided the level of difficulty in sticking to a goal (Locke, Motowidlo and Bobko 1986). A critique of this theory is that without feedback there is very little effect, that without feedback for a long time, there is very little difference in performance to achieve goals (Strang, Lawrence and Fowler