5.1: Individual Perceptions and Behavior

5.1.1: The Perceptual Process

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent and understand the environment.

Learning Objective

Outline the internal and external factors that influence the perceptual selection process

Key Points

The perceptual process consists of six steps: the presence of objects, observation, selection, organization, interpretation, and response.
Perceptual selection is driven by internal (personality, motivation) and external (contrast, repetition) factors.
Perceptual organization includes factors that influence how a person connects perceptions into wholes or patterns. These include proximity, similarity, and constancy, among others.

Key Terms

Perception: That which is detected by the five senses; that which is detected within consciousness as a thought, intuition, or deduction.
factor: An integral part.

Perceptual Process

The perceptual process is the sequence of psychological steps that a person uses to organize and interpret information from the outside world. The steps are:

Objects are present in the world.
A person observes.
The person uses perception to select objects.
The person organizes the perception of objects.
The person interprets the perceptions.
The person responds.

The selection, organization, and interpretation of perceptions can differ among different people . Therefore, when people react differently in a situation, part of their behavior can be explained by examining their perceptual process, and how their perceptions are leading to their responses.

Multistability

The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way. The vase can be seen as either a vase or two faces.

Perceptual Selection

Perceptual selection is driven by internal and external factors.

Internal factors include:

Personality – Personality traits influence how a person selects perceptions. For instance, conscientious people tend to select details and external stimuli to a greater degree.
Motivation – People will select perceptions according to what they need in the moment. They will favor selections that they think will help them with their current needs, and be more likely to ignore what is irrelevant to their needs.
Experience – The patterns of occurrences or associations one has learned in the past affect current perceptions. The person will select perceptions in a way that fits with what they found in the past.

External factors include:

Size – A larger size makes it more likely an object will be selected.
Intensity – Greater intensity, in brightness, for example, also increases perceptual selection.
Contrast – When a perception stands clearly out against a background, there is a greater likelihood of selection.
Motion – A moving perception is more likely to be selected.
Repetition – Repetition increases perceptual selection.
Novelty and familiarity – Both of these increase selection. When a perception is new, it stands out in a person’s experience. When it is familiar, it is likely to be selected because of this familiarity.

Perceptual Organization

After certain perceptions are selected, they can be organized differently. The following factors are those that determine perceptual organization:

Figure-ground – Once perceived, objects stand out against their background. This can mean, for instance, that perceptions of something as new can stand out against the background of everything of the same type that is old.
Perceptual grouping – Grouping is when perceptions are brought together into a pattern.
Closure – This is the tendency to try to create wholes out of perceived parts. Sometimes this can result in error, though, when the perceiver fills in unperceived information to complete the whole.
Proximity – Perceptions that are physically close to each other are easier to organize into a pattern or whole.
Similarity – Similarity between perceptions promotes a tendency to group them together.
Perceptual Constancy – This means that if an object is perceived always to be or act a certain way, the person will tend to infer that it actually is always that way.
Perceptual Context – People will tend to organize perceptions in relation to other pertinent perceptions, and create a context out of those connections.

Each of these factors influence how the person perceives their environment, so responses to their environment can be understood by taking the perceptual process into account.

5.1.2: Cognitive Biases

Perceptual distortions, such as cognitive bias, can result in poor judgement and irrational courses of action.

Learning Objective

Analyze the complex cognitive patterns that can complicate employee perception and behavior

Key Points

Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior that can cause deviations in judgement that produce negative consequences for an organization.
Understanding how perception can be distorted is particularly relevant for managers because they make many decisions, and deal with many people making assessments and judgments, on a daily basis.
Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These include information-processing shortcuts (heuristics), mental noise and the mind’s limited information processing capacity, emotional and moral motivations, and social influence.
A few examples of perceptual distortions include confirmation bias, self-serving bias, causality, framing, and belief bias.

Key Terms

heuristic: Experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. An exhaustive search is impractical, so heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.
cognitive: The area of mental function that deals with logic, as opposed to affective functions which deal with emotion.

A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations and can lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Implicit in the concept of a pattern of deviation is a standard of comparison with what is normative or expected; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or a set of independently verifiable facts. Essentially, there must be an objective observer to identify cognitive bias in a subjective individual.

Optical illusion

In this optical illusion all lines are actually parallel. Perceptual distortion makes them seem crooked.

Bias arises from various processes that can be difficult to distinguish. Bias is not inherently good or bad–it is pointedly subjective or contrary to reactions or decisions that one might objectively expect. Ways in which biases are derived include:

Information-processing shortcuts (heuristics)
Mental noise
The mind’s limited information processing capacity
Emotional and moral motivations
Social influence

The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972 and grew out of their experience of people’s innumeracy, or inability to reason intuitively with greater orders of magnitude. They and their colleagues demonstrated several replicable ways in which human judgments and decisions differ from rational choice theory. They explained these differences in terms of heuristics, rules which are simple for the brain to compute but which introduce systematic errors.

Perceptual Distortions and Management

The ways in which we distort our perception are particularly relevant for managers because they make many decisions, and deal with many people making assessments an judgments, on a daily basis. Managers must be aware of their own logical and perceptive fallacies and the biases of others. This requires a great deal of organizational behavior knowledge. A few useful perceptual distortions managers should be aware of include:

Confirmation bias – Simply put, humans have a strong tendency to manipulate new information and facts until they match their own preconceived notions. This inappropriate confirmation allows for poor decision-making that ignores the true implications of new data.
Self-serving bias – Another common bias is the tendency to take credit for success while passing the buck on failure. Managers must monitor this in employees and realize when they are guilty themselves. Being objective about success and failure enables growth and ensures proper accountability.
Belief bias – Individuals often make a decision before they have all the facts. In this situation, they believe that their confidence in their decision is founded on a rational and logical assessment of the facts when it is not.
Framing – It is quite easy to be right about everything if you carefully select the context and perspective on a given issue. Framing enables people to ignore relevant facts by narrowing down what is considered applicable to a given decision.
Causality – Humans are pattern-matching organisms. People analyze past events to predict future outcomes. Sometimes their analysis is accurate, but sometimes it is not. It is easy to see the cause-effect relationship in completely random situations. Statistical confidence intervals are useful in mitigating this perceptive distortion.

5.1.3: Impression Management

Impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others.

Learning Objective

Outline the way in which impressions and impressions management affect management, organizations, and branding

Key Points

Influencing others and gaining rewards, along with other motives, govern impression management from a general perspective.
Impression management theory states that an individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their stakeholder groups.
Organizations use branding and other impressions management strategies to convey a consistent and repeatable image to external and internal audiences.
Management must also consider the impressions they make on others, both subordinates and business partners. Every organization has an image to maintain—and so does its management.

Key Term

impression: The overall effect of something, e.g., on a person.

In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others about a person, object, or event. Impression management is performed by controlling or shaping information in social interactions. It is usually synonymous with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence how others perceive their image. Impression management is used by communications and public relations professionals to shape an organization’s public image.

While impression management and self-presentation are often used interchangeably, some argue that they are not the same. In particular, Schlenker believed that self-presentation should be used to describe attempts to control “self-relevant” images projected in “real or imagined social interactions.” This was because people manage impressions of entities other than themselves, such as businesses, cities, and other individuals.

Application to Management

From the managerial and/or organizational frame, the basic premise is the same. Organizations put forward a self-proclaimed (and strategized and refined) organizational perception. This is most commonly referred to as brand image or brand perception. Management must ensure that all aspects of the organization conform to and fulfill the desired brand image, and communicate it to the public.

Managers must also consider the impressions they make on others, both subordinates and business partners. Managers have to ensure that they too are promoting the company brand image. Maintaining a consistent and reliable impression in a professional context that is conducive to the organizational impression is a central communicative skill managers must practice to be successful.

Impression Management Theory

Impression management theory states that any individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their stakeholder groups. From both a communications and public relations viewpoint, impression management encompasses ways of communicating congruence between personal or organizational goals and their intended actions in order to influence public perception.

The idea that perception is reality is the basis for this sociological and social psychology theory. Perception of an individual—a manager or employee—fundamentally shapes how the public perceives an organization and its products.

Motives and Strategies

There are several motives that govern impression management. One is instrumental: we want to influence others and gain rewards. Giving the right impression facilitates desired social and material outcomes. Social outcomes can include approval, friendship, assistance, or power, and conveying an impression of competency in the workforce. These can trigger positive material rewards like higher salaries or better working conditions.

The second motive of self-presentation is expressive. We construct an image of ourselves to claim personal identity, and present ourselves in a manner that is consistent with that image. If people feel that their ability to express themselves is restricted, they react negatively, often by becoming defiant. People resist those who seek to curtail self-presentation expressiveness by adopting many different impression management strategies. One of them is ingratiation, the use of flattery or praise to highlight positive characteristics and increase social attractiveness. Another strategy is intimidation, which is aggressively showing anger to get others to hear and obey.

Basic Factors Governing Impression Management

There are a range of factors governing impression management. Impression management occurs in all social situations because people are always aware of being observed by others. The unique characteristics of a given social situation are important: cultural norms determine the appropriateness of particular verbal and nonverbal behaviors in different situations. These behaviors and actions have to be appropriate to the culture and the audience in order to positively influence impression management.

A person’s goals are another factor governing impression management. Depending on how they want to influence their audience regarding a certain topic, presenting themselves in different ways can shape different impressions and reactions in their audience.

Self-efficacy is also important to consider; this describes whether a person is confident that s/he can convey the intended impression successfully. If they aren’t confident, the audience will be able to tell.

5.2: Personality

5.2.1: The Big Five Personality Traits

The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Learning Objective

Apply the “Big Five” personality traits identified in psychology to organizational behavior

Key Points

The concept of the “Big Five” personality traits is taken from psychology and includes five broad domains that describe personality. The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
These five factors are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. They were defined and described by several different researchers during multiple periods of research.
Employees are sometimes tested on the Big Five personality traits in collaborative situations to determine what strong personality traits they can add to a group dynamic.
Businesses need to understand their people as well as their operations and processes. Understanding the personality components that drive the employee behavior is a very useful informational data point for management.

Key Term

neuroticism: The tendency to easily experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

The concept of the “Big Five” personality traits is taken from psychology and includes five broad domains that describe personality. These five personality traits are used to understand the relationship between personality and various behaviors.

These five factors are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. These five factors were defined and described by several different researchers during multiple periods of research. However, as a result of their broad definitions, the Big Five personality traits are not nearly as powerful in predicting and explaining actual behavior as are the more numerous lower-level, specific traits.

The Five Traits

The traits are:

Openness – Openness to experience describes a person’s degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and preference for novelty and variety. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret this factor, which is sometimes called intellect.
Conscientiousness – Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement. Conscientiousness also refers to planning, organization, and dependability.
Extraversion – Extraversion describes energy, positive emotions, assertiveness, sociability, talkativeness, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
Agreeableness – Agreeableness is the tendency to be compassionate and cooperative towards others rather than suspicious and antagonistic.
Neuroticism – Neuroticism describes vulnerability to unpleasant emotions like anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability. Neuroticism also refers to an individual’s level of emotional stability and impulse control and is sometimes referred to as emotional stability.

Applicability to Organizational Behavior

When scored for individual feedback, these traits are frequently presented as percentile scores. For example, a conscientiousness rating in the 80th percentile indicates a relatively strong sense of responsibility and orderliness, whereas an extraversion rating in the 5th percentile indicates an exceptional need for solitude and quiet.

Questionnaires for the Big Five personality traits

The Big Five personality traits are typically examined through surveys and questionnaires.

Employees are sometimes tested on the Big Five personality traits in collaborative situations to determine what strong personality traits they can add to the group dynamic. Personality tests can also be part of the behavioral interview process when a company is hiring to determine an individual’s ability to act on certain personality characteristics.

Understanding its people is as important to a company as understanding its operations and processes. Understanding what personality components drive the behavior of subordinates is a highly useful informational data point for management that can be used to determine what type of assignments should be set, how motivation should be pursued, what team dynamics may arise, and how to best approach conflict and/or praise when applicable.

5.2.2: The Myers-Briggs Personality Types

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a commonly used personality test exploring 16 personality types.

Learning Objective

Summarize the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality assessment perspective and the four personality types it measures

Key Points

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a questionnaire that measures the psychological preferences that influence how people perceive the world and make decisions. The MBTI sorts psychological differences into four opposite pairs, resulting in 16 possible personality types.
None of these types are good or bad; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that societies as a whole naturally prefer one overall type.
The four type preferences are Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judgment vs. Perception. One possible classification of a personality type could be ESTJ: extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J).
Myers-Briggs tests are frequently used in the areas of career counseling, team building, group dynamics, professional development, marketing, leadership training, executive coaching, life coaching, personal development, marriage counseling, and workers’ compensation claims.

Key Term

Forced-choice: A type of question used in psychological tests that only allows the individual to choose between one of two possible answers to each question.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a questionnaire designed to measure the psychological preferences that shape how people perceive the world and make decisions. The original developers of the personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. They began work on a questionnaire during World War II to help women who were entering the industrial workforce as part of the war effort to understand their own personality preferences and use that knowledge to identify the jobs that would be best for them. That initial questionnaire grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was first published in 1962. The MBTI focuses on normal populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences between people.

MBTI personality types

The dimensions of the MBTI are seen here, along with temperament descriptions associated with each personality trait.

MBTI Defined

The MBTI sorts psychological differences into four opposite pairs, or dichotomies, resulting in 16 possible psychological personality types. None of these types are good or bad; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that societies as a whole naturally prefer one overall type. In the same way that writing with the left hand is hard work for a right-handed person, people find that using their opposite psychological preferences is difficult, even if they can become proficient by practicing and developing those different ways of thinking and behaving.

The 16 Personality Types

The 16 personality types are typically referred to by an abbreviation of four letters—the initial letters of each of their four type preferences. The four type preferences are: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judgment vs. Perception.

One possible classification of a personality type is ESTJ: extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J). Another example is INFP: introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), perception (P); and so on for all 16 possible type combinations. In this situation, extroversion means “outward turning” and introversion means “inward turning.” People who prefer judgment over perception are not necessarily more judgmental or less perceptive; they simply prefer one over the other. The most common combination from the Myers-Briggs test is ISFJ or Introvert, Sensing, Feeling, and Judgment.

The current North American English version of the Myers-Briggs test includes 93 forced-choice questions. Forced-choice means that the individual has to choose only one of two possible answers to each question. Myers-Briggs tests are frequently used in the areas of career counseling, team building, group dynamics, professional development, marketing, leadership training, executive coaching, life coaching, personal development, marriage counseling, and workers’ compensation claims.

Relevance to Management

One of the most common contexts for using the MBTI is team-building and employee personality identification. Managers are tasked with creating work groups and teams with a variety of human resources, which is a complicated social process of intuitively estimating who would complement who in group dynamics. The MBTI test is an excellent tool to measure and more accurately predict how individuals will interact in a group and what types of skills they may bring to the table.

One particularly good example is in the IE relationship. Understanding which employees in a team are naturally introverted is a useful way to ensure that a manager doesn’t miss out on these employees’ opinions just because they are naturally quiet. The manager could meet with them privately and informally—over coffee, for instance—and get their opinions. Similarly, knowing which members tend to be intuitive thinkers (NT) and which tend to understand emotions and be observant (SF) can lead the manager to give them very different tasks, though the two might work well together in a group setting since they balance each other. Management can use this tool to minimize conflict and optimize performance.

5.2.3: Other Important Trait Theories

The disposition theory, three fundamental traits, and HEXACO model of personality structure are applicable to the work place.

Learning Objective

Examine various perspectives on personality and how to measure it in the context of organizational behavior

Key Points

Some important personality trait theories are: Gordon Allport’s dispositions, Hans Eysenck’s three fundamental traits and Michael Aston and Kibeom Lee’s six-dimensional HEXACO model of personality structure.
Gordon Allport’s disposition theory includes cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits. Cardinal traits dominate an individual’s behavior, central traits are common to all individuals, and secondary traits are peripheral.
Hans Eysenck rejected the idea that there are “tiers” of personality traits, theorizing instead that there are just three traits that describe human personality: extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.
The HEXACO model of personality identifies six factors of personality: Honesty, Emotionality, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.

Key Terms

extroversion: Concern with or an orientation toward others or what is outside oneself; behavior expressing such an orientation.
trait: An identifying characteristic, habit, or trend.
Disposition: A tendency or inclination to respond a certain way under given circumstances.

The “Big Five” describes five important personality traits, and the Myers-Briggs Test identifies a number of different personality types, but there are other important traits that have been studied by psychologists. Some of these traits include Gordon Allport’s dispositions, Hans Eysenck’s three fundamental traits, and Michael Aston and Kibeom Lee’s six dimensional HEXACO model of personality structure. All of these theories discuss important personality traits that have been studied and identified.

Allport’s Disposition Theory

Gordon Allport’s disposition theory includes cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits.

Gordon Allport

American psychologist Gordon Allport wrote an influential work on prejudice, The Nature of Prejudice, published in 1979.

Cardinal trait: A trait that dominates and shapes a person’s behavior. These are the ruling passions/obsessions, such as the desire for money, fame, love, etc.
Central trait: A general characteristic that every person has to some degree. These are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior, although they are not as overwhelming as cardinal traits. An example of a central trait would be honesty.
Secondary trait: a characteristic seen only in certain circumstances (such as particular likes or dislikes that only very close friend might know). They must be included to provide a complete picture of human complexity.

Eysenck’s Extroversion and Neuroticism Theory

Hans Eysenck rejected the idea that there are “tiers” of personality traits, theorizing instead that there are just three traits that describe human personality. These traits are extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Extroversion and neuroticism provide a two-dimensional space to describe individual differences in behavior. Eysenck described these as analogous to latitude and longitude describing a point on the Earth. An individual could rate high on both neuroticism and extroversion, low on both traits, or somewhere in between. Where an individual falls on the spectrum determines her/his overall personality traits.

The third dimension, psychoticism, was added to the model in the late 1970s as a result of collaborations between Eysenck and his wife, Sybil B. G. Eysenck.

Aston and Lee’s HEXACO Model of Personality

Aston and Lee’s six-dimensional HEXACO model of personality structure is based on a lexical hypothesis that analyzes the adjectives used in different to describe personality, beginning with English. Subsequent research was conducted in other languages, including Croatian, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, and Turkish. Comparisons of the results revealed six emergent factors. The six factors are generally named Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extroversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). After the adjectives that describe each of these six factors were collected using self-reports, they were distilled to four traits that describe each factor.

Honesty-Humility (H): Sincerity, Fairness, Greed Avoidance, Modesty
Emotionality (E): Fearfulness, Anxiety, Dependence, Sentimentality
Extroversion (X): Social Self-Esteem, Social Boldness, Sociability, Liveliness
Agreeableness (A): Forgivingness, Gentleness, Flexibility, Patience
Conscientiousnes (C): Organization, Diligence, Perfectionism, Prudence
Openness to Experience (O): Aesthetic Appreciation, Inquisitiveness, Creativity, Unconventionality

These three personality trait theories, among others, are used to describe and define personalities today in psychology and in organizational behavior.

5.3: Stress in Organizations

5.3.1: Defining Stress

Stress is defined in terms of its physical and physiological effects on a person, and can be a mental, physical, or emotional strain.

Learning Objective

Define stress within the field of organizational behavior and workplace dynamics

Key Points

Differences in individual characteristics, such as personality and coping skills, can be very important predictors of whether certain job conditions will result in stress.
Stress-related disorders include a broad array of conditions, including psychological disorders and other types of emotional strain, maladaptive behaviors, cognitive impairment, and various biological reactions – each of which can eventually compromise a person’s physical health.
Categories of work demands that may cause stress include task demands, role demands, interpersonal demands, and physical demands.

Key Term

stress: Mental, physical, or emotional strain caused by a demand that challenges or exceeds the individual’s coping ability.

Stress

Stress is defined in terms of how it impacts physical and psychological health; it includes mental, physical, and emotional strain. Stress occurs when a demand exceeds an individual’s coping ability and disrupts his or her psychological equilibrium. Stress occurs in the workplace when an employee perceives a situation to be too strenuous to handle, and therefore threatening to his or her well-being.

Stress

A black and white photo of a woman that captures her high level of stress.

Stress at Work

While it is generally agreed that stress occurs at work, views differ on the importance of worker characteristics versus working conditions as its primary cause. The differing viewpoints suggest different ways to prevent stress at work. Different individual characteristics, like personality and coping skills, can be very important predictors of whether certain job conditions will result in stress. In other words, what is stressful for one person may not be a problem for someone else.

Stress-related disorders encompass a broad array of conditions, including psychological disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder) and other types of emotional strain (e.g., dissatisfaction, fatigue, tension), maladaptive behaviors (e.g., aggression, substance abuse), and cognitive impairment (e.g., concentration and memory problems). Job stress is also associated with various biological reactions that may ultimately lead to compromised physical health, such as cardiovascular disease.

Categories of Work Stress

Four categories of stressors underline the different causal circumstances for stress at work:

Task Demands – This is the sense of not knowing where a job will lead you and whether the activities and tasks will change. This uncertainty causes stress that manifests itself in feelings of lack of control, concern about career progress, and time pressures.
Role Demands – Role conflict happens when an employee is exposed to inconsistent or difficult expectations. Examples include: interole conflict (when there are two or more expectations or separate roles for one person), intrarole conflict (varying expectations of one role), person-role conflict (ethics are challenged), and role ambiguity (confusion about their experiences in relation to the expectations of others).
Interpersonal Demands – Examples include: emotional issues (abrasive personalities, offensive co-workers), sexual harassment (directed mostly toward women), and poor leadership (lack of management experience, poor style, cannot handle having power).
Physical Demands – Many types of work are physically demanding, including strenuous activity, extreme working conditions, travel, exposure to hazardous materials, and working in a tight, loud office.

5.3.2: Causes of Workplace Stress

Work stress is caused by demands and pressure from both within and outside of the workplace.

Learning Objective

Evaluate the role of work conditions, economic factors, and organizational social dynamics in the experience of stress in the workplace

Key Points

Job stress can result from interactions between the worker and the conditions of the work. This can include factors such as long work hours and an employee’s status in the organization.
Economic factors that employees are facing in the 21st century, such as company layoffs in response to economic conditions, have been linked to increased stress levels.
Uncertainty around the future of one’s job, lack of clarity about responsibilities, inconsistent or difficult expectations, interpersonal issues between workers, and physical demands of the work can also impact stress levels.
Non-work demands, such as personal or home demands, can also contribute to stress both inside and outside of work.

Key Term

stress: Mental, physical, or emotional strain due to a demand that exceeds an individual’s coping ability.

Work-Related Stress

Problems caused by stress have become a major concern to both employers and employees. Symptoms of stress can manifest both physiologically and psychologically. Work-related stress is typically caused by demands and pressure from either within or outside of the workplace; it can be derived from uncertainty over where the job will take the employee, inconsistent or difficult expectations, interpersonal issues, or physical demands.

Although the importance of individual differences cannot be ignored, scientific evidence suggests that certain working conditions are stressful to most people. Such evidence argues that working conditions are a key source of job stress and job redesign should be used as a primary prevention strategy.

Studies of Work-Related Stress

Large-scale surveys of working conditions—including conditions recognized as risk factors for job stress—were conducted in member states of the European Union in 1990, 1995, and 2000. Results showed a time-related trend that suggested an increase in work intensity. In 1990, the percentage of workers reporting that they worked at high speeds for at least one-quarter of their working time was 48%; this increased to 54% in 1995 and 56% in 2000. Similarly, 50% of workers reported that they worked against tight deadlines at least one-fourth of their working time in 1990; this increased to 56% in 1995 and 60% in 2000. However, no change was noted in the period from 1995 to 2000 in the percentage of workers reporting sufficient time to complete tasks (data was not collected in 1990 for this category).

A substantial percentage of Americans work very long hours. By one estimate, more than 26% of men and more than 11% of women worked 50 hours or more per week (outside of the home) in 2000. These figures represent a considerable increase over the previous three decades—especially for women. According to the Department of Labor, there has been an upward trend in hours worked among employed women, an increase in work weeks of greater than forty hours by men, and a considerable increase in combined working hours among working couples, particularly couples with young children.

Power and Stress

A person’s status in the workplace can also affect levels of stress. Stress in the workplace has the potential to affect employees of all categories, and managers as well as other kinds of workers are vulnerable to work overload. However, less powerful employees (those who have less control over their jobs) are more likely to experience stress than employees with more power. This indicates that authority is an important factor complicating the work stress environment.

Economics and Stress

Economic factors that employees are facing in the 21st century have been linked to increased stress levels as well. Researchers and social commentators have pointed out that advances in technology and communications have made companies more efficient and more productive than ever before. This increase in productivity has resulted in higher expectations and greater competition, which in turn place more stress on employees.

The following economic factors can contribute to workplace stress:

Pressure from investors who can quickly withdraw their money from company stocks
Lack of trade and professional unions in the workplace
Inter-company rivalries caused by global competition
The willingness of companies to swiftly lay off workers to cope with changing business environments

Social Interactions and Stress

Bullying in the workplace can also contribute to stress. Workplace bullying can involve threats to an employee’s professional or personal image or status, deliberate isolation, or giving an employee excess work.

Another type of workplace bullying is known as “destabilization.” Destabilization can occur when an employee is not given credit for their work or is assigned meaningless tasks. In effect, destabilization can create a hostile work environment for employees, negatively affecting their work ethic and therefore their contributions to the organization.

Stress Outside of the Workplace

Non-work demands can create stress both inside and outside of work. Stress is inherently cumulative, and it can be difficult to separate our personal and professional stress inducers. Examples of non-work stress that can be carried into the workplace include:

Home demands: Relationships, children, and family responsibilities can add stress that is hard to leave behind when entering the workplace. The Academy of Management Journal states that this constitutes “an individual’s lack of personal resources needed to fulfill commitments, obligations, or requirements.”
Personal demands: Personal demands are brought on by the person when he or she takes on too many responsibilities, either inside or outside of work.

5.3.3: Consequences of Workplace Stress

Stress can impact an individual mentally and physically and so can decrease employee efficiency and job satisfaction.

Learning Objective

Recognize the potentially severe consequences of work-related stress on an individual, particularly over time

Key Points

Problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than any other life stressor.
Participation problems such as absenteeism, tardiness, strikes, and turnover take a severe toll on a company.
Individual distress manifests in three basic forms: psychological disorders, medical illnesses, and behavioral problems.
When individual workers within an organization suffer from a high degree of stress, overall efficiency can substantially decrease. Stressed workers will ultimately foster a negative culture and show reduce operational capabilities.

Key Terms

stress: Mental, physical, or emotional strain due to a demand that exceeds an individual’s ability to cope.
psychosomatic: Pertaining to physical diseases or symptoms that have psychological causes.

Stress

Symptoms of stress

Stress can manifest as various symptoms affecting one’s body, mind, behavior, and/or emotions.

Negative or overwhelming work experiences can cause a person substantial distress. Burnout, depression, and psychosomatic disorders are particularly common outcomes of work-related stress. In general, individual distress manifests in three basic forms: psychological disorders, medical illnesses, and behavioral problems.

Psychological Disorders

Psychosomatic disorders are a type of psychological disorder. They are physical problems with a psychological cause. For example, a person who is extremely anxious about public speaking might feel extremely nauseated or may find themselves unable to speak at all when faced with the prospect of presenting in front of a group. Since stress of this type is often difficult to notice, managers would benefit from carefully monitoring employee behavior for indications of discomfort or stress.

Medical Illnesses

Physiological reactions to stress can have a long-term impact on physical health. In fact, stress is one of the leading precursors to long-term health issues. Backaches, stroke, heart disease, and peptic ulcers are just a few physical ailments that can arise when a person is under too much stress.

Behavioral Problems

A person can also exhibit behavioral problems when under stress, such as aggression, substance abuse, absenteeism, poor decision making, lack of creativity, or even sabotage. A stressed worker may neglect their duties, impeding workflows and processes so that the broader organization slows down and loses time and money. Managers should keep an eye out for such behaviors as possible indicators of workplace stress.

Organizational Effects of Stress

Stress in the workplace can be, so to speak, “contagious”—low job satisfaction is often something employees will discuss with one another. If stress is not noted and addressed by management early on, team dynamics can erode, hurting the social and cultural synergies present in the organization. Ultimately, the aggressive mentality will be difficult to remedy.

Managers are in a unique position when it comes to workplace stress. As they are responsible for setting the pace, assigning tasks, and fostering the social customs that govern the work group, management must be aware of the repercussions of mismanaging and inducing stress. Managers should consistently discuss job satisfaction and professional and personal health with each of their subordinates one on one.

5.3.4: Reducing Workplace Stress

A combination of organizational change and stress management is a productive approach to preventing stress at work.

Learning Objective

Examine the various ways in which job stress can be prevented or reduced in an organization

Key Points

Stress management refers to a wide spectrum of techniques and therapies that aim to control a person’s levels of stress, especially chronic stress, to improve everyday functioning.
To reduce workplace stress, managers can monitor each employee’s workload to ensure it is in line with their capabilities and resources.
Managers can also be clear and explicit about general expectations and long-term objectives to ensure there is no discrepancy between what the manager is looking for and what the employee is working toward.
Managers must keep culture in mind when approaching issues of workplace stress. They must quickly dismantle any negative workplace culture that arises, such as bullying or harassment, and replace it with a constructive working environment.

Key Term

stress: Mental, physical, or emotional strain due to a demand that exceeds an individual’s ability to cope.

Stress management refers to a wide spectrum of techniques and therapies that aim to control a person’s levels of stress, especially chronic stress, to improve everyday functioning.

Preventing Job Stress

If employees are experiencing unhealthy levels of stress, a manager can bring in an objective outsider, such as a consultant, to suggest a fresh approach. But there are many ways managers can prevent job stress in the first place. A combination of organizational change and stress management is often the most effective approach. Among the many different techniques managers can use to effectively prevent employee stress, the main underlying themes are awareness of possibly stressful elements of the workplace and intervention when necessary to mitigate any stress that does arise.

Specifically, organizations can prevent employee stress in the following ways:

Intentional Job Design

Design jobs that provide meaning and stimulation for workers as well as opportunities for them to use their skills.
Establish work schedules that are compatible with demands and responsibilities outside the job.
Consider flexible schedules—many organizations allow telecommuting to reduce the pressure of being a certain place at a certain time (which enables people to better balance their personal lives).
Monitor each employee’s workload to ensure it is in line with their capabilities and resources.

Clear and Open Communication

Teach employees about stress awareness and promote an open dialogue.
Avoid ambiguity at all costs—clearly define workers’ roles and responsibilities.
Reduce uncertainty about career development and future employment prospects.

Positive Workplace Culture

Provide opportunities for social interaction among workers.
Watch for signs of dissatisfaction or bullying and work to combat workplace discrimination (based on race, gender, national origin, religion, or language).

Employee Accountability

Give workers opportunities to participate in decisions and actions that affect their jobs.
Introduce a participative leadership style and involve as many subordinates as possible in resolving stress-producing problems.

Stress Prevention Programs

St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company conducted several studies on the effects of stress prevention programs in a hospital setting. Program activities included educating employees and management about workplace stress, changing hospital policies and procedures to reduce organizational sources of stress, and establishing of employee assistance programs. In one study, the frequency of medication errors declined by 50% after prevention activities were implemented in a 700-bed hospital. In a second study, there was a 70% reduction in malpractice claims among 22 hospitals that implemented stress prevention activities. In contrast, there was no reduction in claims in a matched group of 22 hospitals that did not implement stress prevention activities.

5.4: Drivers of Behavior

5.4.1: Defining Attitude

An attitude is generally defined as the way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively.

Learning Objective

Define attitude within the context of behavioral norms for employees in an organization

Key Points

An attitude could be generally defined as a way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively. The precise definition of attitude is nonetheless a source of some discussion and debate.
Work environment can affect a person’s attitude.
Some attitudes are a dangerous element in the workplace, one that can spread to those closest to the employee and affect everyone’s performance.
Attitudes are the confluence of an individual and external stimuli, and therefore everyone is in a position of responsibility to improve them (managers, employees, and organizations).
A strong work environment is vital for an effective and efficient workplace.

Key Term

attitude: Disposition or state of mind.

Overview

An attitude could be generally defined as the way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively. The definition of attitude is nonetheless a source of some discussion and debate.

When defining attitude, it is helpful to bear two useful conflicts in mind. The first is the existence of ambivalence or differences of attitude towards a given person, object, situation etc. from the same person, sometimes at the same time. This ambivalence indicates that attitude is inherently more complex than a simple sliding scale of positive and negative, and defining these axes in different ways is integral to identifying the essence of attitude. The second conflict to keep in mind is the degree of implicit versus explicit attitude, which is to say subconscious versus conscious. Indeed, people are often completely ignorant of their implicit attitudes, complicating the ability to study and interpret them accurately.

The takeaway here is to be specific when discussing attitudes, and define terms carefully. For a manager to say that somebody has attitude, or that somebody is being negative or positive about something, is vague and nonconstructive. Instead, a manager’s job is to observe and to try to pinpoint the possible causes and effects of a person’s perspective on something.

Attitudes in the Workplace

Everyone has attitudes about many things; these are not necessarily a bad thing. One aspect of employees’ attitude is the impact it can have on the people around them. People with a positive attitude can lift the spirits of their co-workers, while a person with a negative attitude can lower their spirits. Sometimes, though, this principle works in reverse, and attitudes are often more complex than positive or negative. Attitudes may affect both the employee’s work performance and the performances of co-workers .

Attitude

A person’s attitude can be influenced by his or her environment, just as a person’s attitude affects his or her environment.

Can Management Change People’s Attitudes?

Some attitudes represent a dangerous element in the workplace that can spread to those closest to the employee and affect everyone’s performance. Is it a manager’s responsibility to help change the person’s attitude? Should the employee alone be responsible? The answer is that attitudes are the confluence of an individual and external stimuli, and therefore everyone is in a position of responsibility.

Still, a manager may be able to influence a employee’s attitude if the root cause relates to work conditions or work environment. For example, employees may develop poor attitudes if they work long hours, if the company is having difficulties, or if they have relationship issues with the manager or another employee. Similarly, if employees feel believe there is little chance for advancement or that their efforts go unappreciated by the organization, they may develop a negative attitude. To the extent they are able, managers should strive to remedy these situations to encourage an effective work environment.

A strong work environment is vital for an effective and efficient workplace. Employees who are in a positive, encouraging work environment are more likely to seek solutions and remain loyal, even if the company is having financial difficulties. Even so, employees have some responsibility to alter their own attitudes. If management does everything in its power to create a positive environment and the employee refuses to participate, then managers can do little else to help. At times, attitudes are beyond the reach of the business to improve.

5.4.2: How Attitude Influences Behavior

Attitudes can positively or negatively affect a person’s behavior, regardless of whether the individual is aware of the effects.

Learning Objective

Explain how differing attitudes can have a meaningful effect on employee behavior

Key Points

Attitudes are infectious and can affect the people that are near the person exhibiting a given attitude, which in turn can influence their behavior as well.
Understanding different types of attitudes and their likely implications is useful in predicting how individuals’ attitudes influence their behavior.
Daniel Katz identifies four categories of attitudes: utilitarian, knowledge, ego-defensive and value-expressive.
Organizations can influence a employee’s attitudes and behavior by using different management strategies and by creating strong organizational environments.
As people are affected in different ways by varying influences, an organization may want to implement multiple strategies.

Key Term

behavior change: Any transformation or modification of human habits or patterns of conduct.

Individual Attitudes and Behaviors

Attitudes can positively or negatively affect a person’s behavior. A person may not always be aware of his or her attitude or the effect it is having on behavior. A person who has positive attitudes towards work and co-workers (such as contentment, friendliness, etc.) can positively influence those around them. These positive attitudes are usually manifested in a person’s behavior; people with a good attitude are active and productive and do what they can to improve the mood of those around them.

In much the same way, a person who displays negative attitudes (such as discontentment, boredom, etc.), will behave accordingly. People with these types of attitudes towards work may likewise affect those around them and behave in a manner that reduces efficiency and effectiveness.

Attitudinal Categories

Attitude and behavior interact differently based upon the attitude in question. Understanding different types of attitudes and their likely implications is useful in predicting how individuals’ attitudes may govern their behavior. Daniel Katz uses four attitude classifications:

Utilitarian: Utilitarian refers to an individual’s attitude as derived from self or community interest. An example could be getting a raise. As a raise means more disposable income, employees will have a positive attitude about getting a raise, which may positively affect their behavior in some circumstances.
Knowledge: Logic, or rationalizing, is another means by which people form attitudes. When an organization appeals to people’s logic and explains why it is assigning tasks or pursuing a strategy, it can generate a more positive disposition towards that task or strategy (and vice versa, if the employee does not recognize why a task is logical).
Ego-defensive: People have a tendency to use attitudes to protect their ego, resulting in a common negative attitude. If a manager criticizes employees’ work without offering suggestions for improvement, employees may form a negative attitude and subsequently dismiss the manager as foolish in an effort to defend their work. Managers must therefore carefully manage criticism and offer solutions, not simply identify problems.
Value-expressive: People develop central values over time. These values are not always explicit or simple. Managers should always be aware of what is important to their employees from a values perspective (that is, what do they stand for? why do they do what they do?). Having such an awareness can management to align organizational vision with individual values, thereby generating passion among the workforce.

Organizational Attitudes and Behaviors

Attitudes can be infectious and can influence the behavior of those around them. Organizations must therefore recognize that it is possible to influence a person’s attitude and, in turn, his or her behavior. A positive work environment, job satisfaction, a reward system, and a code of conduct can all help reinforce specific behaviors.

One key to altering an individual’s behavior is consistency. Fostering initiatives that influence behavior is not enough; everyone in the organization needs to be committed to the success of these initiatives. It is also important to remember that certain activities will be more effective with some people than with others. Management may want to outline a few different behavior-change strategies to have the biggest effect across the organization and take into consideration the diversity inherent in any group.

5.4.3: Defining Values

Values are guiding principles that determine individual morality and conduct.

Learning Objective

Define values in the context of organizational ethics and organizational behavior

Key Points

Personal values are people’s internal conception of what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc.
Values such as honesty, hard work, and discipline can increase an employee’s efficacy in the workplace and help them serve as a positive role model to others.
Employees should not impose their own values on their co-workers.
Management must take values into consideration when hiring to ensure that employee values align with the company’s, as well as those of other co-workers.

Key Term

values: A collection of guiding principles; what an individual considers to be morally right and desirable in life, especially regarding personal conduct.

Overview

Personal values can be influenced by culture, tradition, and a combination of internal and external factors. Values determine what individuals find important in their daily life and help to shape their behavior in each situation they encounter. Since values often strongly influence both attitude and behavior, they serve as a kind of personal compass for employee conduct in the workplace. Values help determine whether an employee is passionate about work and the workplace, which in turn can lead to above-average returns, high employee satisfaction, strong team dynamics, and synergy.

How Are Values Formed?

Values are usually shaped by many different internal and external influences, including family, traditions, culture, and, more recently, media and the Internet. A person will filter all of these influences and meld them into a unique value set that may differ from the value sets of others in the same culture.

Values are thought to develop in various stages during a person’s upbringing, and they remain relatively consistent as children mature into adults. Sociologist Morris Massey outlines three critical development periods for an individual’s value system:

Imprint period (birth to age seven): Individuals begin establishing the template for what will become their own values.
Modeling period (ages eight to thirteen): The individual’s value template is sculpted and shaped by parents, teachers, and other people and experiences in the person’s life.
Socialization period (ages thirteen to twenty-one): An individual fine-tunes values through personal exploration and comparing and contrasting with other people’s behavior.

Values in the Workplace

Values can strongly influence employee conduct in the workplace. If an employee values honesty, hard work, and discipline, for example, he will likely make an effort to exhibit those traits in the workplace. This person may therefore be a more efficient employee and a more positive role model to others than an employee with opposite values.

Conflict may arise, however, if an employee realizes that her co-workers do not share her values. For example, an employee who values hard work may resent co-workers who are lazy or unproductive without being reprimanded. Even so, additional conflicts can result if the employee attempts to force her own values on her co-workers.

Hiring for Values

If the managers of a business create a mission statement, they have likely decided what values they want their company to project to the public. The mission statement can help them seek out candidates whose personalities match these values, which can help reduce friction in the workplace and foster a positive work environment.

Skills-based hiring is important for efficiency and is relatively intuitive. However, hiring for values is at least as important. Because individual values have such strong attitudinal and behavioral effects, a company must hire teams of individuals whose values do not conflict with either each other’s or those of the organization.

Hard work

A strong work ethic is a personal value.

5.4.4: How Values Influence Behavior

Values influence behavior because people emulate the conduct they hold valuable.

Learning Objective

Discuss the positive relationship between meaningful corporate and employee values and behavior in the workplace

Key Points

Values are an important element that affects individuals and how they behave towards others.
Companies can influence a person’s behavior with codes of conduct, ethics and vision statements, ethics committees, and a punishment-and-reward system.
A gap sometimes exists between a person’s values and behavior. Organizational strategies, such as a reward system, can close that gap.
Culture is also largely relevant to how values shape behavior, as a given organizational culture can create camaraderie and social interdependence.

Key Term

behavior: The way a living creature acts.

Overview

Values are defined as perspectives about an appropriate course of action. If a person values honesty, then he or she will strive to be honest. People who value transparency will work hard to be transparent. Values are one important element that affects individual character and behavior towards others. The relationship between values and behavior is intimate, as values create a construct for appropriate actions.

Values and Behavior in the Workplace

A work environment should strive to encourage positive values and discourage negative influences that affect behavior. All individuals possess a moral compass, defined via values, which direct how they treat others and conduct themselves. People who lack strong or ethical values may participate in negative behavior that can hurt the organization. While a company cannot do anything about the influences that shape a person’s values and behavior before hiring, the organization can try to influence employee behavior in the workplace.

Means of Encouraging or Discouraging Behavior

Training programs, codes of conduct, and ethics committees can inform employees of the types of behavior that the company finds acceptable and unacceptable. While these efforts will not necessarily not change an individual’s values, they can help them decide not to participate in unethical behavior while at work. Managers must emphasize not only an employee’s responsibilities, but also what the organization expects with respect to values and ethics. Ethics statements and vision statements are useful tools in communicating to employees what the company stands for and why.

A system of punishments and rewards can also help foster the type of values the company wants to see in its employees, essentially filtering behavior through conditioning. If people see that certain behaviors are rewarded, then they may decide to alter their behavior and in turn alter their values. In addition, a gap sometimes exists between a person’s values and behavior. This gap can stem from a conscious decision not to follow a specific value with a corresponding action. This decision can be influenced by how deeply this value affects the person’s character and by the surrounding environment.

Culture is also largely relevant to how values shape behavior, as a given organizational culture can create camaraderie and social interdependence. Conforming to the expectations and values of the broader organization is a common outcome of organizations with strong ethos and vision. Such an organization promotes passion and positive behavior in their employees. Of course, a company’s culture can work in both directions. Some industries are inherently competitive, valuing individual dominance over other individuals (for example, sales, stock trading, etc.). While some may view such a culture as objectively negative, it is subjectively useful for the organization to instill and develop these values to create certain behaviors (such as hard work and high motivation).

5.4.5: Defining Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is the level of contentment employees feel about their work, which can affect performance.

Learning Objective

Define job satisfaction in the context of the driving forces in organizational behavior

Key Points

Job satisfaction can be influenced by a person’s ability to complete required tasks, the level of communication in an organization, and the way management treats employees.
Measuring job satisfaction can be challenging, as the definition of satisfaction can be different for different people.
If an organization is concerned about employee job satisfaction, management may conduct surveys to determine what type of strategies to implement. This approach helps management define job satisfaction objectively.
Superior-subordinate communication, or the relationship between supervisors and their direct report(s), is another important influence on job satisfaction in the workplace.

Key Term

job satisfaction: The level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her work.

What Is Job Satisfaction?

Job satisfaction is the level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her job. This feeling is mainly based on an individual’s perception of satisfaction. Job satisfaction can be influenced by a person’s ability to complete required tasks, the level of communication in an organization, and the way management treats employees.

Job satisfaction falls into two levels: affective job satisfaction and cognitive job satisfaction. Affective job satisfaction is a person’s emotional feeling about the job as a whole. Cognitive job satisfaction is how satisfied employees feel concerning some aspect of their job, such as pay, hours, or benefits.

Measuring Job Satisfaction

Many organizations face challenges in accurately measuring job satisfaction, as the definition of satisfaction can differ among various people within an organization. However, most organizations realize that workers’ level of job satisfaction can impact their job performance, and thus determining metrics is crucial to creating strong efficiency.

Despite widespread belief to the contrary, studies have shown that high-performing employees do not feel satisfied with their job simply as a result of to high-level titles or increased pay. This lack of correlation is an significant concern for organizations, since studies also reveal that the implementation of positive HR practices results in financial gain for the organizations. The cost of employees is quite high, and creating satisfaction relevant to the return on this investment is paramount. Simply put: positive work environments and increased shareholder value are directly related.

Some factors of job satisfaction may rank as more important than others, depending on each worker’s needs and personal and professional goals. To create a benchmark for measuring and ultimately creating job satisfaction, managers in an organization can employ proven test methods such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). These assessments help management define job satisfaction objectively.

Important Factors

Typically, five factors can be used to measure and influence job satisfaction:

1. Pay or total compensation

2. The work itself (i.e., job specifics such as projects, responsibilities)

3. Promotion opportunities (i.e., expanded responsibilities, more prestigious title)

4. Relationship with supervisor

5. Interaction and work relationship with coworkers

Management and Communication

In addition to these five factors, one of the most important aspects of an individual’s work in a modern organization concerns communication demands that the employee encounters on the job. Demands can be characterized as a communication load: “the rate and complexity of communication inputs an individual must process in a particular time frame.” If an individual receives too many messages simultaneously, does not receive enough input on the job, or is unsuccessful in processing these inputs, the individual is more likely to become dissatisfied, aggravated, and unhappy with work, leading to a low level of job satisfaction.

Superior–subordinate communication, or the relationship between supervisors and their direct report(s), is another important influence on job satisfaction in the workplace. The way in which subordinates perceive a supervisor’s behavior can positively or negatively influence job satisfaction. Communication behavior—such as facial expression, eye contact, vocal expression, and body movement—is crucial to the superior–subordinate relationship.

5.4.6: How Job Satisfaction Influences Behavior

Job satisfaction can affect a person’s level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover.

Learning Objective

Discuss the way in which job satisfaction reflects upon work behaviors in an organization

Key Points

If people are satisfied with the work they are doing, it feels less like work, thus motivating a more positive attitude and higher levels of passion.
Individuals who are committed to their job will likely be more willing to work longer hours or take on additional responsibilities without an increase in pay.
Satisfaction can be improved through effective management strategies. Managers are responsible for understanding what motivates employee satisfaction and creating a positive work environment conducive to it.

Key Terms

job turnover: The number of employees who leave an organization of their own free will and need to be replaced.
job description: An outline of the tasks and responsibilities in a post within an organization.

The Influence of Job Satisfaction on Behavior

Job satisfaction can affect a person’s level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover rate. It can also affect performance levels, employee willingness to participate in problem-solving activities, and the amount of effort employees put in to perform activities outside their job description. When people are satisfied with the work they are doing, then their job feels less like work and is a more enjoyable experience. Those who are satisfied in their jobs usually do not find it difficult to get up and go to work.

Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction can affect relationships.

Job satisfaction also reduces stress, which can affect job performance, mental well-being, and physical health. Stress can also affect decision-making—possibly leading to unethical or nonstrategic choices. Satisfied employees, on the other hand, maintain a more positive and carefree perspective about work. This positive outlook often spreads to co-workers and can have a positive experience on everyone’s performance. There are some indications that job satisfaction is directly tied to job performance; nonetheless, feeling less stressed can positively affect a person’s behavior.

Methods for Increasing Job Satisfaction

To determine if employees are actually satisfied with the work they do, organizations frequently conduct surveys to measure employees’ level of job satisfaction and to identify areas—on-boarding, job training, employee incentive programs, etc.—for improvement and job enrichment. Because job satisfaction varies for each individual, management teams employ several different strategies to help the majority of employees within an organization feel satisfied with their place in the company.

One proven way to enhance job satisfaction is rewarding employees based on performance and positive behavior. When employees go above and beyond their job description to complete a project or assist a colleague, their actions can be referred to as organizational citizenship behavior or OCB (see Bommer, Miles, and Grover, 2003). Bommer, Miles, and Grover state:

Social-information processing is predicated on the notion that people form ideas based on information drawn from their immediate environment, and the behavior of co-workers is a very salient component of an employee’s environment. Therefore, observing frequent citizenship episodes with in a workgroup is likely to lead to attitudes that such OCB is normal and appropriate. Consequently, the individual is likely to replicate this ‘normal’ behavior.

These positive changes in behavior show that people learn from their environments and that corporate culture plays a large part in creating job satisfaction. Managers are tasked with managing this positive culture and understanding how each employee is affected by cultural influences in the workplace. No two people are the same; this is where managers come into play. Managers must be insightful and observant, identifying what motivates high levels of job satisfaction in each individual and ensuring employees get what they need. In some ways, a manager’s customers are their subordinates. Understanding this dynamic is an important component of the role of management.

5.4.7: How Emotion and Mood Influence Behavior

Emotion and mood can affect temperament, personality, disposition, motivation, and initial perspectives and reactions.

Learning Objective

Describe the importance of employee moods and emotions on overall performance from an organizational perspective

Key Points

The poor decision-making effects of a given mood can hinder a person’s job performance and lead to bad decisions that affect the company.
Emotion is a subjective lens on an objective world; decision-making should discard emotion whenever possible. This is particularly important for managers, who make significant decisions on a daily basis.
As emotion is largely a chemical balance (or imbalance) in the mind, emotions can quickly cloud judgment and complicate social interactions without the individual being consciously aware that it is happening.

Key Terms

emotions: Subjective, conscious experiences that are characterized primarily by psycho-physiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states.
mood: A mental or emotional state.

Emotions in the Workplace

Emotions and mood can affect temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. They can affect a person’s physical well-being, judgement, and perception. Emotions play a critical role in how individuals behave and react to external stimuli; they are often internalized enough for people to fail to notice when they are at work. Emotions and mood can cloud judgment and reduce rationality in decision-making.

Mood

All moods can affect judgment, perception, and physical and emotional well-being. Long-term exposure to negative moods or stressful environments can lead to illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and ulcers. The decision-making effects of any kind of bad mood can hinder a person’s job performance and lead to poor decisions that affect the company. In contrast, a positive mood can enhance creativity and problem solving. However, positive moods can also create false optimism and negatively influence decision making.

Emotion

Emotions are reciprocal with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. Emotions can be influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and seratonin. Dopamine can affect a person’s energy level and mood, while seratonin can affect critical-thinking skills. As emotion is largely a chemical balance (or imbalance) in the mind, emotions can quickly cloud judgment and complicate social interactions without the individual being consciously aware that it is happening.

Plutchik Wheel

Emotions are complex and move in various directions. Modeling emotional feelings and considering their behavioral implications are useful in preventing emotions from having a negative effect on the workplace.

The implication for behavior is important for both managers and subordinates to understand. Workers must try to identify objectively when an emotional predisposition is influencing their behavior and judgement and ensure that the repercussions of the emotion are either positive or neutralized. Positive emotions can be a great thing, producing extroversion, energy and job satisfaction. However, both positive and negative emotions can distort the validity of a decision. Being overconfident, for example, can be just as dangerous as being under-confident.

Organizational Implications

By encouraging positive employee management relationships and employee dynamics, an organization may be able to balance a person’s mood and emotions. Improving the level of job satisfaction for employees is another way that a company can influence an employee’s mood. If a person is satisfied at work, that condition may reduce levels of stress and help influence motivation and disposition. Job satisfaction can affect a person’s mood and emotional state. Providing organizational benefits, such as a company gym, meditation classes, or company retreats, can likewise influence a person’s emotions. An active lifestyle has been shown to produce an increased level of dopamine, which can enhance energy and mood.

Managers are tasked not only with monitoring and controlling their own moods and emotions, but also with recognizing emotional issues in their subordinates. Managers should strive to balance the emotions of their subordinates, ensuring nothing negatively affects their mental well-being. This can be a difficult role for management, as many people display their emotions in different ways (and most tend to hide them, particularly at work). Managers must be both perceptive and strategic in ensuring a mental balance at work.

5.5: Motivating an Organization

5.5.1: The Importance of Motivation

Motivating employees can lead to increased productivity and allow an organization to achieve higher levels of output.

Learning Objective

Identify the importance of generating high levels of motivation in employees within an organizational behavior framework

Key Points

Motivation is generally what energizes, maintains, and controls behavior.
The role of motivation in the workplace is straightforward theoretically but is difficult to actually measure.
Salary is often enough motivation to keep employees working for an organization, but it’s not always enough to push them to fulfill their full potential.
Motivated employees will retain a high level of innovation while producing higher-quality work at a higher level of efficiency.
The opportunity cost in motivating employees is essentially zero.

Key Terms

innovation: The introduction of something new; the development of an original idea.
Opportunity cost: The value of investing in the next best alternative; the value forfeited by taking a particular route.
productivity: The rate at which products and services are generated relative to a particular workforce.

Motivation in the Workplace

Generally speaking, motivation is what energizes, maintains, and controls behavior. As such, it is clear why it plays an important role in the workplace. But empirically measuring that role is another matter; it is challenging to capture an individual’s drive in quantitative metrics in order to ascertain the degree to which higher motivation is responsible for higher productivity. However, it is widely accepted that motivated employees generate higher value and lead to more substantial levels of achievement. The management of motivation is therefore a critical element of success in any business; with an increase in productivity, an organization can achieve higher levels of output.

Research has shown that motivated employees will:

Always look for a “better” way to complete a task
Be more quality-oriented
Work with higher productivity and efficiency

In summary, motivated employees will retain a high level of innovation while producing higher-quality work more efficiently. There is no downside—i.e., the opportunity cost of motivating employees is essentially zero, assuming it does not require additional capital to coach managers to act as effective motivators.

Internal and External Motivation

Salary is often enough to keep employees working for an organization, but it’s not always necessarily enough to push them to fulfill their full potential. Herzberg’s theory emphasizes that while salary is enough to avoid dissatisfaction, it is not necessarily enough to propel employees to increase their productivity and achievement. In fact, the output of employees whose motivation comes solely from salary and benefits tends to decline over time. To increase employees’ efficiency and work quality, managers must turn to understanding and responding to individuals’ internal and external motivations. External motives include work environment (e.g., cramped cubicle vs. airy, open office); internal motivations include thoughts and emotions (e.g., boredom with performing the same task over and over vs. excitement at being given a wide variety of project types).

Internal and external motives

There are four sources of motivation. The three internal motives are needs, cognitions, and emotions. The fourth source consists of external motives.

5.5.2: Perspectives on Motivation

Motivation in the workplace is primarily concerned with improving employees’ focus through the use of incentives.

Learning Objective

Compare and contrast the organizational behavior theories regarding analyzing and improving motivation in the workplace

Key Points

Generally, motivation in the workplace can be thought of through one of four specific theoretical frameworks: needs-oriented, cognition-oriented, behavior-oriented, and job-oriented.
In needs-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through fulfilling a particular employee’s needs, with anything from salary to a sense of fulfillment.
In cognition-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through fulfilling employees’ rational expectation that they be compensated based directly on the amount of value they provide.
In behavior-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through conditioning (reinforcement and punishment). Conditioning is the implementation of positive incentives to promote desirable behaviors and negative consequences to discourage undesirable behaviors.
In job-oriented theories, motivation is achieved when employees feel fulfilled and interested in their work; financial compensation is only enough to avoid dissatisfaction.

Key Terms

conditioning: A technique of behavior modification, developed by B.F. Skinner, that utilizes positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment to alter behavior.
incentive: A reward used to motivate employees to perform better.

From a managerial perspective, very few ideas are more important than the dynamics of motivation. Understanding what moves employees toward efficiency and fulfillment is at the core of any manager’s responsibilities. Motivation in the workplace is primarily concerned with improving employees’ focus, often through pursuing positive incentives and avoiding negative ones.

Theories of motivation are of course rooted in psychology. An individual must direct their attention toward a task, generate the necessary effort to achieve that task, and persist in working toward it despite potential distractions. Various theories have attempted to identify the factors that contribute to effective employee motivation, most of which are easily divided into four broad categories:

Needs-oriented theories
Cognition-oriented theories
Behavior-oriented theories
Job-oriented theories

Needs-Oriented Theories

At its most basic, motivation can be defined as the fulfillment of various human needs. These needs can encompass a range of human desires, from basic, tangible needs of survival to complex, emotional needs surrounding an individual’s psychological well-being.

Hierarchy of Needs

The most well-known example of a needs-oriented theory of motivation is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow postulated that needs should be fulfilled in a particular scaffolded order, with food, water, and shelter in the bottom, most fundamental two tiers and intangible needs such as fulfillment, self-esteem, and a sense of belonging in the upper three tiers. While this framework makes a certain amount of logical sense, critics have noted that there have been minimal data that suggest employees strive to satisfy needs in the workplace in accordance with this hierarchical framework. But the fundamental idea behind Maslow’s model is that individuals have various tangible and intangible desires that can be leveraged in the use of motivational incentives.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs postulates that need must be fulfilled in a hierarchical order, from basic needs such as food and water to more intangible needs such as self-esteem and a sense of belonging.

Need for Achievement Theory

Atkinson and McClelland proposed the Need for Achievement Theory, which highlights three particular needs in the context of the workplace: achievement, authority, and affiliation. Atkinson and McClelland hypothesized that every individual has a need for all three of these intangible segments of fulfillment but that most individuals lean more toward one of the three. For example, a salesman with a quota to fulfill would be best paired with an achievement-oriented manager, as such a goal-oriented approach toward, for example, a specific number of sales would be highly motivating.

Cognition-Oriented Theories

Cognition-oriented theories generally revolve around expectations and deriving equitable compensation for a given effort or outcome. There are two main cognition-oriented theories: equity theory and expectancy theory.

Equity Theory

Equity Theory is based on the basic concept of exchange. It values the culmination of employee experience, skills, and performance against their respective compensation and advancement opportunities.

Expectancy Theory

Expectancy Theory is similarly derived, but it states this relationship through an equation: Motivation = Expectation (Σ Instrumentality × Valence). Instrumentality simply refers to the belief that a level of performance will result in a level of outcome; valence refers to the value of that outcome.

Essentially, Expectation Theory and Equity Theory demonstrate the value of rewarding an employee’s investment of time and effort with appropriate compensation.

Behavior-Oriented Theories

The underlying concept of behavioral approaches to motivation is rooted in theories of “conditioning,” particularly the work of psychologist B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism stipulates that an employer should promote positive behavior and deter negative behavior, generally through a basic rewards system. Variable compensation, as found in many sales jobs, is a prime example of this concept. When an employee makes a sale, the employer provides a certain portion of income to the employee that executed that sale. This positive reinforcement serves as a behavior modifier, motivating the employee to repeat this behavior and make more sales.

Job-Oriented Theories

Job-oriented theories adhere to the view that employees are motivated to complete tasks effectively because of an innate desire to be fulfilled or to contribute and that compensation and other forms of incentives are less important to them.

Two-Factor Theory

Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory is the most well known of the job-oriented theories, despite the fact that it has not been supported by empirical evidence. Herzberg states that salary, benefits, status, and other tangible benefits for employees can only reduce dissatisfaction and that intangibles—such as autonomy, natural interest, recognition, and the responsibility of the work itself—are the true basis of motivation.

Work Engagement Theory

Other theories, such as Work Engagement Theory, similarly propose that intellectually fulfilling and emotionally immersive work is the foundation of a motivated workforce.

Clearly, our understanding of workplace motivation could benefit from further research and empirical analysis. But the variety of theories also highlights the fact that people can be motivated by different things in different circumstances. Effective organizational management requires an understanding of these theories as well as of their possible limitations.

5.6: Employee Needs and Motivation

5.6.1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helps managers understand employees’ needs in order to further employees’ motivation.

Learning Objective

Diagram Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in the context of organizational motivation and employee behaviors

Key Points

Maslow is best known for his theory, the Hierarchy of Needs. Depicted in a pyramid, the theory explains the different levels and importance of human psychological and physical needs. It can be used by business managers to better understand employee motivation.
The general needs in Maslow’s hierarchy include physiological needs (food and clothing), safety needs (job security), social needs (friendship), self-esteem, and self-actualization.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs relates to organizational theory and behavior due to it’s exploration of worker motivation, enabling better managerial practices and higher job satisfaction.
Managers must be perceptive and empathetic to their employees—they must listen to what their employees’ needs are and work to fulfill them.

Key Term

self-actualization: The final level of psychological development, which can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled.

Abraham Maslow was a social psychologist who focused on the entirety of human psychological needs rather than on individual psychological problems. Maslow is best known for his theory, the Hierarchy of Needs. Depicted in a pyramid, the theory explains the different levels of importance of human psychological and physical needs.

The general needs in Maslow’s hierarchy include physiological needs (food and clothing), safety needs (job security), social needs (friendship), self-esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be used by managers to better understand employees’ needs and motivations, allowing them to best provide for employees’ needs and generate high productivity and job satisfaction.

The Hierarchy of Needs: Levels of the Pyramid

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Each level of Maslow’s hierarchy outlines a specific category of need, each of which must be accomplished in a bottom-up order. Managers should correlate their managerial style with the needs of their employees.

At the bottom of the pyramid are the physiological (or basic) needs of a human being: food, water, sleep, and sex. The next level is safety needs: security, order, and stability. These two levels are important to the physical survival of the person. Once individuals have basic nutrition, shelter, and safety, they attempt to accomplish more.

The third level of need is love and belonging, which are psychological needs; when individuals have taken care of themselves physically, they are ready to share themselves with others, such as with family and friends. The fourth level is achieved when individuals feel comfortable with what they have accomplished. This is the esteem level, which includes the need to feel competent and recognized, such as through status and level of success. Then there is the cognitive level, where individuals intellectually stimulate themselves and explore. After that is the aesthetic level, which includes the need for harmony, order, and beauty.

At the top of the pyramid, self-actualization occurs when individuals reach a state of harmony and understanding because they have achieved their full potential. Once people have reached the self-actualization stage they focus on themselves and try to build their own image. They may look at this in terms of feelings such as self-confidence, or by accomplishing a set goal.

Hierarchy of Needs and Organizational Theory

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs relates to organizational theory and behavior because it explores a worker’s motivation. For example, some people are prepared to work just for money, but others like going to work because of the friends they have made there or the fact that they are respected by others and recognized for their good work. One conclusion that can be made from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in the workforce is, “If a lower need is not met, then the higher ones are ignored.” For example, if employees are worried that they will be fired, and have no job security, they will be far more concerned about capital accumulation and ensuring their lower rungs can continue to be met (paying rent, paying bills, etc.) than about friendship and respect at work. However, if employees are wealthy enough to fulfill their basic needs, praise for good work and meaningful group relationships may be a more important motivation.

If a need is not met, staff may become very frustrated. For example, if someone works hard for a promotion and does not achieve the recognition they want, they may become demotivated and put in less effort. When a need is met it will no longer motivate the person, but the next need in the hierarchy will become important to that person. Keep in mind that it is not quite as simple in reality as in a model, and that individuals may have needs that are more complex or difficult to quantify than the hierarchy suggests. Managers must be perceptive and empathetic to their employees, they must listen to what their needs are and work to fulfill them.

5.6.2: Alderfer’s ERG Theory

Alderfer’s ERG theory, based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, outlines three core needs: existence, relatedness, and growth.

Learning Objective

Discuss Clayton Alderfer’s ERG Theory relative to employee needs and motivation within an organization

Key Points

ERG Theory posits that there are three groups of core needs: existence (E), relatedness (R), and growth (G)—hence the acronym “ERG”. These groups align with the levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The “existence” needs describe our basic material requirements for living.
The “relatedness” needs concern the maintaining of important interpersonal relationships.
The “growth” needs relate to self-actualization and self-esteem.
Alderfer also proposed that if an individual’s needs in a certain category are not met, then they will redouble their efforts toward fulfilling needs in a lower category.

Key Terms

existence: The state of being or occurring.
relatedness: The state of being connected, especially by kinship.

Clayton Paul Alderfer (b. 1940) is an American psychologist who further developed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into his own ERG Theory. ERG Theory posits that there are three groups of core needs: existence (E), relatedness (R), and growth (G)—hence the acronym “ERG.” These groups align with the Maslow’s levels of physiological needs, social needs, and self-actualization needs, respectively.

The “existence” needs describe our basic material requirements for living. These include what Maslow categorized as physiological needs (such as air, food, water, and shelter) and safety-related needs (such as health and secure employment and property).

The “relatedness” needs concern the maintaining of important interpersonal relationships. These needs are based in social interactions with others and align with Maslow’s levels of love/belonging-related needs (such as friendship, family, and sexual intiamcy) and esteem-related needs (such as respect of and by others).

Finally, the “growth” needs describe our intrinsic desire for personal development. These needs align with Maslow’s levels of esteem-related needs (such as self-esteem, confidence, and achievement) and self-actualization needs (such as morality, creativity, problem-solving, and acceptance of facts).

Alderfer proposed that if an individual’s needs in a certain category are not met, then they will redouble their efforts toward fulfilling needs in a lower category. For example, if an individual’s self-esteem is suffering, they will invest more effort in the relatedness category of needs.

5.6.3: McClelland’s Need Theory

David McClelland describes three central motivational paradigms: achievement, affiliation and power.

Learning Objective

Examine what McClelland’s Need Theory proposes regarding motivating employees and fulfilling their needs

Key Points

McClelland’s Need Theory, created by psychologist David McClelland, is a motivational model that attempts to explain how the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation affect people’s actions in a management context.
People who are achievement-motivated are driven by the desire to master tasks and situations.
People who are affiliation-motivated are driven by the desire to create and maintain social relationships. They enjoy belonging to a group and want to feel loved and accepted.
People who are power-motivated are driven by the desire to influence, teach, or encourage others.
Each individual is motivated by varying degrees of each of these three categories of needs.

Key Terms

zero-sum: Of any system in which all gains are offset by exactly equal losses.
achievement: The act of performing, obtaining, or accomplishing.
affiliation: The relationship that results from combining one thing with another.

Psychologist David McClelland developed Need Theory, a motivational model that attempts to explain how the needs for achievement, power (authority), and affiliation affect people’s actions in a management context. Need Theory is commonly often taught in management and organizational-behavior classes.

David McClelland

Psychologist David McClelland created Need Theory.

Achievement

People who are strongly achievement-motivated are driven by the desire for mastery. They prefer working on tasks of moderate difficulty in which outcomes are the result of their effort rather than of luck. They value receiving feedback on their work.

Affiliation

People who are strongly affiliation-motivated are driven by the desire to create and maintain social relationships. They enjoy belonging to a group and want to feel loved and accepted. They may not make effective managers because they may worry too much about how others will feel about them.

Power

People who are strongly power-motivated are driven by the desire to influence, teach, or encourage others. They enjoy work and place a high value on discipline. However, they may take a zero-sum approach to group work—for one person to win, or succeed, another must lose, or fail. If channeled appropriately, though, this can positively support group goals and help others in the group feel competent about their work.

Application of Need Theory

Need Theory does not claim that people can be categorized into one of three types. Rather, it asserts that all people are motivated by all of these needs in varying degrees and proportions. An individual’s balance of these needs forms a kind of profile that can be useful in determining a motivational paradigm for them. It is important to note that needs do not necessarily correlate with competencies; it is possible for an employee to be strongly affiliation-motivated, for example, but to still be successful in a situation in which his affiliation needs are not met.

McClelland proposes that those in top management positions should have a high need for power and a low need for affiliation. He also believes that although individuals with a need for achievement can make good managers, they are not generally suited to being in top management positions.

5.6.4: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory states that certain factors cause job satisfaction and other factors cause dissatisfaction.

Learning Objective

Analyze Frederick Herzberg’s perspective on motivating employees through his Two-Factor Theory (also known as Motivation-Hygiene Theory)

Key Points

According to Herzberg, intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators have an inverse relationship: intrinsic motivators tend to create motivation when they are present, whereas extrinsic motivators tend to reduce motivation when they are absent.
Intrinsic motivators tend to represent less tangible, more emotional needs, such as challenging work, recognition, relationships, and growth potential.
Extrinsic motivators tend to represent more tangible, basic needs, such as status, job security, salary, and fringe benefits.
Extrinsic motivators are expected and so cause dissatisfaction if they are absent. Intrinsic motivators, on the other hand, can provide extra motivation. Because of this, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are independent; one does not necessarily increase exactly as the other decreases.
Management is tasked with differentiating when more job satisfaction is needed (providing intrinsic motivators) and when less job dissatisfaction is needed (providing extrinsic motivators).

Key Terms

Two-Factor Theory: A framework, developed by Frederick Herzberg, that suggests there are certain factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and a separate set of factors can cause dissatisfaction.
hygiene factors: Elements of life or work that do not increase satisfaction but that can lead to dissatisfaction if they are missing.

The Two Factors: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators

Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, also known as Motivation-Hygiene Theory or intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, concludes that there are certain factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and a separate set of factors that can cause dissatisfaction. It is critical to emphasize that this is not a linear relationship: the factors that cause satisfaction do not necessarily negate those that cause dissatisfaction; one does not necessarily increase exactly as the other decreases.

Extrinsic Motivators (Hygiene Factors)

Extrinsic motivators tend to represent more tangible, basic needs—i.e., the kinds of needs identified in McClelland’s “existence” category of needs in his ERG Theory or in the lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Extrinsic motivators include status, job security, salary, and fringe benefits. Managers must realize that not providing the appropriate and expected extrinsic motivators will sow dissatisfaction and unmotivated behavior among employees.

Intrinsic Motivators (Motivation Factors)

Intrinsic motivators tend to represent less tangible, more emotional needs—i.e., the kinds of needs identified in McClelland’s “relatedness” and “growth” categories of needs in his ERG Theory and in the higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Intrinsic motivators include challenging work, recognition, relationships, and growth potential. Managers must recognize that while these needs may be outside the more traditional scope of what the workplace should provide, they are absolutely critical in empowering strong individual and team performance.

Herzberg’s Theory in Context

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, McClelland’s Need Theory, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs all talk about higher-level psychological needs such as achievement, recognition, responsibility, and advancement. The key factor that differentiates Two-Factor Theory is the idea of expectation.

According to Herzberg, intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators have an inverse relationship. This is to say that intrinsic motivators tend to inspire motivation when they are present, while extrinsic motivators tend to reduce motivation when they are absent. This is because of expectation. Extrinsic motivators (e.g., salary, benefits) are expected and so will not increase motivation when they are in place, but they will cause dissatisfaction when they are missing. Intrinsic motivators (e.g., challenging work), on the other hand, can be a source of additional motivation.

If management wants to increase employees’ job satisfaction, they should be concerned with the nature of the work itself—the opportunities it presents employees for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and achieving self-realization. If, on the other hand, management wishes to reduce dissatisfaction, then it must focus on the job environment—policies, procedures, supervision, and working conditions. To ensure a satisfied and productive workforce, managers must pay attention to both sets of job factors.

5.7: Process and Motivation

5.7.1: Equity Theory

Equity theory explains the relational satisfaction in terms of fair or unfair distribution of resources within interpersonal relationships.

Learning Objective

Discuss equity theory and its motivational implications at the organizational level

Key Points

Equity theory proposes that individuals who perceive themselves as either under-rewarded or over-rewarded will experience distress, and that this distress leads to efforts to restore equity within the relationship.
If an employee feels underpaid, then that employee will experience hostility towards the organization and perhaps co-workers, which may result in the employee’s diminished performance.
When individuals find themselves participating in inequitable relationships, they become distressed.
Managers must monitor their employees’ earnings, discuss this with their superiors, assess efficacy, and provide intangible rewards.

Key Terms

equity theory: An attempt to explain relational satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair or unfair distribution of resources within interpersonal relationships.
equitable: Marked by or having equity.

Motivated by Equity

Equity theory attempts to explain relational satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair or unfair distributions of resources within interpersonal relationships. Regarded as one of many theories of justice, equity theory was first developed in 1963 by John Stacey Adams. Adams, a workplace and behavioral psychologist, asserted that employees seek to maintain equity between what they put into a job and what they receive from it against the perceived inputs and outcomes of others.

Equity theory posits that people value fair treatment, which motivates them to maintain a similar standard of fairness with their co-workers and the organization. According to the theory, equity structure in the workplace is based on the ratio of inputs (employee contributions) to outcomes (salary and other rewards).

Imbalances

Equity theory proposes that individuals who perceive themselves as either under-rewarded or over-rewarded will experience distress, and that this distress leads to efforts to restore equity within the relationship. Equity theory focuses on determining whether the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners. Equity is measured by comparing the ratios of contributions and benefits of each person within the relationship. Partners do not have to receive equal benefits (such as receiving the same amount of love, care, and financial security) or make equal contributions (such as investing the same amount of effort, time, and financial resources), as long as the ratio between these benefits and contributions is similar.

Much like other prevalent theories of motivation, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, equity theory acknowledges that subtle and variable individual factors affect individuals’ assessment and perception of their relationship with their relational partners. According to Adams, underpayment inequity induces anger, while overpayment induces guilt. Compensation, whether hourly or salaried, is a central concern for employees and therefore the cause of equity or inequity in most, but not all, cases.

The Employee/Organization Relationship

In any position, employees wants to feel that their contributions and work performance are being rewarded with fair pay. An employee who feels underpaid may experience feelings of hostility towards the organization and perhaps co-workers. This hostility may lead to the employee under-performing and could cause job dissatisfaction in others.

Subtle or intangible compensation also plays an important role in feelings about equity. Receiving recognition for strong job performance and being thanked can create employee satisfaction, and therefore help the employee feel worthwhile, resulting in better outcomes for both the individual and the organization.

When individuals find themselves participating in inequitable relationships, they become distressed. The more inequitable the relationship, the more distress individuals feel.

The Role of Management

Depending upon the organizational structure and its distribution of authority, the decision to provide monetary compensation for a strong work deliverable is not always in the hands of an employee’s direct manager. As a result, managers must monitor their direct reports’ earnings, discuss this with their superiors, assess efficacy, and provide intangible rewards (such as recommendations, gratitude, authority, new projects, etc.). Creating and maintaining equity is a responsibility of all managers.

5.7.2: Assessing and Restoring Equity

The assessment and restoration of equity helps improve employee performance and organizational behavior.

Learning Objective

Distinguish the core components of equity theory that seek to measure equity accurately and restore equity when appropriate

Key Points

Equity theory proposes that individuals who perceive themselves as either under-rewarded or over-rewarded will experience distress, and this distress leads to efforts to restore equity within the relationship.
Individuals consider themselves treated fairly if they perceive the ratio of their own inputs to outcomes to be equivalent to those around them.
In any position, employees want to feel that their contributions and work performance are being fairly rewarded. If this is not the case, management must intervene and either renegotiate or replace dissatisfied individuals.

Key Terms

organization: A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.
human resources: The personnel department of an organization, dealing with the recruitment, administration, management and training of employees.

Organizational Behavior

Similar to human resources management, organizational behavior management (OBM) is an important aspect of management. OBM applies psychological principles of organizational behavior and the experimental analysis of behavior to organizations to improve individual and group performance. The areas of application may include: systems analysis, management, and training and performance improvement. Equity theory plays a role in analyzing organizational behavior.

Definition of Equity Theory

Equity theory suggests that individuals who perceive themselves as either under-rewarded or over-rewarded will experience distress, and that this distress leads to efforts to restore equity within the relationship. The theory focuses on determining whether the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners. Equity is measured by comparing the ratios of contributions and benefits of each person within the relationship.

Equity theory

The core concept of equity theory amounts to each party’s inputs and outcomes equating.

Assessing Equity

Individuals consider themselves treated fairly when they perceive the ratio of their inputs to outcomes to be equivalent to those around them. In practice, all else being equal, this means an employee would find it acceptable for a more senior colleague to receive higher compensation, since the value of the senior employee’s experience (and input) is higher. Employee job satisfaction often relies on comparisons with their co-workers.

If an employee observes another employee receive more recognition and rewards for contributions—even when both have performed the same amount and quality of work—the employee who receives fewer rewards will experience dissatisfaction. That employee may feel under-appreciated as a consequence. Equity theory proposes that rewards (outcomes) should be directly related to the quality and quantity of employees’ contributions (inputs). If both employees in this situation receive the same reward, the workforce is more likely to recognize that the organization is fair, observant, and appreciative.

Managers are tasked with assessing equity: identifying both the quantity and quality of a given individual’s inputs and comparing that to his or her overall compensation. Managers are also responsible for discussing this situation with their subordinates, ensuring that they feel their contributions are being matched by their salary and other forms of compensation. While this concern also falls within the human resources frame, the manager is more directly involved with employee’s actual contributions (and thus more accurate in assessing value).

Restoring Equity

In any position, employees want to feel that their contributions and work performance are being fairly compensated. If this is not the case, management must intervene and either renegotiate or replace the dissatisfied individual. Workers have a right to be compensated in a manner that reflects their value; if they are not, then management must restore this equity or risk losing valuable talent.

Organizations can ensure collective rewards are maximized through the use of accepted systems for equitably rewarding members. Systems of equity will evolve within groups, and members must encourage other members to accept and adhere to these systems. The only way groups can ensure equitable practices are observed is by making it more profitable to behave equitably than inequitably. Thus, an organization will generally reward members who treat others equitably and generally punish (increase the cost for) members who treat others inequitably.

5.7.3: Expectancy Theory

Expectancy theory deals with mental processes regarding choices and behaviors.

Learning Objective

Analyze Vroom’s expectancy theory to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of motivating based upon expectancy, instrumentality, and valence

Key Points

Expectancy theory proposes that individuals decide to act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a behavior over other behaviors based on their expectation of the result.
The individual chooses based on estimates of how well the expected results of a given behavior are going to match up with the desired results.
Expectancy theory explains the behavioral process of why individuals are motivated to choose one behavioral option over another. It also explains how they make decisions to achieve the outcome that they perceive as most valuable.

Key Terms

instrumentality: The quality or condition of serving a purpose, being useful.
expectancy theory: A framework that holds that people decide to act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors based on the expected result.
valence: A one-dimensional value assigned to an object, situation, or state that can usually be positive or negative.

Overview

Expectancy theory is about the mental processes involved in making choices. In organizational behavior, expectancy theory embraces Victor Vroom’s definition of motivation. Vroom proposed that a person decides to behave in a certain way, selecting one behavior over other behaviors, based on the expected result of the selected behavior. For example, people will be willing to work harder if they think the extra effort will be rewarded.

In essence, the motivation behind chosen behavior is determined by the desirability of the expected outcome. At the theory’s core is the cognitive process of how an individual processes the different motivational elements. Processing is done before an individual makes the final choice. The expected result, therefore, is not the sole determining factor in the decision of how to behave because the person has to predict whether or not the expectation will be fulfilled.

Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

In 1964, Vroom defined motivation as a process controlled by the individual that governed choices among alternative forms of voluntary activities. Individuals make choices based on estimates of how well the expected results of a given behavior are going to match up with or eventually lead to the desired results.

In Vroom’s analysis, the basis for motivation is threefold:

the individual’s expectancy that effort will lead to the intended performance
the instrumentality of this performance in achieving a certain result
the desirability of the result (known as valence) to the individual

Vroom introduces three variables within his expectancy theory: valence (V), expectancy (E), and instrumentality (I). These three elements also have clearly defined relationships: effort-performance expectancy (E>P expectancy), performance-outcome expectancy (P>O expectancy).

These three components of expectancy theory (expectancy, instrumentality, and valence) fit together in this fashion:

Expectancy: Effort → Performance (E→P)
Instrumentality: Performance → Outcome (P→O)
Valence: V(O)

Effort → Performance (E→P): Expectancy is the belief that an effort (E) will result in attainment of desired performance (P) goals. Usually, this belief is based on an individual’s past experience, self-confidence, and the perceived difficulty of the performance standard or goal. Factors associated with the individual’s expectancy perception are competence, goal difficulty, and control.

Performance → Outcome (P→O): Instrumentality is the belief that a person will receive a desired outcome (O) if the performance expectation is met. This outcome may come in the form of a pay increase, promotion, recognition, or sense of accomplishment. Instrumentality is low when the outcome is the same for all possible levels of performance.

V(O): Valence is the value individuals place on outcomes (O) based on their needs, goals, values, and sources of motivation. Factors associated with the individual’s valence are values, needs, goals, preferences, sources of motivation, and the strength of an individual’s preference for a particular outcome.

Implications

Expectancy theory can help managers understand how individuals are motivated to choose among various behavioral alternatives. To enhance the connection between performance and outcomes, managers should use systems that tie rewards very closely to performance. Managers also need to ensure that the rewards provided are deserved and wanted by the recipients. To improve the connection between effort and performance, managers should use training to improve employee capabilities and help employees believe that added effort will in fact lead to better performance .

5.7.4: Goal-Setting Theory

People perform better when they are committed to achieving certain goals, enabling businesses to benefit from employing goal-setting theory.

Learning Objective

Apply goal-setting theory to the process and motivation considerations inherent in organizational behavior and business procedure

Key Points

Studies of goal-setting suggest that it is an effective tool for making progress, as long as managers ensure that participants are clearly aware of what is expected from them.
Goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance more than goals that are not.
On a personal level, setting goals helps people work towards their own objectives (most commonly, financial or career-based goals).
Managers should not constantly drive motivation, or keep track of an employee’s work on a continuous basis. Instead, they should use goals, which have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism.
Managers should also keep track of performance to allow employees to see how effective they have been in attaining their goals.

Key Terms

motivation: Willingness of action, especially in behavior.
productivity: The rate at which goods or services are produced by a standard population of workers.

Overview

People perform better when they are committed to achieving certain goals. Factors that ensure commitment to goals include:

The importance of the expected outcomes of goal attainment
Self-efficacy, or belief that the goal can be achieved
Promises or engagements to others, which can strengthen level of commitment

Aim for the goal

Goal-setting is closely tied to performance. Those who set realistic but challenging goals are likely to perform better than those who do not.

Goal-setting is a key component of performance in a business setting, but certain principles apply. Goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance more than goals that are not. A goal can become more specific by attaching a quantity to it (for example, “increase productivity by 50 percent”) or by defining certain tasks that must be completed.

Goals in Business (Motivation)

Managers cannot constantly drive motivation, or keep track of an employee’s work on a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers, because goals have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that gives an employee a certain amount of guidance. Shalley, Locke, and Latham have identified four ways goal-setting can affect individual performance:

Goals focus attention toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities.
Goals serve as an energizer. Higher goals induce greater effort, while low goals induce lesser effort.
Goals affect persistence.
Goals activate cognitive knowledge and strategies that help employees cope with the situation at hand.

Locke et al. examined the behavioral effects of goal-setting, concluding that 90 percent of laboratory and field studies involving specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than those involving easy or no goals. While some managers believe it is sufficient to urge employees to “do their best,” Locke and Latham have a contrasting view. They propose that people who are told to “do their best” generally do not. To elicit some specific form of behavior from another person requires giving the person a clear view of what is expected. A goal is therefore vital, as it helps an individual focus his or her efforts in a specific direction.

However, when management merely dictates goals, employee motivation to meet these goals is diminished. To increase motivation, employees should participate in the goal-setting process.

Goals and Feedback

Managers should track performance so that employees can see how effective they have been in attaining their goals. Without proper feedback channels, employees find it impossible to adapt or adjust their behavior. Goal-setting and feedback go hand-in-hand. Without feedback, goal-setting is unlikely to work.

Providing feedback on short-term objectives helps to sustain an employee’s motivation and commitment to a goal. When giving feedback, managers should:

Create a positive context
Use constructive and positive language
Focus on behaviors and strategies
Tailor feedback to the needs of the individual worker
Make feedback a two-way communication process

5.7.5: Setting the Right Goals

People perform better when they are committed to achieving certain goals, emphasizing the importance of strategic goal setting.

Learning Objective

Examine the inherent motivational value in setting meaningful goals and objectives in the organizational behavior frame

Key Points

Setting goals is a process that requires buy-in from both the management and employee; it is best executed using tools such as goal-setting theory.
The SMART model illustrates the goal-setting aims, where objectives are identified and pursued through being specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-oriented.
According to Locke and Latham, the effectiveness of goal setting can be explained by two aspects of Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT): the principle of diminishing returns and temporal discounting.
Combining Locke and Latham’s perspective with SMART goal setting, individuals should focus on taking small steps towards larger objectives through specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals.

Key Terms

diminishing returns: A condition in which additional inputs into an organization, project, or process produce progressively fewer or lower-quality outputs and may decrease the total quantity or quality of outputs.
quantitatively: Measurable numerically; demonstrated through numbers.

Introduction to Goal Setting

Goal setting involves establishing specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (SMART) goals. Work on the theory of goal-setting suggests that it is an effective tool for progress, primarily through ensuring that participants in a group with a common goal are clearly aware of what is expected from them (and able to measure it). On a personal level, setting goals helps people work towards their own objectives—most commonly financial or career-based goals.

Goal setting and achievement

Athletes set goals during the training process. Through choice, effort, persistence, and cognition, they can prepare to compete.

SMART Goals

Setting goals requires both the foresight to perceive future obstacles and a scale in which to measure and benchmark progress. Setting effective goals and identifying the the appropriate way in which to pursue these goals are both important elements of successfully implementing an effective motivational strategy. The SMART method for goal setting effectively summarizes the necessary steps to take when setting objectives:

Specific: Establishing the appropriate scope of goals is difficult, and it is important to be as specific as possible to ensure successful implementation.
Measurable: The ability to measure and assess progress quantitatively is useful in goal setting, as it provides motivational checkpoints and ensures progress stays on track.
Achievable: Ensuring goals are achievable is important in successfully pursuing goals. People have a natural tendency to challenge themselves, but it is important to stay within the confines of ability.
Realistic: Similar to achievable, realistic goal setting requires a grounded approach of identifying tangible, results-oriented objectives.
Time-targeted: Establishing deadlines is essential for goals, particularly from a motivational perspective. Knowing the time frame necessary in which to complete the goal is important in ensuring the end product will be useful and relevant to the business.

Deriving Goal Setting from Temporal Motivation Theory

Locke and Latham note that goal-setting theory lacks “the issue of time perspective.” Taking this into consideration, Steel and Konig use Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT) to account for goal-setting’s effects and suggest new hypotheses regarding two moderators: goal difficulty and proximity.

Motivation over Time

The idea of time perspective is simpler than it sounds. Take an example of a university student who has 30 days to study for a final exam. On day 1, when the exam is still a month away, the student does not feel the time motivation very strongly. They are much more likely to choose an activity that is more enjoyable than studying. However, as the test approaches, the student will increasingly tend to choose studying due to the time perspective.

Larger Objectives vs. Series of Smaller Objectives

With this example in mind, it seems logical that structuring a project based on a series of smaller goals with closer deadlines rather than on one faraway end goal is likely to be more motivating. This is also supported by the idea of diminishing returns, which posits that for each unit of investment (be it a minute of time or a dollar) into a given process, less output will be produced. Therefore, combining a series of small objectives (processes) will be more motivating, causing less output to be lost to diminishing returns over time. It is related to the expression “the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole.”

SMART Goal-Setting and TMT

TMT (which draws from these two theories of time perspective and diminishing returns) and SMART goal setting together therefore tell us that to maximize motivation and therefore output, managers should divide projects into several more immediate, specific, and realistic sub-goals.

5.8: Reinforcement and Motivation

5.8.1: Reinforcement as a Management Tool

Reinforcement is a process of strengthening desirable behaviors, often through the use of rewards.

Learning Objective

Describe the role of behavioral reinforcement in organizational management

Key Points

Reinforcement is a term used in behavioral analysis and in a specific kind of intentional behavior change known as operant conditioning. It is a process of increasing the incidence of a (measurable) desirable behavior.
Reinforcement is a process in which someone is given a reward (i.e., “positive reinforcement”) or is spared an unpleasant consequence (i.e., “negative reinforcement”) to incentivize a certain desirable behavior.
Incentive programs (e.g., bonuses, commissions, etc.) are examples of rewards (i.e., positive reinforcers) managers can give their employees to increase desirable results, such as sales.

Key Terms

Positive Reinforcement: Giving a desired reward when a behavior is performed to increase how often the person repeats the behavior.
reinforcement: The process of increasing the incidence of a directly measurable behavior.
negative reinforcement: The removal of an unpleasant condition or consequence when a behavior is performed to increase how often the behavior is repeated.

Defining Reinforcement

Reinforcement is a term used in the context of behavioral analysis and in a specific kind of intentional behavior change known as operant conditioning. It is a process of increasing the incidence of a (measurable) behavior. Very basic examples of such behaviors include things like the rate of pulling a lever, the duration of holding down a button, or the speed with which a switch is flipped after a certain noise is sounded.

Positive and Negative Reinforcement

In reinforcement, the rate of the target behavior is increased by giving a reward (i.e., “positive reinforcement”) or by removing an unpleasant stimulus (i.e., “negative reinforcement”) immediately or shortly after each occurrence of the behavior. Giving a monkey a banana for performing a trick is an example of positive reinforcement; quieting a constant unpleasantly loud noise when a rat pushes a button is an example of negative reinforcement.

Reinforcement as a Management Tool

In a management context, reinforcers include salary increases, bonuses, promotions, variable incomes, flexible work hours, and paid sabbaticals. One particularly common positive-reinforcement technique is the incentive program, a formal scheme used to promote or encourage specific actions, behaviors, or results from employees over a defined period of time. Incentive programs can reduce turnover, boost morale and loyalty, improve wellness, increase retention, and drive daily performance among employees. Motivating staff will in turn help business outcomes and increase efficiency.

Managers are responsible for identifying what behaviors should be promoted and what should be discouraged and must carefully consider organizational objectives in this process. Implementing rewards and punishments that parallel the organization’s goals help to create a work culture and work environment that embody those goals and objectives.

Example of an Incentive Program

Let’s take an IT sales team as an example. The team’s overarching goal is to sell their new software to businesses. The manager may want to emphasize sales to partners of a certain size (i.e., big contracts). To this end, the manager may reward team members who gain clients of 5,000 or more employees with a commission of 5% of the overall sales volume for each such partner. This reward of a 5% commission reinforces the behavior of closing big contracts, strongly motivating team members to work toward that goal and thus likely increasing the number of big contracts closed.

Features of a Successful Incentive Program

To facilitate the creation of a profitable program, every feature of the incentive program must be tailored to the participants’ interests. A successful incentive program requires clearly defined rules, suitable rewards, efficient communication strategies, and measurable success metrics. By adapting each element of the program to fit the target audience, companies are better able to engage program participants and enhance overall program efficacy.

Reinforcing good behavior

This soldier reinforces her dog’s desirable behavior by giving it a treat.

5.8.2: Punishment as a Management Tool

Punishment is the imposition of a negative consequence with the goal of reducing or stopping someone’s undesirable behavior.

Learning Objective

Recognize the uses of punishment as a motivational tool in the context of organizational behavio

Key Points

The purpose of punishment is to encourage and enforce “proper” behavior as defined by a group, an organization, or society through the use of negative consequences.
Punishment, like reinforcement, is a term used in behavioral analysis and in a specific kind of intentional behavior change known as operant conditioning.
Whereas reinforcement is used to increase desirable behavior, punishment is used to decrease undesirable behavior through the application of a negative consequence (positive punishment) or through the removal of something the person enjoys (negative punishment).
Punishment can be used in a business context to prevent employees from doing something the organization or manager considers undesirable or wrong.

Key Term

punishment: The act of imposing a sanction.

Defining Punishment

Punishment is a term used in the context of behavioral analysis and in a specific kind of intentional behavior change known as operant conditioning. It is a process of decreasing the incidence of a (measurable) behavior. Very basic examples of such behaviors include things like the rate of pulling a lever, the duration of holding down a button, or the speed with which a switch is flipped after a certain noise is sounded.

Positive and Negative Punishment

In punishment, the rate of the target behavior is decreased by imposing a negative consequence (i.e., “positive punishment”) or by removing a pleasant or desired stimulus (i.e., “negative punishment”) immediately or shortly after each occurrence of the behavior. Shocking a rat for turning left instead of right in a maze is an example of positive punishment; taking away a child’s toy after he hits his brother is an example of negative punishment.

Punishment as a Management Tool

The purpose of punishment is to prevent future occurrences of a given socially unacceptable or undesirable behavior. According to deterrence theory, the awareness of a punishment will prevent people from performing the behavior. This can be accomplished either through punishing someone immediately after the undesirable behavior so that they are reluctant to perform the behavior again or through educating people about the punishment preemptively so they are reluctant to perform the behavior at all. In a management context, punishment tools can include demotions, salary cuts, and terminations (fires).

In business organizations, punishment and deterrence theory play a vital role in shaping culture to be in line with operational expectations and in avoiding conflicts and negative outcomes both internally and externally. If employees clearly know what they are not supposed to do, they generally try to avoid doing it. Prevention is a much cheaper and easier approach than waiting for something bad to happen, so preemptive education regarding rules and penalties for rule violation is common practice.

Punishment of the Paddle

This is an old form of punishment.

5.8.3: Managerial Perspectives on Motivation

Managers can employ motivational theory and reinforcement tools to motivate employees and increase efficiency.

Learning Objective

Explain the managerial importance of understanding motivational theories as they pertain to an organization’s employees

Key Points

Motivating employees is a primary responsibility of management, as motivational management enables higher outputs and job satisfaction from employees.
While there is a great deal of research on motivation from the perspective of both management and psychology, a few specific psychological theories can be applied specifically to employee motivation.
According to psychological theories of motivation, management is in the difficult position of identifying and fulfilling needs for different employees who will, in turn, require distinct motivational assistance.
Managers may rely on a few tools to steer the direction of motivation. These include positive and negative reinforcements and positive and negative punishment.

Key Term

motivation: Willingness to perform an action, especially a behavior; an incentive or reason for doing something.

Psychological Theories and Motivation

Motivation is the psychological boost that helps people achieve high performance and reach goals. Motivating employees is a primary managerial responsibility of management, as motivational management enables higher outputs and job satisfaction from employees.

While studies have produced a great deal of research on motivation, from the perspective of both management and psychology, a few psychological theories can be applied specifically to employee motivation. Using modern research and understanding what drives behavior are the focal points of organizational behavior study, and managers should actively apply these psychological frameworks to their everyday management strategies and considerations. These frameworks can be coupled with concepts of reinforcement and punishment as tools managers use to emphasize or discourage specific behaviors.

Need-based Theories

Need-based theories of motivation focus on an employee’s drive to satisfy needs by working. Needs range from basic physiological needs for survival to higher-level emotional needs, like belonging and self-actualization.

From the perspective of the manager, Maslow’s model (see below image) is highly useful in drawing a few simple yet important conclusions. First, if employees are not being paid enough to satisfy the bottom two tiers of the hierarchy (for example, pay rent, buy food, etc.), then they will be unmotivated to create a strong social environment, accomplish goals, or be creative. Salary, therefore, must be high enough to match or exceed a reasonable standard of living. Secondly, without a good culture for social interaction, employees will find it difficult to achieve high levels of creativity and problem-solving. If managers want to capture maximum value from employees, they must supply each component on this list—to the best of their ability—in reimbursements, culture, and goal setting.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The hierarchy underscores how management should assess employees’ needs. Salary encompasses the bottom two tiers (safety-related and physiological needs), while social and objective-based motivators address the higher needs (love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization).

Equity Theory

Equity theory is derived from social-exchange theory. It explains motivation in the workplace as a cognitive process where the employee evaluates the balance between inputs (or efforts) in the workplace and the outcomes (or rewards) that are received or anticipated.

For management, the implications are similar to those of Maslow’s lower-level needs. Employees expect that they will receive an equivalent reimbursement for the value they create. Management must assess the value of the job objectively and clearly explain the exchange (time and efforts for money/benefits/job satisfaction) to the employee prior to the onset of work. Equity must be maintained for proper motivation, and managers are responsible for establishing equity within the organization.

Reinforcement and Punishment

Based upon the psychological theories of motivation discussed here, management is in the difficult position of identifying and fulfilling needs for different employees (who will in turn require different motivational assistance). To accomplish this need fulfillment, managers have a few tools to employ that allows them to steer the direction of motivation. These include positive and negative reinforcements and positive and negative punishments.

As noted above in Maslow’s hierarchy, employees are motivated in a linear fashion (fulfilling base needs will result in higher needs). As a result, a manager must recognize what level of the hierarchy an employee is on before using reinforcement or punishment. If the employee is more concerned about salary and creating enough capital to live comfortably, a manager could positively reinforce certain behaviors with bonus pay or raises. If an employee is pursuing esteem, managers can apply promotions or employee-achievement awards.

Similarly, punishments can be effective in emphasizing motivational successes and failures as well. Using equity theory, managers can consider employees’ actions in context with desired outcomes. For example, if an employee is often late and misses important meetings, resulting in a loss of revenue for the company, equity theory permits that this employee should be punished with lower pay. In this situation, equity theory allows management to motivate through punishing employees who do not create the required returns to pay their salaries.

5.9: Job Design and Motivation

5.9.1: Defining Job Design

Job design is the systematic and purposeful allocation of tasks to individuals and groups within an organization.

Learning Objective

Compare and contrast the multitude of job-design approaches and perspectives available in the organizational field

Key Points

The key inputs for a strong job design are a task, motivation, resource allocation and a compensation system.
Taylorism, or scientific management, is the original job-design theory. It stresses standardization of tasks and proper training of workers to administer the tasks for which they are responsible.
The Socio-Technical Systems Approach is a theory that maps the evolution from individual work to work groups. The organization itself is structured to encourage group autonomy and productivity.
The Core Characteristics Model connects job characteristics to the psychological states that the worker brings to the job. It emphasizes designing jobs so that they lead to desired outcomes.
Taking into account these various theoretical models, job design is best described as specifying a task with enough context to communicate clearly and concisely what is expected of a given employee.

Key Term

empower: To give people more confidence or strength to do something, often by enabling them to increase their control over their own life or situation.

Job Design Overview

Job design is the allocation of specific work tasks to individuals and groups. Allocating jobs and tasks means specifying the contents, method, and relationships of jobs to satisfy technological and organizational requirements, as well as the personal needs of jobholders.

Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model (Instructional Design)

The figure shows how an instructional system is designed. It represents a model of a job design with a specific application (instruction).

Key Elements of Job Design

To understand job design, it is helpful to identify some key elements and their relationship with job design processes.

A task can be best defined as a piece of assigned work expected to be performed within a certain time. Job designers must strictly and thoroughly identify tasks that need completion.
Motivation describes forces within the individual that account for the level, direction, and persistence of effort expended at work. Individuals need to be compelled, excited, and passionate to do their work. Managers should design jobs that motivate employees.
Resource allocation occurs when an organization decides to appropriate or allocate certain resources to specific jobs, tasks, or dilemmas facing the organization. In job design, it is necessary to identify and structure jobs in a way that uses the company’s resources efficiently. Appropriate resource allocation allows large organizations to foster and develop innovation in their workforce and underscores strategy through distribution.
Reward systems also play a role in job design. Reward systems include compensation, bonuses, raises, job security, benefits, and various other reward methods for employees. An outline or description of reward packages should be established when constructing jobs.

Theoretical Models of Job Design

Organizations may employ various theoretical approaches for job design. These include Taylorism, Socio-Technical Systems Approach, Core Characteristics Model, and Psychological Empowerment Theory. Each approach emphasizes different aspects to be considered in effective job design.

Taylorism

Taylorism, also known as scientific management, is a foundation for systematic job design. Frederick Taylor developed this theory in an effort to develop a “science” for every job within an organization according to the following principles:

Create a standard method for each job.
Successfully select and hire proper workers.
Effectively train these workers.
Support these workers.

The Socio-Technical Systems Approach

The Socio-Technical Systems Approach is based on the evolution from individual work to work groups. This approach has the following guiding principles:

The design of the organization must fit its goals.
Employees must be actively involved in designing the structure of the organization.
Control of variances in production or service must be undertaken as close to their source as possible.
Subsystems must be designed around relatively self-contained and recognizable units of work.
Support systems must fit in with the design of the organization.
The design should allow for a high-quality working life.
Changes should continue to be made as necessary to meet changing environmental pressures.

Core Characteristics Model

Another modern job design theory is the Core Characteristics Model, which maintains five important job elements that motivate workers and performance:

Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Autonomy
Job feedback

The individual elements are then proposed to lead to positive outcomes through three psychological states:

Experienced meaningfulness
Experienced responsibility
Knowledge of results

Psychological Empowerment Theory

Psychological Empowerment Theory posits that there is a distinction between empowering practices and cognitive motivational states. When individuals are aware of the impact they have, they benefit more than if they cannot attribute positive impact to any of their actions.

Overall Trend

Many more iterations of job design theory have evolved, but general trends can be identified among them: job design is moving towards autonomous work teams and placing added emphasis on the importance of meaning derived from the individual.

5.9.2: Job Characteristics Theory

The Job Characteristics Theory is a framework for identifying how job characteristics affect job outcomes.

Learning Objective

Analyze the core characteristics, psychological states, and work outcomes in the Job Characteristics Theory, as identified by Hackman and Oldham

Key Points

The Job Characteristics Theory (JCT), developed by Hackman and Oldham, is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics affect job outcomes, including job satisfaction.
The five job characteristics are skill variety, task variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
Three different psychological states determine how an employee reacts to job characteristics: experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results.
Job outcomes, such as satisfaction and motivation, are the synthesis of core characteristics and psychological states.

Key Terms

characteristic: A distinguishable feature of a person or thing.
job analysis: The formal process of identifying the content of a position within an organization in terms of activities involved and attributes needed to perform the work, as well as major job requirements.

Core Characteristics

The Job Characteristics Theory (JCT), also referred to as Core Characteristics Model and developed by Hackman and Oldham, is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics impact job outcomes, including job satisfaction. The theory states that there are five core job characteristics:

Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Autonomy
Feedback

Each job has these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent. No one combination of characteristics makes for the ideal job; rather, it is the purpose of job design to adjust the levels of each characteristic to attune the overall job with the worker performing it. This alignment is important because the worker brings psychological states to bear upon the job that affect job outcomes when combined with the core characteristics.

Motivating potential score

The Job Characteristics Theory uses this equation to estimate the overall motivation inherent in a job design based upon the five core characteristics.

Psychological States

The core characteristics affect three critical psychological states of the workers doing the job:

Experienced meaningfulness
Experienced responsibility for outcomes
Knowledge of the actual results

The job characteristics directly derive the three states. Indeed, the first three characteristics (skill variety, task variety and task significance) pertain to the meaningfulness of the work. Autonomy directly correlates to responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results relates to feedback. Pictured as a process flow, the characteristics and psychological states operate in continuous feedback loop that allows employees to continue to be motivated by thoroughly owning and understanding the work in which they are involved.

Work Outcomes

The combination of core characteristics with psychological states influences work outcomes such as:

Job satisfaction
Absenteeism
Work motivation

Therefore, the goal should be to design the job in such a way that the core characteristics complement the psychological states of the worker and lead to positive outcomes. The five core job characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score for a job that can be used as an index of how likely a job is to affect an employee’s attitudes and behaviors. Analyses of studies of the model provide some support for the validity of the Job Characteristics Theory.

5.9.3: Tactics for Improving Fit

Ways of improving job fit include assessing employee activities through various tools to increase employee satisfaction and efficiency.

Learning Objective

Describe ways in which management and supervisors can improve job design to fit employee and organizational needs

Key Points

The flexibility to tailor job design more precisely for both organizational effectiveness and employee job satisfaction is a significant, ongoing part of the job design process.
If a job is well designed, then its required competencies and responsibilities are explicit and clear.
Training is meant to develop in the employee the skills required to improve job fit as the individual enters the workforce.
Analyzing the outcomes of a given job within the organization, both from the task perspective and the employee perspective, can assist in improving fit.
Supervisors can use interviews, surveys, observations, questionnaires, and checklists to observe efficacy of job design and improve fit for each employee.

Key Term

job fit: Correlation between a given position’s roles, responsibilities, and objectives and the skills and competencies of the individual holding that position.

The Job Fit Template

The basis for improving fit between the employee and the job is striking a balance between job design and individual—crafting the job in such a way that it complements the employee’s individual skills, aspirations, personality, and attributes. Job design is usually completed prior to hiring the individual who then performs the identified duties. As a result, flexibility to tailor the job design for both organizational effectiveness and employee job satisfaction is a significant, ongoing part of the job design process.

If a job is well designed, then the competencies it requires and responsibilities it involves are explicit and clear. This design becomes the foundation for the job description, which is a more exact picture of the job’s nature and which comprises the following:

The title and duties the job fulfills
Who supervises the employee holding the job
Experience and qualifications expected from an applicant

The job description outlines the general attributes of the person for whom the job is designed and serves as the basis for improvement and modification during the improvement process.

Training

The first step in improving fit for a given job design is training. Once an individual is hired to perform a specific set of duties, both management and human resources should assist in preparing the individual to accomplish these tasks. In this process, the organization is responsible for improving fit by supplying all of the necessary tools, contacts, and information employees will need to accomplish their objectives.

Job Analysis

Analyzing the outcomes of a given job within the organization, both from the task perspective and the employee perspective, can assist in improving fit by ensuring that the employee is both satisfied and accomplishing the desired objective. Job analysis employs a series of steps which enable a supervisor to assess a given employee/job fit and to improve the fit, if necessary. These steps include:

Observation: The simplest method of assessing how a job and employee fit is observing the employee at work. The manager may find it useful to ask a few questions during this process, but it is important not to make the employee uncomfortable (which would skew the results).
Survey/Questionnaire: Providing the employee with a survey is another effective data-collection strategy. A survey should provide dimensions of the job and allow the experts in that specific role to weigh the importance of each component. Supervisors can also gather data on what is working and what is not, allowing them to edit and improve task assignments.
Interviews: One-on-one, formal or informal interviews are also a useful tool in gathering data about the employee, allowing the supervisor to obtain more details than a survey provides. In this situation, the supervisor can also customize each discussion to become more familiar with the personality, levels of satisfaction, and perceived efficiency of each employee.
Checklist: Another method of improving job fit is to create a checklist. Employees or the supervisor can fill these out, identifying what tasks are being done early, on-time, or later (they can also note quality and resource efficiency).

Questionnaire

Employee questionnaires can be a useful method of assessing job fit.

5.10: Compensation and Motivation

5.10.1: Monetary Employee Compensation

Monetary compensation can be either guaranteed (base) pay or variable pay and positively correlates with job satisfaction.

Learning Objective

Identify the different cash compensation models (i.e., guaranteed and variable) and the behavioral implications of using monetary compensation

Key Points

The basic element of guaranteed pay is the base salary, paid on an hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly rate.
Variable pay is a monetary (cash) reward, such as a bonus or commission, that is contingent on performance or results achieved.
For many years, bonuses have been considered an incentive program that reinforces positive and efficient behavior among employees.
Generally speaking, employees who feel that they are underpaid relative to their skill levels do not perform as well as those who feel that they are appropriately compensated.

Key Terms

commission: A fee charged by an agent or broker for carrying out a transaction; for example, a finder’s fee.
Variable Pay: A monetary (cash) reward that is contingent on discretion, performance, or results achieved.

Base Pay

Monetary compensation includes both guaranteed (base) and variable pay. The basic element of guaranteed pay is the base salary, paid on an hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly rate. Many countries dictate the minimum base salary by defining a minimum wage.

U.S. Minimum Wage Map, 2007

A map of the United States comparing state minimum wage laws to the federal minimum wage. Kansas is the only state with a minimum wage rate lower than the federal one.

Individual skills and experience levels of employees leave room for differentiation of income levels within the job-based pay structure. In addition to base salary, other pay elements are based solely on employee/employer relations, such as salary and seniority allowance. Salaries and wages are tied to a job description that lays out the expectations and responsibilities of an employee. Management can refer to job descriptions to determine whether employees qualify for raises.

Variable Pay

Variable pay is a monetary reward that is contingent on discretion, performance, or results achieved. There are different types of variable pay plans, such as bonus schemes, sales incentives (commission), overtime pay, and more. Variable pay is common in industries such as real estate or insurance, where pay is based on commission or the amount of sales generated by the employee. In a typical variable pay plan, the salesperson might receive 50 percent of every dollar he brings in up to a defined level of revenue, after which pay increases to 85 percent for every dollar earned.

Bonuses represent another type of variable pay, one based on an employee’s performance during a certain period of time. Employees who are performing particularly well during a year may receive an additional bonus that is above their base salary or commission percentage.

Monetary Compensation and Behavior

From a behavioral perspective, bonuses have been studied to ascertain their effectiveness as an employee incentive to improve performance. B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist, studied behavioral reactions to extrinsic environmental consequences such as reinforcement or punishment. Drawing on Skinner’s perspective, bonuses have served for a number of years as an incentive program to reinforce positive, efficient behavior among employees.

Additionally, behavioral and organizational psychologists have considered salaries in comparison with skill level to determine how employees perform based on their wage level. The results of these studies show that employees who feel that they are underpaid relative to their skill levels will not perform as well as they would if they felt that they were appropriately compensated.

The effect of compensation on employee job satisfaction has also been studied. Not surprisingly, employees who are paid more are more satisfied with their jobs and less inclined to leave their employers—up to a certain point (i.e., salary level). While the amount of that exact point is frequently debated, experts generally agree that somewhere beyond the ballpark of a six-figure salary range reflects diminishing returns (i.e., no additional benefit to the organization for paying the individual more).

5.10.2: Non-Monetary Employee Compensation

Non-monetary compensations (e.g., benefits) are essential in recruiting skilled employees and maintaining a satisfied workforce.

Learning Objective

Discuss non-monetary compensation benefits within the larger framework of motivation

Key Points

Examples of non-monetary compensation include benefits, flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement matching, mentoring programs, tuition assistance, and childcare.
A benefits plan is designed to address a specific need and is often provided in a non-cash form. Many countries dictate certain minimum benefits, such as paid time off, employer’s pension contribution, and sick pay.
Many skilled laborers will not accept a position without at least a simple benefits package. It is standard practice in U.S. culture to offer a basic amount of non-monetary benefits to full-time, permanent employees.

Key Term

non-monetary: Payment in the form of benefits, flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement plans, mentoring, tuition assistance, child care, or other non-cash option.

Benefits as Incentives

Non-monetary benefits are essential to attracting a productive workforce. Many skilled laborers will not accept a position that does not offer at least a simple benefits package. It is standard practice in U.S. culture to offer basic non-monetary benefits to full-time, permanent employees. Part-time and contract workers are not always offered these benefits, partly as a result of the high cost to businesses.

Offering benefits above the expected amount can be an incentive program and used to recruit highly skilled employees to an organization. For example, skilled employees may be more likely to join an organization that offers free onsite parking, retirement benefits, and extra paid time off than an organization that does not offer these fringe benefits. Companies also use non-monetary benefits to increase and maintain employee morale and satisfaction.

Benefits can be a key element in addressing the lowest level of Maslow’s needs hierarchy. If employees do not feel that an organization is treating them fairly with respect to basic needs (food, money for retirement, etc.), then they are likely to be less satisfied with their jobs, perform at a lower level, or leave. Those who do not feel their basic needs are met may also fail to reach higher levels of motivation.

Benefit Types

Employers have several options with respect to non-monetary compensation. These can include benefits (including medical or other insurance), flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement matching, mentoring programs, tuition assistance, and childcare. All of these benefits communicate to employees that their work is valued and promote a positive work-life balance. The idea behind benefits is to build a community and support system, which enables employees to focus on work rather than worry about life.

The largest category of non-monetary compensation includes benefits. Employee benefits can include paid time off, insurance (life, medical/dental, or disability coverage), and pension plans.

Legalities and Benefits

Many countries dictate different minimum benefits, such as paid time off, employer’s pension contribution, and sick pay. In the U.S., benefits may include a health plan to which the company contributes and that sometimes includes vision and dental coverage, along with basic health coverage. Some governments mandate benefits such as retirement savings matching, but organizations can offer additional retirement benefits through a matching plan.

Health insurance distribution (under 65 years)

Health insurance includes employer-sponsored health insurance, military health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and non-group health insurance. The largest group of insured Americans consists of middle- and upper-class employees receiving health insurance through employers. 16% of Americans remain uninsured.

5.10.3: Financial Rewards for Managers

Financial rewards are often used as a tool to motivate managers to perform better.

Learning Objective

Identify the relationship between management and pay-for-performance financial incentives.

Key Points

Incentive programs, also known as “pay for performance,” provide employees, consumers, or providers with financial rewards as a way of motivating better performance.
The view that managers are most responsible for strategic planning and decision making is part of the rationale for financial incentive programs. In this view, financial rewards such as bonuses are a performance-based incentive to improve productivity.
One risk of incentive schemes is ethical hazard. Offering incentives to hit specific targets can result in the target becoming the primary goal, rather than the improvement of the company’s performance as a whole.
The recession of 2008–2010 made it more difficult for businesses to offer managers monetary rewards.

Key Term

incentive: Reward used to motivate employees toward better performance.

Incentive programs, also known as “pay for performance,” provide employees, consumers, or providers with financial rewards as a way of motivating better performance. Various behavioral factors might be considered prior to establishing an incentive program, including the target audience’s motivation, skills, recognition, understanding of the goals, and ability to measure progress. The interest of participants plays a vital role in determining an incentive program, as the goal is to motivate their behavior.

Pay-for-Performance Jobs

Pay-for-performance programs are quite common in a number of industries, most notably sales. A sales role often features a contractual agreement that stipulates a certain percentage of a given representative’s sales contribute to that sales rep’s own salary. This motivates sales professionals to pursue higher success rates, as their own income will directly correlate with their efficacy.

Other types of pay-for-performance jobs are found in the manufacturing, restaurant, and financial industries. The basic premise is simple: the more sales or profits generated by the individual, the larger the share of the organization’s profit that individual will receive in return.

Incentive Programs

Managerial roles can function similarly to these pay-for-performance jobs, where the success of the company (or department) will directly affect the salary of the manager. Managers are often motivated by financial rewards. Like other pay-for-performance programs, the incentive programs for managers are designed to increase their performance as well as the overall performance of the company. These and other incentive programs are often used to reduce turnover, boost morale and loyalty, improve employee wellness, increase retention, and drive performance.

The financial rewards of upper management are often the highest in the organization. Such financial incentive programs are based on the understanding that the top managers within a business are the most responsible for strategic planning and decision making. In this view, financial rewards like bonuses serve as an incentive for senior management to improve performance.

CEO pay growth compared to employee salaries, U.S. gross domestic product, and overall U.S. corporate profits

CEOs, as primary examples of upper managerial salary, receive high salaries in comparison to other gross income indicators. This contrast may be a result of the differing pay structure often associated with upper management.

A risk of incentive schemes is ethical hazards. Offering incentives to hit specific targets means the targets themselves can become the primary goal, rather than the improvement of the company’s performance as a whole. This mindset may cause a reduction in overall performance—even as the rate of hitting targets climbs. In the wake of the global recession of 2008–2010, financial incentive schemes received greater criticism and oversight, partly for this very reason.