Motivation Effect on Decision Making

Keywords: motivation and decision making, motivation decision making

Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-orientated behavior. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation.

At lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such as physiological needs, money is a motivator, however it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period (in accordance with Herzberg’s two-factor model of motivation). At higher levels of the hierarchy, praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money, as both Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation and Douglas McGregor’s theory X and theory Y (pertaining to the theory of leadership) demonstrate.

Maslow has money at the lowest level of the hierarchy and shows other needs are better motivators to staff. McGregor places money in his Theory X category and feels it is a poor motivator. Praise and recognition are placed in the Theory Y category and are considered stronger motivators than money.

Motivated employees always look for better ways to do a job.

Motivated employees are more quality oriented.

Motivated workers are more productive.

The average workplace is about midway between the extremes of high threat and high opportunity. Motivation by threat is a dead-end strategy, and naturally staff are more attracted to the opportunity side of the motivation curve than the threat side. Motivation is a powerful tool in the work environment that can lead to employees working at their most efficient levels of production.

The assumptions of Maslow and Herzberg were challenged by a classic study at Vauxhall Motors’ UK manufacturing plant. This introduced the concept of orientation to work and distinguished three main orientations: instrumental (where work is a means to an end), bureaucratic (where work is a source of status, security and immediate reward) and solidaristic (which prioritises group loyalty).

Other theories which expanded and extended those of Maslow and Herzberg included Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Theory, Edwin Locke’s Goal Theory and Victor Vroom’s Expectancy theory. These tend to stress cultural differences and the fact that individuals tend to be motivated by different factors at different times.

According to the system of scientific management developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, a worker’s motivation is solely determined by pay, and therefore management need not consider psychological or social aspects of work. In essence, scientific management bases human motivation wholly on extrinsic rewards and discards the idea of intrinsic rewards.

In contrast, David McClelland believed that workers could not be motivated by the mere need for money-in fact, extrinsic motivation (e.g., money) could extinguish intrinsic motivation such as achievement motivation, though money could be used as an indicator of success for various motives, e.g., keeping score. In keeping with this view, his consulting firm, McBer & Company, had as its first motto “To make everyone productive, happy, and free.” For McClelland, satisfaction lay in aligning a person’s life with their fundamental motivations.

Elton Mayo found out that the social contacts a worker has at the workplace are very important and that boredom and repetitiveness of tasks lead to reduced motivation. Mayo believed that workers could be motivated by acknowledging their social needs and making them feel important. As a result, employees were given freedom to make decisions on the job and greater attention was paid to informal work groups. Mayo named the model the Hawthorne effect. His model has been judged as placing undue reliance on social contacts at work situations for motivating employees.

HOW THE MOTIVATION CONCEPT AFFECTS THE DECISION MAKING OF MANUFACTURING COMPANY

As we all know that motivation is the activation or energization of goal-orientated behavior. It means motivation concept is one of the major parts of manufacturing company as it helps in motivating the employees and as well as helps in making various important decisions in any manufacturing company.

To motivate is to provide employees with a motive to do some tasks. It is to cause or provoke somebody to act either positively or negatively in the manufacturing company.

Motivation has been used by effective managers to prompt ordinary people to achieve uncommon results in all fields of Endeavour.

Employees do not only work because they want to collect only pay but for other numerous factors. People work because they have goals to achieve which surpass financial gains from their employment.

Anyone in management knows that employees have their good days and their bad days and that, for the most part, the reasons for their ups and downs are unknown. Most managers shrug their shoulders at this fact of work life.

All employees have aspirations and objectives which they want to achieve through their organizations. Responsible managers ought to help them to achieve their modest aspirations.

Motivated employees look new and innovative ideas to perform their job in any manufacturing company.

Motivation also helps employees in making decisions regarding their job.

For example: In a manufacturing company, where main job profile of a worker is to produce and manufacture, basically that is his continuous work and he may feel fatigue and tired. So, now the work of manager starts from that point, now he have to motivate his tired employee not just to produce more but for a rejuvenating experience. Manager have to make him feel refreshing so that worker will feel that his manager is thinking about him and organization is cautious about him. It will make him feel good and it will also increase its productivity.

Motivation factors that are affective and effective in one employee or in a group of employees may not be affective or effective in others. This is an area where study, query and feedback will have to be carried out.

For example, the issue of bonus as motivation factor in employees may spurn employees to be ‘distrustful’, ‘self-centered’, ‘selfish’ and ‘individualistic’ instead of working for the collective success of a team.

How these concepts affect decision making?

The front line manager deals with multiple individuals and may observe a full spectrum of attitudes, values, personality, ethics, and cultural differences. Every organization would be fortunate to have extremely eager, positive, and ethical workers. The reality is that people come in all shapes and sizes, as do the individual traits. These traits or attributes can shape the organization.

The manager’s role is to understand how these traits affect an organization and lead accordingly to provide maximum benefit to the corporation.

Attitudes reflect how one feels about something Individual attitude is often linked to job satisfaction. If an employee has a sense of satisfaction with the work and the workplace, the employee will generally have a positive attitude. Likewise, if the employee is dissatisfied with the work the employee will generally express a negative attitude.

There is significant study within organizational behavior on attitude. Job satisfaction is nearly interchangeable with individual attitude in the context of organizational behavior.

Organizational behavior studies, thus far, have investigated job satisfaction to better understand how to measure it, what causes it, and the impact of individual job satisfaction on the organization.

One factor ascribed to an employee’s level of job satisfaction is job stress. Frequently cited sources of job stress include “role conflict and ambiguity, work overload, underutilization of skills, resource inadequacy, and lack of participation”

The assumption is as job stress lowers, job satisfaction increases leading to greater group function and productivity. Successful managers often want to take an active role in lowering employees’ job stress. This may actually have the opposite effect.

According to Cummins, punctuation error intervention may be counter productive for some individual employees. Cummins’ study found that individuals that tended to be task oriented did not react positively to intervention whereas relationship oriented individuals tended to react well to intervention. Cummins’ study noted that mentorship might be a suitable strategy for improving job satisfaction for relationship oriented employees, while clear definition of roles and responsibilities is better suited to task oriented individuals.

Attitudes, such as job satisfaction, provide us with some insight on how a person feels about something. Values contribute to our understanding of why these attitudes are formed. Values are the individual’s set of beliefs that determine behavior. These are often described as an individual’s guiding principles.

Values are studied within organizational behavior to improve understanding of individuals and their motivations.

An individual’s values define right and wrong for that person. When bringing people together from different backgrounds the basis for right and wrong can vary from individual to individual.

Thus, values can create biases. The lesson for the manager is to identify individuals with personal values that match those of the organization and will mesh well with others within the group. If values create biases, it is important for the manager to realize this and correct for it within his or her thinking and actions.

Why motivation concept are included in the process of decision making?

There are two main approaches to study human decision making. Process approaches focus on the decision process, how the information is interpreted and reinterpreted, what decision rules are used to reach a decision etc. Structural approaches do not follow the intervening decision process, but attempt to predict choices based on parameters of the decision problems.

The Hawthorne Effect – Mayo Studies in Employee Motivation in manufacturing company:

The aptitudes of individuals are imperfect predictors of job performance. Although they give some indication of the physical and mental potential of the individual, the amount produced is strongly influenced by social factors.

Informal organization affects productivity. The researchers discovered a group life among the workers. The studies also showed that the relations that supervisors develop with workers tend to influence the manner in which the workers carry out directives.

Work-group norms affect productivity. The Hawthorne researchers were not the first to recognize that work groups tend to arrive at norms of what is “a fair day’s work.” However, they provided the best systematic description and interpretation of this phenomenon.

The workplace is a social system. The researchers came to view the workplace as a social system made up of interdependent parts. The worker is a person whose attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands from both inside and outside the work plant. Informal group within the work plant exercise strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of the individual worker.

The need for recognition, security and sense of belonging is more important in determining workers’ morale and productivity than the physical conditions under which he works.