Motivation In the Workplace

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Motivation can be properly thought of as a process whereby people take certain available resources- their time- talent and energy, and distribute them as they choose. (Maehr, Braskamp, 1986).

The objective of this paper is to explore the relationships between the individual, the external environment and the business environment and examine how they interact with each other to effect the amount of motivation an employee exhibits on the job. As with most other models we must take into account the Basic Needs Theory of Maslow (Vroom and Deci, 1970) and after satisfying those needs we intend to mold our model after the Expectancy Theories of Vroom. The Expectancy Theory is a subjective-expected-utility model. It states that the force exerted towards a given act will be a product of the individual's belief that he or she can perform at a certain level (Kleinbeck, Quast, Thierry Hacker, 1990). The Equity Theory concerns the worker's perception of how she is being treated. The basic idea is that an employ first considers her input (effort) and then her outcomes (rewards). The employee then compares her personal ratio of effort to reward to the ratio of a referent (Invancevich, Lorenzi, Skinner, and Crosby, 1994).

We would also like to point out that Motivation is a "continuously changing variable" as well as a vector quantity. It involves an infinite number of magnitudes and can be exerted in an infinite number of directions. This makes an accurate measurement of motivation very difficult to accomplish (Morris, 1968).

a comprehensive model that measures motivation through statistical analysis.

Understanding our model is assisted by the use of circles to exemplify the various categories affecting motivation.

Individual

External environment
Business environment
The individual includes such characteristic as personality, education, experience, work ethics, religious and ethnic background, goals and past achievement, etc.

The external environment includes such characteristics as family and financial needs, social contacts and political beliefs, etc..

The business environment includes wages and benefit packages, corporate culture, training programs, child-care facilities, pension and retirement programs, flex-time scheduling and family care leave time, etc(Kondo, 1991).

As these three different categories begin to interact with each other you begin to obtain some overlapping. The more overlapping of the three categories, the higher the degree of motivation. When all three circles are separated you have no motivation what-so-ever. When all three circles overlay each other completely you would have the most intense motivation possible. We recognize neither scenario has much probability of occurring but recognize that some interaction of all three circles is realistic.

Model Explanation

We intent to explore the policies and programs that businesses can promote to assist in bringing these three categories, closer together, thereby increasing the amount of motivation experienced in the workplace. We will also explore methods of measuring and predicting the amount of motivation indicated by the overlapping intersection(Cranny, Smith, Stone, 1992).

Our motivation model consists of three circle areas. Each circle is perceived by an individual to represent individual needs, external influences, and business management.

The area of individual needs and external influences always overlap because a person is living in a society and his or her desire is strongly related to external factors such as, family, status, religion, and so on. The relationship is a fundamental condition for the individual's motivation to perform.

The overlapping area of individual needs and external influences indicates the individual motivation to perform in the society. Size of the area indicates a degree of the relationship between the various factors (Figure 1, Model 1). The larger the overlapping area becomes, the larger the degree of interaction and subsequent relationship. Management's primary goal is to intervene in the already existing relationship between individual needs and external influences in order to boost an employees' motivation with regards to its core operation.

Motivation is based on individual needs, not external influences. When an individual himself wants to do something for his needs, motivation occurs automatically.

Therefore, management should consider the relationship between the individual's needs and business to increase the individual's motivation at work. If the business develops a relationship with only external influences (Figure 1, Model 2), the individual is not motivated by the business approach. Accordingly, management should always strive to have a relationship with the individual needs.

In order to address the primary concern of enlarging the relationships between individual needs, external influences, and business, management must constantly strive to expand the degree of overlapping between the three categories. This overlapping area represents the strongest relationship to motivate the employees for the business because the individual's motivation in the external influences and the business coexist in the individual's needs. The goal of needs is to improve employees' motivation for the business. Therefore, management must work diligently to expand the overlapping area.

If the business develops a relationship focusing only on the individual's needs (Figure 1, Model 3), this approach will again fail to motivate the employees. There is no overlapping of the three circles and the motivation for the business and the motivation related to external influences for the individual are completely separate. Each motivation would conflict if the individual must chose one or the other . The choice would be made by the comparison between the degree of importance for the individual. In order for the individual to become better motivated with respect to the business, the degree of the motivation should be larger than that of the other category. On the other hand, if the degree of the relationship between individual's needs and external factors is larger than that of the relationship between individual's needs and business, management will never increase motivation for the business.

When business interacts with the employees, each overlapping area with individual's needs and external influence happens coincidentally and together. Some factors would match the individual's needs but some factors would match only external influences. This means that even though business may try to address individual's needs, some factors are typically not accepted by the individual as his needs, thereby causing some factors to remain a part of external influences only recognized by the individual. It is such an ideal situation that the business approach perfectly matches the individual's needs.

Our study has identified three management approaches that tend to stimulate motivation. The first approach focuses on the individuals' needs only. The second approach strives to address only those external influences that affect the individual. The third model suggest a combined approach whereby the individuals' needs and the external influences are given an equal amount of consideration.

The purpose of the first approach is to increase the overlapping area with the individual's needs. A stronger degree of connection to individual's needs results in increased motivation for the business. Salary increases, promotion, or an increase of vacation time would be used to expand the overlapping area. This approach directly motivates the employees because the factors presented by the management are highly related to the individual needs and desires.

The purpose of the second approach is to expand the overlapping area made by the three circles when the management can not provide effective factors that would satisfy the individual's needs. An overlapping caused by external influences does exist except, the area that overlays the individual's needs does not relate to the employees' motivation for the business. Expanding the overlapping area requires enlarging the overlapping area made by the three circles. It means that by approaching the external influences, management could create a stronger motivation for its business. Health care system including family members, pension plans, or housing allowances are examples designed to expand this degree of overlap.

The final approach is the most efficient way to get the maximum interaction between the three circles. If management tries to obtain the overlapping area by using the first approach, management has to present several factors in effort to match the individual needs. It would be costly and difficult to provide them completely because the company must identify the effective factors and provide them in an appropriate amount. If management tries to gain the overlapping area by using the second approach, the company has to provide several externally influenced factors resulting in even less motivational success than the first approach. However, if management addresses both the individual needs and the external influences equally, it will have identified the strongest motivation area made by the three circles. (Figure 1, Model 7). Management can present some factors which satisfies the individual needs, but will not be required to provide every possible factor thereby saving valuable time and resources. Addressing external resources can also provide for increased efficiency by identifying only those factors that contribute to the overlapping effect and motivational appreciation.

The ideal model is that the business circle and the individual needs circle are completely overlapping (Figure 1, Model 8). It means that all of what the individual wants to do are business related. The condition never occurs because it is impossible to satisfy all of the individual needs perfectly.

To improve the employee' motivation for the business, management will try to achieve the ideal condition. There have been many attempts to achieve the motivation by using these approaches. The attempts would be determined by management only after considering the company's philosophy, financial situation, social and political pressures, etc.

The models can show the current conditions companies and use surveys to lead the companies to the appropriate factors needed to improve their employees' motivation. With the results of the surveys, the company should be able to measure each overlapping area and describe its own conditional model. The model would be either model 4, 5, or 6. The company can therefore identify simply understand its present condition for motivating the employees by the model. Afterward, the company would be in a better position to decide which approach is the most favorable to improving employee's motivation within the company. In the next section, we explain how to measure overlapping areas.

Maslow (1954) has argued a hierarchy of human needs. The hierarchical needs are fixed from the bottom to the top. The bottom is physical needs; next is safety and security needs; third is social needs; forth is self-esteem; and fifth is self- actualization. Maslow's theory suggests that an individual's motivational needs aspire to the next level once the lower level needs have been achieved. However, in the present society, these needs are desired by an individual at the same time.

The individual wants money not just to live on but also acquires some degree of personal satisfaction from earning it. Money will be used for housing, foods, and health care, for himself and his family. Receiving an increase in salary will contribute to the individual's status and self-worth, both of which are identified needs that require satisfaction. Note that Maslow's hierarchy needs cannot explain this situation because every need appears coincidentally.

The overlapping areas in our motivation model suggest that the Maslow's needs are satisfied simultaneously. There are three overlapping areas in our model, an overlapping of individual needs and external influences, an overlapping of individual needs and business, and an overlapping of individual needs, external influences, and business. The first area includes the physical needs, the safety and security. The second area includes the social needs. The last area includes self-actualization and self- esteem because the two needs are satisfied when the three factors are met. Furthermore, a size of each overlapping area can explain management's attempt to satisfy the degree of employees' needs.

Herzberg's views of motivation (1966) suggest that motivators lead to individual satisfaction and hygiene factors lead to individual dissatisfaction, and the level of job performance is primarily influenced by the combination of the two factors. Our model explains the existence of both factors at the same time. The motivators are contained in the overlapping area of individual needs and business because the business intention and individual needs meet in the same area (Figure 2, area 1 & 2). The hygiene factors are contained in the overlapping area of business and external influences but fail to meet in the center overlapping area (Figure 2, area 3). This overlapping area shows that the person is not motivated but recognizes the business circumstances which do not effect or negatively effect his performance. To subtract the overlapping area of business and external influences from the overlapping area of individual needs and external influences is to predict the motivation of individual performance for the business (Figure 3).

The expectancy theory presented by Vroom (1964) describes the consequence of effort, performance, reward, and satisfaction (Steers, 1979). This theory suggest that an increase in effort leads to increasing performance and then proper rewards with satisfaction help keep the relationships. The theory considers the relationship between a person and a company and does not take into account external influences. Our model cannot explain the consequences between performance and rewards but can explain the relationship. The relationship between performance and rewards relates to the interaction between individual needs and business. Business provides rewards which meet the individual needs as performance occurs. The size of the overlapping area of individual needs and business can illustrate the degree of matching individual needs and the respective rewards.

Model Analysis and Implementation

Previously we have discussed the factors that influence motivation of the employee in the workplace. We also mentioned the "Intersection Model" which was used to describe the interaction between different category factors (McCoy, 1992). After the manager has identified the possible factors that might influence the overall motivation level of his employees, there are two questions raised; how can the manager find out the most effective factors that will have the greatest influence on the motivation of his employees and how can the manager measure the degree of influence of these factors. One of the reasons for the manager to identify those relevant factors is to focus business resources on those factors that offer the best results. The manager must also identify the motivational degree among different employees and the motivational degree inside each individual. This will allow the manager to identify the contribution and worth of each individual factor which may affect the motivational level between individuals.

In order to answer these questions, some statistical techniques are needed(Levine, Ramsey, Berenson, 1995). Chi-square analysis is used to identify the interdependency between two different kind of factors. Since the analysis will use the "frequency" or "count" data, the manager will have to design a questionnaire that utilizes different categories of factors in a survey format. For example, personal factors can be described as the combination of age, educational level, ethic background, religious background, marital status, gender, years of working experience and so on. External factors can be described as the number of family members, economic source of the family, how many dependents in the family, number and type of insurance policies or security policies, total value of assets owned by the individual, amount of debt which the individual owes, number of social organizations in which the individual participates, the individual's current position in the organization and type of jobs which the individual currently engages in. Business factors include the current salary system, pension retirement plan, family benefit plan, training system, supervision system along with working conditions, and can be said to be relevant to the factors that might influence the individual.

After we list all the factors that might influence the motivation of each individual, the next step is to develop a questionnaire which can describe the factors in a frequency distribution format. The purpose is to take the collected data obtained form the employee questionnaires and perform a chi- square analysis to identify the relationship between each category to determine the effective category. Some examples are illustrated below:

Table 1

Catego Factor Option Option Option Option Option Option ries
s
s
s
s
s
s
s Indivi Age
20-30 31-40
41-50 51-60 61-70
dual
Educat high
associ colleg gradua doctor
ion
school ate
e
te
Ethic Americ Asian- Africa- Hispia Other
an
AM
AM
n
Religi Buddhi Christ Cathol Other
ous
sm
ian
ic
Senior 1-2
3-5
5-10
over
ity
10
Marita Single Divorc Marrie
l
ed
d Extern No. of 1
2
3
4
5
over 5 al
FF
No.
over 3 3
2
1

Feeder

Insura -

50000- over

nce

$50000 1mil

1mil

Asset -

Over 2 1mil- $50k-

$50000 mil

2mil

1mil

Debt

-$5000 5000-

10k-

over

10000

20k

Social 1

over 3

Positi Operat Senior Superv Manage Senior

isor

Type

Clark

Sales Manage

Job

floor

r Busine Salary Senior Perfor Combin

Sys

ity B m B

Pensio 1%

T 2%

T Over

Sale

sale

Traini Freque Often

Someti Few

mes

Superv Freque Often

Someti Few

ise

mes

Bad

Not

Good

cond.

bad

Good

Family 1%

T 2%

T Over

ben

Sale

After the survey, a chi square analysis can be performed. We focused our questions to identify the level of education and the employee's current position. We assumed our survey was completed by 500 employees who answered the questions honestly. The following results are listed below.

high

associat college graduate doctor

Subtotal

school

e Operator 60

160

224 Senior 56

126 OP Supervis 4

89 or Manager 0

45 Senior 0

16 Mgr Sub

120

240

500 Total

We make a hypotheses test Ho as "two categories that are independent to each other" and Ha as "at least one combination which shows two categories are dependent of each other". We therefore, can calculate the X2 Calc and compare the value with the X2 table we obtained from the table. If X2 Calc >= X2 table we reject the Ho in favor of Ha which means that the two categories are not independent of each other and some type of relationship exists between the two. In this case, X2 Calc = 711.165, compare with the X2 table = 16.4734 using significant level 0.1 and degree of freedom 25. Since X2 Calc > X2 table we reject Ho in favor of Ha. In other words, we conclude there is some relationship between educational level and the individual's current position in the company. The implication for management is simple; if the current position of an individual plays an important role in the individual's motivation, a manger can increase the individual's educational level by special training programs or subsidize the individual's educational expenses.

After we realized the relationship between every subcategory, another type of analysis should be done to compare the motivation level between individuals and the individual himself. This is done with the use of a "Motivational Tree".

This method compares the difference between individuals by using the "Motivation Tree" and allows the manager to know the overall motivation level or score in the organization. The idea of the "Motivation Tree" comes from the decision tree theory(Gordon, Pressman, 1978), which defines the factors that might influence the motivation of employees by assessing the varied weight of each category and the subcategories. We can calculate the "Motivation Score" for each individual after applying the motivation tree to all the employees. Those scores can be described in a statistical language, such as mean, medium, mode, standard deviation, and confidence interval. Employers or managers can use the statistical data as a standard or benchmark to estimate the general motivation level inside the organization. Managers can compare those numbers on a time bases in order to understand the effectiveness of plans that are designed to increase the motivation in the organization. Managers can also compare those benchmark numbers with the individual numbers and distinguish the difference between individual and organizational levels of motivation. From the comparison, managers can determine if an individual is below the overall level, at the overall level or below the overall motivation level; in other words, is the specific employee being motivated or not. Managers can also identify the most effective factors which contribute to the largest motivation scores. By enhancing these factor and eliminating the factors which don't contribute significantly to the motivation scores, managers can improve the individual motivation level as well as the general motivational level inside the organization. The following is an example of the "Motivational Tree" analysis.

This analysis look at all the factors as a whole, therefore, a questionnaire which determines the weight score of first two "Background Categories" can be obtain through a survey or determined by the manger himself. The manager can give more weight to "Age" if he thinks age plays a more important role in the potential of one individual's motivation level. As to the score itself, questions listed in Table 1 can be used again, but the order of the answers should be rearranged to one that ranks questions based on motivation potentials. For example, the higher the age, the more motivation potential that individual has. In the business category, we can use a survey to test the employee's perception towards current business working conditions. After we get the score for both the motivation potential and the current motivation level, a motivation score can be generated and compare to each other. By using the chi-square analysis, we know whether two categories of factors are dependent or independent of each other. We can also recognize the degree of motivation of one individual in an organization by conducting the "Motivation Tree" analysis. The next step is to find the degree of relationship which can be described in a quantitative way between different category factors. For example, the degree of influence between individual factors and external factors at an organization. The degree of relationship is shown by the overlapping area of the two circles, as shown above. From our example, we have six individual factors and six external factors so each circle is divided into six parts, and each part represents each subcategories.

Now we will use statistical methods to compute the overlapping area(Kvanli, Guynes, Pavur, 1992). The overlapping area between the two circles is the probability that those two categories having something in common. We took external factors and individual factors as an example. We let external factors be E, individual factors be I. The six external factors were therefore E1 to E6, and the six individual factors were I1 to I6. The overlapping area between E and I, demonstrates the probability that E and I has something in common is P(IE) = P(I1E1)+ P(I1E2)+ P(I1E3) +...+ P(I6E6) = P(E1)P(I1|E1) +P(E2)P(I1|E2)+ P(E3)P(I1|E3) +...+ P(E6)P(I6|E6). We can obtain the P(E1), P(E2)...P(E6) from the survey which we conducted before. In order to find the area of P(I1|E1), P(I1|E2), P(I1|E3),... and P(I6|E6), which statistically means "the probability of Ix will happen under the condition that Ex has happened, we use the questionnaire method. Some example questions are as follows: Categories Sample questions Educational Under current number of family members, do you level think your educational level is enough to support and # in your family's need? family Age Under current amount of assets you have, do you and Amt of think it is normal for people of your age to have Asset this amount of assets? Seniority Under your current position, do you think it is and normal for people of your seniority to have this Current position? position Marital under your current amount of debts, do you think it status is normal for people with the same marital status and Amt of to have this amount of debts? Debt The answers can be described on a scale from 0 to 100 with 0 representing "strong disagree" and 100 representing "strong agree". After we finished the questionnaire, we can know the area between E and I. The same method can be applied between external factors/business factors and individual factors/ business factors.

After realizing the factors which significantly contribute to the motivation of employees and understanding the degree of interaction between two different categories, managers can use this knowledge to develop the most effective action to stimulate the motivation level in the company.

More and more companies have become aware of and concerned about their employees level of needs. Major corporations like IBM have initiated programs such as child care consultation and referral services along with continuous employee opinion surveys in an effort to influence the employee's external environment which may subsequently affect the level of motivation(Winfield, 1988).

References

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