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CENTRAL PHILIPPINE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTANCY
Iloilo City, Philippines 5000
Tel. No. (63-33) 3307262 / 3307264
Website: http://www.cpu.edu.ph | Email: businessad@cpu.edu.ph
Academic Year 2023-2024
Second Semester

BME 2102 (HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATIONS)

LECTURE NOTES
Chapter 7 – Motivation Concepts

MOTIVATION AND EARLY THEORIES

Motivation
• The processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and
persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. (Robbins and Judge)
• The forces within a person that affect his/her direction, intensity, and persistence
of voluntary behavior (McShane and Glinow).
• The process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior (Nelson and
Quick).

The three key elements of motivation:

• Intensity – describes how hard a person tries
• Direction – the point toward which the effort is channeled
• Persistence – a measure of how long a person can maintain effort

Early Theories of Motivation

HIERARCHY OF NEEDS THEORY
• The best-known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of five needs—physiological, safety, social, esteem,
and self-actualization—in which, as each need is substantially satisfied, the next
need becomes dominant.
The original five needs are:
Lower Order Needs (satisfied externally)
1. Physiological - Includes hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs.
2. Safety-security - Security and protection from physical and emotional harm.

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Higher Order Needs (satisfied internally)

3. Social-belongingness - Affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
4. Esteem - Internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement, and
external factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization - Drive to become what we are capable of becoming; includes
growth, achieving our potential, and self-fulfillment.

• Maslow’s theory has received long-standing wide recognition, particularly among

practicing managers.
• It is intuitively logical and easy to understand, and some research has validated
it.
• However, most research does not, especially when the theory is applied to
diverse cultures, with the possible exception of physiological needs.
TWO-FACTOR THEORY
• A theory that relates intrinsic factors to job satisfaction and associates extrinsic
factors with dissatisfaction.
• Also called motivation-hygiene theory.
• Developed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg and proposed that the opposite of
“satisfaction” is “no satisfaction”, and the opposite of “dissatisfaction” is “no
dissatisfaction”.
• Under two-factor theory, the factors that lead to job satisfaction are separate and
distinct from those that lead to job dissatisfaction.

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McClelland’s THEORY OF NEEDS

• A theory that states achievement, power, and affiliation are three important
needs that help explain motivation.
• developed by David McClelland and his associates. As opposed to, say,
Maslow’s hierarchy, these needs are more like motivating factors than strict
needs for survival.
There are three:
• Need for achievement (nAch) is the drive to excel, to achieve in relationship to a
set of standards.
• Need for power (nPow) is the need to make others behave in a way they would
not have otherwise.
• Need for affiliation (nAff) is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal
relationships.
Well-supported predictions of the relationship between achievement need and job
performance:
1. Jobs with a high degree of personal responsibility and feedback; and an
intermediate degree of risk will strongly motivate high achievers.
2. A high need to achieve does not necessarily make someone a good
manager, especially in large firms.
3. The needs for affiliation and power tend to be closely related to
managerial success. The best managers are high in their need for power
and low in their need for affiliation.

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ERG THEORY

• Clayton Alderfer developed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into a three-factor

model of motivation known as the ERG model.
• In this model the letter E, R, & G each stand for a different human need:
existence, relatedness and growth.
• The ERG model is a content theory of motivation
• The most concrete and motivating of Alderfer’s three needs is existence, which
really relates to physical and psychological survival.
• The next level is the need for relatedness, a sense of community and a good
relationship with yourself.
• The least concrete, but still important, of Alderfer’s needs in the ERG model is
growth, which really relates to self-development, fulfillment and the sense of
achieving your potential.

Content Theories vs. Process Theories of Motivation

Content theories – motivation theories which focus on the factors that motivate people.
These theories assume that needs lead to behavior. To motivate employees, the
organization should satisfy their needs.
Four important content theories:
4. Hierarchy of Needs of Abraham Maslow
5. ERG Theory of Clayton Alderfer
6. Two-factor Theory of Frederick Herzberg
7. Theory of Needs of David McClelland
One weakness of content theories is the assumption that motivation can be explained
by only one or two factors, such as given need or the content of a job. But we have
seen that motivation is much more complex, that there are many conditions that interact
to produce motivated behavior.

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Process theories – concerned with the process by which factors that motivate interact
to produce motivation. Process theories take this complexity into account. These
theories focus on the cognitive processes in which people engage to influence their
behavior.
Three important process theories of motivation are:
1. Goal-Setting Theory of Edwin Locke
2. Expectancy Theory of Victor Vroom
3. Equity Theory of Stacy Adam

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY
• A theory of motivation that is concerned with the beneficial effects of intrinsic
motivation and the harmful effects of extrinsic motivation.
• The proponents of this theory are Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
• This theory proposes that people prefer to feel they have control over their
actions, so anything that makes a previously enjoyed task feel more like an
obligation than a freely chosen activity will undermine motivation.
• Cognitive evaluation theory – a version of self-determination theory that holds
that allocating extrinsic rewards for behavior that had been previously intrinsically
rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of motivation if the rewards are
seen as controlling.
• A more recent outgrowth of self-determination theory is self-concordance,
which considers how strongly people’s reasons for pursuing goals are consistent
with their interests and core values.
• What does all of this mean?
▪ For individuals: Choose your job for reasons other than extrinsic
rewards.
▪ For organizations: Provide intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives.

GOAL-SETTING THEORY
• A theory that says that specific and difficult goals, with feedback, lead to higher
performance.
• proposed by Edwin Locke that reveals the impressive effects of goal specificity,
challenge, and feedback on performance.
• Under the theory, intentions to work toward a goal are considered a major source
of work motivation.
• To effectively set goals employees, managers should address the following
factors:
o Goal specificity – Specific goals increase performance.
o Goal difficulty – Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher
performance than do easy goals.

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o Goal commitment – Employees must accept and believe he/she can

achieve the goals and want to achieve it.

Three personal factors influence the goals–performance relationship: goal

commitment, task characteristics, and national culture.
Goal Commitment: Goal-setting theory assumes an individual is
committed to the goal and determined not to lower or abandon it. The
individual (1) believes he or she can achieve the goal and (2) wants to
achieve it.
Task Characteristics: Goals themselves seem to affect performance
more strongly when tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned
rather than novel, independent rather than interdependent, and on the
high end of achievable.
National Culture: Setting specific, difficult, individual goals may have
different effects in different cultures.
• Research has found that people differ in the way they regulate their thoughts and
behaviors during goal pursuit. Generally, people fall into one of two categories,
though they could belong to both.
Promotion focus: A self-regulation strategy that involves striving for goals
through advancement and accomplishment.
Prevention focus: A self-regulation strategy that involves striving for
goals by fulfilling duties and obligations.
• A more systematic way to utilize goal-setting is with management by objectives
(MBO), a program that encompasses specific goals, participatively set, for an
explicit time period, with feedback on goal progress.

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OTHER CONTEMPORATY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

SELF-EFFICACY THEORY
• An individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task.
• Also known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory
• Goal-setting theory complements self-efficacy theory
• Albert Bandura, the researcher who developed self-efficacy theory proposes
four ways to increase self-efficacy:
➢ Enactive mastery – gaining relevant experience with the task or job.
➢ Vicarious modeling – becoming more confident because you see
someone else doing the task.
➢ Verbal persuasion – becoming more confident when someone convinces
us that we have the skills necessary to be successful.
➢ Arousal – an energized state, so we get “psyched up,” feel up to the task,
and perform better.
• Implications of self-efficacy theory:
➢ The best way for a manager to use verbal persuasion is through the
Pygmalion effect. It is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy – believing in
something can make it true.

REINFORCEMENT THEORY
• A theory that says that behavior is a function of its consequences.
• It suggests that reinforcement conditions behavior and that behavior is
environmentally caused.
• Operant conditioning theory – argues that people learn to behave to get
something they want or to avoid something they don’t want

This concept was part of B.F. Skinner’s broader concept of behaviorism.

Behaviorism – a theory that argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively
unthinking manner.

• Social-Learning Theory and Reinforcement

The view that we can learn through both observation and direct experience.
It assumes behavior is a function of consequences—it also acknowledges the
effects of observational learning and perception.
Processes that determine their influence on an individual:
1. Attentional processes: People learn from a model only when they recognize
and pay attention to its critical features.

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2. Retention processes: A model’s influence depends on how well the individual

remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.
3. Motor reproduction processes: This process demonstrates that the individual
can perform the modeled activities.
4. Reinforcement processes: Individuals are motivated to exhibit the modeled
behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided.
EQUITY THEORY/ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE
Equity theory
• A theory that says that individuals compare their job inputs and outcomes with
those of others and then respond to eliminate any inequities.
• Choices of employees who perceive inequity:
1. Change inputs (exert less effort if underpaid or more if overpaid).
2. Change outcomes (individuals paid on a piece-rate basis can increase their
pay by producing a higher quantity of units of lower quality).
3. Distort perceptions of self (“I used to think I worked at a moderate pace,
but now I realize I work a lot harder than everyone else”).
4. Distort perceptions of others (“Mike’s job isn’t as desirable as I thought”).
5. Choose a different referent (“I may not make as much as my brother-in-law,
but I’m doing a lot better than my Dad did when he was my age”).
6. Leave the field (quit the job).

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Organizational Justice
• An overall perception of what is fair in the workplace, composed of distributive,
procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice.

• Distributive justice - Perceived fairness of the amount and allocation of rewards

among individuals.
• Procedural justice - The perceived fairness of the process used to determine the
distribution of rewards.
• Informational justice - The degree to which employees are provided truthful
explanations for decisions.
• Interpersonal justice - The degree to which employees are treated with dignity
and respect.
EXPECTANCY THEORY
• A theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain way depends
on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome
and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual.
• One of the most widely accepted explanations of motivation by Victor Vroom

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• Focuses on three relationships:

1. Effort–performance relationship - The probability perceived by the individual
that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance.
2. Performance–reward relationship - The degree to which the individual
believes performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired
outcome.
3. Rewards–personal goals relationship - The degree to which organizational
rewards satisfy an individual’s personal goals or needs and the attractiveness
of those potential rewards for the individual.

Prepared by: HERMELY A. JALANDO-ON, MMBM