Organizational Behavior Chapter 8: Motivation

Chapter 8: Motivation

• Chapter 8 of Organizational Behavior (18th Edition) focuses on motivation, from theoretical concepts to practical applications.

Learning Objectives

• 8.1: Describes how the job characteristics model motivates by changing the work environment.
• 8.2: Compares the different ways jobs can be redesigned.
• 8.3: Explains how specific alternative work arrangements motivate employees.
• 8.4: Describes employee involvement measures and their motivational impact.
• 8.5: Demonstrates how variable-pay programs increase employee motivation.
• 8.6: Shows how flexible benefits can turn benefits into motivators.
• 8.7: Identifies the motivational benefits of intrinsic rewards.

The Job Characteristics Model

• Core job dimensions: Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
• Critical psychological states: Experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work, and knowledge of the actual results of the work activities.
• Personal and work outcomes: High internal work motivation, high-quality work performance, high satisfaction, low absenteeism and turnover, and employee growth-need strength.
• Motivating Potential Score (MPS): A single predictive index combining core job dimensions to indicate the motivating potential of a job; evidence supports the model's effectiveness in generating higher satisfying job performance.
• Supporting leadership behaviors can enhance job characteristics of R&D professionals.

Comparing Ways Jobs Can Be Redesigned

• Repetitive jobs: Offer limited variety, autonomy, and motivation.
• Job Rotation (Cross-training): Periodic shifting of employees from one task to another; Strengths: reduces boredom, elevates motivation, and enhances understanding of work contributions; Weaknesses: disrupts workflow, requires extra training time for supervisors, and decreases efficiency
• Job Enrichment: Increasing a job's level responsibilities to increase intrinsic motivation, involve adding another layer of responsibility and meaning. Effective at reducing turnover.

Alternative Work Arrangements

• Job Sharing: Two or more people share a single 40-hour workweek; Declining in use, requires coordination to ensure job performance; Improves flexibility.
• Telecommuting: Employees work from home at least two days per week; Organizations may encourage or discourage this; Advantages: Positively related to objective performance and job satisfaction, reduces work-family conflict, and reduces carbon emissions; Disadvantages: Social loafing, difficulty coordinating teamwork and evaluating non-quantitative performance, increased feelings of isolation, reduced coworker relationship quality.

Employee Involvement and Motivation

• Employee Involvement: A participatory process using employee input to enhance commitment to organizational success.
  • Participative Management: Joint decision-making, acts as a panacea for poor morale and low productivity; trust in leadership is essential, but mixed results exist in the literature..
  • Representative Participation: Workers are represented by a small group to participate in decision-making; Common forms include works councils and board representatives; prevalent in Western European Countries.

Variable-Pay Programs

• What to Pay: Complex; balances internal and external equity which some organizations prefer paying leaders above market to incentivize better qualified candidates.

  • Variable pay programs:

• Piece-rate plans: compensation solely based on output

• Merit-based pay, Bonuses, Profit sharing, and Employee stock ownership plans.

• Piece-Rate Pay: Pure piece-rate plans provide no fixed salary, paying exclusively based on production. Limitations exist, making it not feasible for many jobs; Financial risk is a major drawback.

• Merit-Based Pay: Allows for pay differentiation based on performance. Perceptions of performance & rewards are created. Concerns exist regarding annual appraisals, fluctuating merit pools, and union resistance.

• Bonuses: Annual bonuses are a crucial part of many compensation packages. Frequently, lower-ranking staff are also included to enhance motivation; The downside is that compensation can be vulnerable to cuts, especially when tied to profit improvement.

• Profit-Sharing Plans: Organization-wide; distributes compensation reflecting company profitability; Positive impacts on employee attitudes, which promote a feeling of ownership.

• Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs): Employees acquire stock at below-market prices through company established plans. Increases employee satisfaction and innovation; psychological ownership and a reduced risk of unethical behavior are other benefits.

• Evaluation of variable pay: Variable pay programs generally increase motivation and productivity, but don't equally motivate all employees.

Flexible Benefits

• Allow employees to customize their benefits package matching current needs and situation. Almost all US organizations offer flexible benefits, but global adoption is still developing.

Intrinsic Rewards

• Organizations recognize the significance of both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Employee recognition programs are intrinsically rewarding; compensation systems are extrinsically rewarding.

Implications for Managers

• Recognize individual differences: Understand what motivates each employee; Design jobs to align with individual needs and maximize potential.
• Use goals and feedback: Set clear, specific goals with feedback to monitor progress, aligning with performance expectations and perceptions.
• Allow employee participation: Empower employees in decisions impacting them; this contributes to setting work goals, benefit customization, solving productivity problems, and improving employee's role within the organization..
• Check the system for equity: Employees should perceive individual effort and results drive pay and reward distribution.