Worker Motivation

1. Worker Motivation Ashley Wade PSY 520- Individual Differences

2. Overview • Motivation in I/O psychology • Historical overview of motivation theories • Instruments • MTQ • MMI • WMI • Interventions • Contingent Rewards • Job Enrichment • ProMES

3. Motivation • Concerns the conditions responsible for variations in intensity, quality, and direction of ongoing behavior. • Wide variation in motivational theories • Weiner (1991, 1992) suggested the use of metaphors to categorize theories. • Person as machine • Pushed by internal needs • Pulled by environmental stimuli • Persona as Godlike • Person as scientist • Person as judge • Person as intentional

4. Importance of Motivation in the Workplace • Performance – Clear connections between productivity, performance, and motivation. • Viteles (1953)- The method by which an employer “aroused the cooperation of individual workers”. • Work-life balance- Interaction between satisfaction at work and in home life. Motivation is influenced by occurrences in each domain.

5. Attitudes- Relatively stable feelings or beliefs directed toward specific persons, groups, ideas, jobs, etc. • Importance of Morale. • Personality- Can be a predictor of motivation and work performance. • Judge & Ilies (2002)- Meta-analysi examining the relationship between measures of the Big Five and indicators of motivation. • Found strong, consistent relationships.

6. Early Approaches • Earliest theories based on instincts • Inborn tendencies thought to direct behavior • Instinctslater replaced by needsor drives. • Internal motivation thought to be inborn and universally present in humans. • Drives are the animal equivalents of needs.

7. Behaviorist approachesemphasized environmental factors as causes of behavior. • Field Theory proposed that various forces in the psychological environment interact and combine to yield a final course of action. • Known as group dynamics in industrial settings.

8. Person as Machine Theories • Maslow’s Need Theory- All humans have a basic set of needs that express themselves over the lifespan as internal drives. • Five Basic need sets • Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory: • Hygiene needs • Motivator needs

9. Scott Adams’s Hierarchy of Needs

10. Reinforcement Theory- (Behaviorism- Skinner)- Behavior depends on three simple elements: • Stimulus • Response • reward • Contingent reward, Intermittent or continuous reward- have been used in numerous industrial applications.

11. Person as Godlike Theories- Scientist • Dissonance Theory- Festinger (1957)- Tension exists when individuals hold dissonant cognitions. • Individuals will seek the absence of tension, and will be motivated to act in ways to reduce it. • Path-goal theory- Georgopolus et al. (1957)- If a worker saw high productivity as a path to the goal of desired rewards or personal goals, that worker would likely be a high producer.

12. V.I.E. Theory- Vroom- More elegant version of path-goal. • Valence- Assumes individuals will rationally estimate the relative attractiveness/unattractiveness of different rewards or outcomes • Instrumentality- performance will lead to particular outcomes or rewards, and • Expectancy- effort will lead to performance.

13. Equity Theory- Adams (1965)- Individuals view their world in terms of comparative inputs and outcomes. • They compare their inputs and outcomes with those of their peers by developing an input/outcome ratio. • Workload vs. pay rates. • Will be motivated to correct discrepancies between ratios of self and peers.

14. Person as Godlike- Intentional Theories • Goal-setting Theory- Goal setting adapted to the work setting. Goals asmotivational forces. • Individuals who set specific, difficult, but achievable goals will perform better than individuals who adopt a “do your best” goal, or no goal. Goal Specificity Money Direction Knowledge of Results Goal Commitment Goal Acceptance Intensity Performance Persistence Ability Strategies Participation

15. Control Theory- Alternate view of goal-setting based on the principle of feedback loops, which assume that an individual compares a standard to an actual outcome and adjusts behavior to bring the outcome into agreement with the standard. • Action Theory- Rubicon theory- Considers the broad role of intention in motivated behavior as well as the connection between intention and action. • Phases of active goal pursuit: • Predecisional • Postdecisional • Actional • Evaluative

16. Instruments • Motivational Trait Questionnaire (MTQ)- Kanfer et al.- Measures six dimensions of “general motivation”. Focuses on personality in the context of performance. • 48- item questionnaire • Psychometrics • Test-retest reliability >.80 • Strong construct validity • Internal consistency • Subscales: α≥.85 • Overall: α = .83 for overall scale.

17. Meta-Motivation Inventory (MMI) • Designed to assist people in assessing their progress in personal and managerial development by making them aware of where they stand in relation to a normative population. The scores provide feedback on personal and managerial styles. • 60-item test • Self-administered and self-scored • Four major scales- Determinism, Motivation to Achieve, Need to Control Others, and Concern for People • Eight additional scales: Self-Actualization, Stress, Repression, Anger Judgmental, Creativity Growth Potential, and Fun.

18. MMIPsychometrics • Test-retest reliability: • Subscales: .54 to .90 with a mean of .77. • Major scales:.84 to .87. • Concurrent validity is strong • Convergent validity- Correlated with 12 scales that are shared with an established inventory. • Discriminates between management levels, between female managers and female non-managers, and between top and bottom sales people.

19. Work Motivation Inventory (WMI) • Assesses the importance an individual places on four goals and values: Accomplishment, Recognition, Power, and Affiliation. • Bias scale to measure a tendency to present oneself in a positive light. • Designed for use with individuals age 16 and above, is self-administered, and should take 10-15 minutes to complete. • 65 items scored on 5-point Likert-type scales. 

20. WMI Psychometrics • Acceptable internal consistencies for the four main scales: • .81 for Accomplishment, .82 for Recognition, .82 for Power, and .84 for Affiliation. • The Bias scale has poor internal consistency, yielding an alpha of .33 and .45, in two studies. Use in interpreting other responses is questionable. • Test-retest coefficients were .80 for Accomplishment, .59 for Recognition, .66 for Power, and .64 for Affiliation. • Acceptable construct validity generated by cross-validtion with MBTI scores.

21. Interventions • Contingent rewards- Identify target behaviors and offer workers rewards contingent on their engagement in these behaviors. • Effective interventions result in long-term changes in behavior. • Sales personnel.

22. Interventions • Job Enrichment- (Maslow)- Based on the idea that jobs that satisfy higher order needs are capable of motivating individuals. • Jobs that are more “enriched” and interesting than those that are tedious and boring offer motivation for employees to perform well. • Can also be extended to the act of enriching jobs to increase worker motivation. • Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and task feedback

23. Interventions • ProMES- Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System- Productivity improvement plan intended to maximize motivation primarily through cognitive means. • Productivity is defined as how well a system uses its resources to achieve its goals • Assumes the real issue in productivity is knowing how to allocate time and energy across possible actions or tasks. • Multiple steps • Form a design team • Identify objectives • Identify indicators • Define contingencies • Design feedback system • Give and respond to feedback • Monitor system

24. Questions?