Foundations of

Employee
Motivation

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
McShane/Von Glinow OB 5e Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Employee Motivation and
Engagement at Rackspace
Rackspace hosting has a
highly motivated and engaged
workforce by rewarding
performance, fulfilling personal
needs, and providing
strengths-based feedback.

5-2
Motivation Defined

 The forces within a person

that affect the direction,
intensity, and persistence of
voluntary behavior

 Exerting particular effort level

(intensity), for a certain
amount of time (persistence),
toward a particular goal
(direction).

5-3
Employee Engagement

Emotional and cognitive

motivation, self-efficacy to
perform the job, a clear
understanding of one’s role
in the organization’s vision
and a belief that one has the
resources to perform the job

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 Drives and Needs
 Drives (aka-primary needs, fundamental needs,
innate motives)
• Neural states that energize individuals to correct deficiencies
or maintain an internal equilibrium
• Prime movers of behavior by activating emotions

Self-concept, social norms,

and past experience

Drives Needs
Decisions and
(primary needs) Behavior

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 Drives and Needs
 Needs
• Goal-directed forces that people experience.
• Drive-generated emotions directed toward goals
• Goals formed by self-concept, social norms, and experience

Self-concept, social norms,

and past experience

Drives Needs
Decisions and
(primary needs) Behavior

5-6
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory

Seven categories Need to

Self-
capture most needs know
actual-
ization
Five categories placed Need for
in a hierarchy beauty
Esteem

Belongingness

Safety

Physiological

5-7
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
Need to
know
 Lowest unmet need has
Self-
actual- strongest effect
ization
Need for
beauty  When lower need is
Esteem satisfied, next higher need
becomes the primary
Belongingness motivator
 Self-actualization -- a
Safety
growth need because
people desire more rather
Physiological than less of it when satisfied

5-8
Evaluating Maslow’s Theory
Need to
know
 Lack of support for theory
Self-
actual-
ization
Need for
 People have different
beauty hierarchies – don’t progress
Esteem through needs in the same
order
Belongingness
 Needs change more rapidly
than Maslow stated
Safety

Physiological

5-9
What Maslow Contributed to
Motivation Theory
 More holistic
• Integrative view of needs

 More humanistic
• Influence of social
dynamics, not just instinct
 More positivistic
• Pay attention to strengths,
not just deficiencies

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What’s Wrong with Needs Hierarchy
Models?
 Wrongly assume that
everyone has the same
needs hierarchy (i.e.
universal)
 Instead, likely that each
person has a unique needs
hierarchy
• Shaped by our self-concept --
values and social identity

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Learned Needs Theory

 Needs are amplified or suppressed through

self-concept, social norms, and past
experience

 Therefore, needs can be “learned” (i.e.

strengthened or weakened through training)

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Three Learned Needs
Need for achievement
• Need to reach goals, take responsibility
• Want reasonably challenging goals

Need for affiliation

• Desire to seek approval, conform to others wishes,
avoid conflict
• Effective executives have lower need for social approval

Need for power

• Desire to control one’s environment
• Personalized versus socialized power

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Four-Drive Theory

• Drive to take/keep objects and

Drive to Acquire experiences
• Basis of hierarchy and status

• Drive to form relationships and

Drive to Bond social commitments
• Basis of social identity

• Drive to satisfy curiosity and

Drive to Learn resolve conflicting information

• Need to protect ourselves

Drive to Defend • Reactive (not proactive) drive
• Basis of fight or flight

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Features of Four Drives

Innate and hardwired

• everyone has them

Independent of each other

• no hierarchy of drives

Complete set
• no drives are excluded from the model

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How Four Drives Affect Motivation

1. Four drives determine which emotions are

automatically tagged to incoming information

2. Drives generate independent and often

competing emotions that demand our
attention

3. Mental skill set relies on social norms,

personal values, and experience to
transform drive-based emotions into goal-
directed choice and effort
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Four Drive Theory of Motivation

Drive to Social Personal Past

Acquire norms values experience

Drive to
Bond
Mental
Mental skill
skill set
set resolves
resolves Goal-directed
Goal-directed
competing drive demands
competing drive demands choice
choice and
and effort
effort
Drive to
Learn

Drive to
Defend

Social norms, personal values, and

experience transform drive-based emotions
into goal-directed choice and effort

5-17
Implications of Four Drive Theory

Provide a balanced opportunity for employees

to fulfil all four drives
• employees continually seek fulfilment of drives
• avoid having conditions support one drive more
than others

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Expectancy Theory of Motivation

E-to-P P-to-O Outcomes

Expectancy Expectancy & Valences

Outcome 1
+ or -

Outcome 2
Effort Performance + or -

Outcome 3
+ or -

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Increasing E-to-P and P-to-O
Expectancies
 Increasing E-to-P Expectancies
• Assuring employees they have competencies
• Person-job matching
• Provide role clarification and sufficient resources
• Behavioral modeling
 Increasing P-to-O Expectancies
• Measure performance accurately
• More rewards for good performance
• Explain how rewards are linked to performance

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Increasing Outcome Valences

 Ensure that rewards are valued

 Individualize rewards
 Minimize countervalent outcomes

5-21
Making Every Day Count in NYC
New York City mayor Michael
Bloomberg has challenging goals
to accomplish, and he doesn’t
want any of his remaining tenure
wasted. Bloomberg had special
clocks installed in a dozen city
government offices that count
down how many days remain in
his mayoral term.

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Goal Setting

The process of motivating

employees and clarifying their role
perceptions by establishing
performance objectives

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Effective Goal Setting
Characteristics
Specific -- measureable change
within a time frame
Relevant – within employee’s control
and responsibilities
Challenging – raise level of effort
Accepted (commitment) – motivated
to accomplish the goal
Participative (sometimes) –
improves acceptance and goal
quality
Feedback – information available
about progress toward goal

5-24
Characteristics of Effective Feedback

1. Specific – connected to goal details

2. Relevant – Relates to person’s behavior
3. Timely – to improve link from behavior to
outcomes
4. Sufficiently frequent
• Employee’s knowledge/experience
• task cycle
5. Credible – trustworthy source

5-25
Feedback Through Strengths-Based
Coaching
 Maximizing the person’s potential by focusing
on their strengths rather than weaknesses
 Motivational because:
• people inherently seek feedback about their
strengths, not their flaws
• person’s interests, preferences, and competencies
stabilize over time

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Multisource Feedback

 Received from a full circle of people around

the employee
 Provides more complete and accurate
information
 Several challenges

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Evaluating Goal Setting and
Feedback
 Goal setting has high validity and
usefulness
 Goal setting/feedback limitations:
• Focuses employees on measurable
performance
• Motivates employees to set easy
goals (when tied to pay)
• Goal setting interferes with learning
process in new, complex jobs

5-28
Keeping Pay Equitable at Costco

Costco Wholesale CEO Jim Sinegal

(shown in this photo) thinks the large
wage gap between many executives
and employees is blatantly unfair.
“Having an individual who is making
100 or 200 or 300 times more than
the average person working on the
floor is wrong,” says Sinegal, whose
salary and bonus are a much smaller
multiple of what his staff earn.

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Organizational Justice

Distributive justice
• Perceived fairness in
outcomes we receive relative
to our contributions and the
outcomes and contributions of
others
Procedural justice
• Perceived fairness of the
procedures used to decide the
distribution of resources

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Organizational Justice Components

Distribution
Distributive
Principles
Justice
Perceptions • Emotions

• Attitudes
Structural
Rules
Procedural • Behaviors
Justice
Perceptions
Social
Rules

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Elements of Equity Theory

Outcome/input ratio
• inputs -- what employee contributes (e.g., skill)
• outcomes -- what employee receives (e.g., pay)
Comparison other
• person/people against whom we compare our ratio
• not easily identifiable
Equity evaluation
• compare outcome/input ratio with the comparison
other

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Correcting Inequity Feelings
Actions to correct inequity Example
Reduce our inputs Less organizational citizenship

Increase our outcomes Ask for pay increase

Increase other’s inputs Ask coworker to work harder

Ask boss to stop giving other preferred

Reduce other’s outputs
treatment
Start thinking that other’s perks aren’t
Change our perceptions
really so valuable
Compare self to someone closer to your
Change comparison other
situation

Leave the field Quit job

5-33
Equity Sensitivity

 Outcome/input preferences and reaction to

various outcome/input ratios
 Benevolents
• tolerant of being underrewarded
 Equity Sensitives
• want ratio to be equal to the comparison other
 Entitleds
• prefer proportionately more than others

5-34
Evaluating Equity Theory

 Good at predicting situations unfair

distribution of pay/rewards
 Difficult to put into practice
• doesn’t identify comparison other
• doesn’t indicate relevant inputs or outcomes

 Equity theory explains only some feelings of

fairness
• procedural justice is as important as distributive
justice

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Procedural Justice

 Perceived fairness of procedures used to

decide the distribution of resources
 Higher procedural fairness with:
• Voice
• Unbiased decision maker
• Decision based on all information
• Existing policies consistently
• Decision maker listened to all sides
• Those who complain are treated respectfully
• Those who complain are given full explanation

5-36
 Foundations of
Employee
Motivation

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
McShane/Von Glinow OB 5e Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.5-37