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Motivating Employees In An Organisation

Motivating Employees in an Organization

S Santosh

Contents

Chapter 1 2

Chapter 2 5

Chapter 3 10

Chapter 4 15

Chapter 1

Motivation: Concepts and Theories

Defining motivation
The word "motivation" comes from the Latin word movere - "to move." And managers often view motivation in exactly those terms ("I need to get my people moving!"). Motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action. General motivation is concerned with effort towards any goal, whereas effort towards Organizational goals reflects work-related behavior. Many contemporary authors have also defined the concept of motivation. Motivation has been defined as: the psychological process that gives behavior purpose and direction (Kreitner, 1995); a predisposition to behave in a purposive manner to achieve specific, unmet needs (Buford, Bedeian, & Lindner, 1995); an internal drive to satisfy an unsatisfied need (Higgins, 1994); and the will to achieve (Bedeian, 1993).
For this paper, motivation is operationally defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. We mainly deal with the motivating employees in an organization towards the organizational goal for the benefit of both the organization and the employee. Understanding what motivates employees and how they are motivated was the focus of many researchers following the publication of the Hawthorne Study results (Terpstra, 1979).

Motivation Theories and concepts
While there are many theories on motivation, the seven major approaches that have led to our understanding of motivation are the following:
• According to Maslow, employees have five levels of needs (Maslow, 1943): physiological, safety, social, ego, and self- actualizing. Maslow argued that lower level needs had to be satisfied before the next higher level need would motivate employees.
• Herzberg's work categorized motivation into...