Organizational Behavior: MOTIVATION : MBA Business Management Essay Sample

Running head: Organizational Behavior: MOTIVATION

Organizational Behavior: MOTIVATION
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Organizational Behavior: MOTIVATION

Industrial-organizational psychologists have been studying motivation and satisfaction in the organizations for some five decades. For at least three reasons, however, progress in understanding these phenomena has been slow. First, it turned out that the motivation to work (exert effort) and satisfaction are relatively independent outcomes; thus somewhat different theories are required to understand them. Connecting the two types of theories has proven to be especially difficult. Theories that have tried to explain both phenomena with the same set of concepts generally have been unsuccessful. Second, theories within each domain, especially motivation-performance theories, have focused only on a limited aspect of the domain such as needs, perceived fairness, or managerial motives. Third, the phenomena themselves are highly complex; thus extensive research has been required to understand them irrespective of any attempts to connect them.

It is now possible, however, to piece several of these theories together into a coherent whole. (Brewer, Gene A., Sally Coleman Selden. 2000) This integrated conceptual model concerning motivation in the workplace cannot only explain, in terms of broad fundamentals, both the motivation to work and job satisfaction; it can specify key interrelationships between them. We call this sequence the high performance cycle. Performance quality is becoming a crucial determinant of organizational competitiveness, and there is a growing interest on how to motivate employees to improve quality of products and services.

In organizations, the central premise involves task orientation. That is, the accurate completion of a team task requires: (a) a dynamic exchange of information and resources among team members; (b) coordination of task activities; (c) constant adjustments to task demands; and (d) organizational structuring of members. From this perspective, it is clear that some form of task dependency must exist among team members in order for them to interact dynamically and adaptively to accomplish an objective. Member interdependency is one key element in distinguishing teams from groups.

Although teams are essentially groups of individuals, not all groups of individuals are considered teams. Time is another factor for consideration in constituting teams, in that teams tend to evolve over time. That is, both roles and norms evolve, and team members develop new skills and attitudes. (Wright, Bradley E. 2001)

Further, I believe tasks are modified, communication patterns unfold, goals are revised, and personnel may change. Why are teams so important that they inspire this much concern? A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies suggest that if American industry is to remain competitive in the world market, it must respond to global competition, manage the impact of technological developments, and produce more products without an increase in the available resources. One of the ways that industry can adapt to these challenges is through greater use of work teams, committees, and task forces within the workplace. In fact, American organizations do appear to be using work teams with increasing frequency.

From the preceding discussion it is clear that the issues of team performance and effectiveness are important ones. However, team effectiveness is very different from individual effectiveness. M. Kay Alderman identifies three input factors that may define a team's performance potential:

1. Individual-level factors: member skills, knowledge, personalities, and status characteristics.

2. Group-level factors: group size, group structure, group norms, and cohesiveness.

3. Environmental-level factors: the nature of the task, the level of environmental stress, and reward structure. (Alderman; M. Kay 2004)

In my opinion, it is a well-known fact that organizations have to put a great deal of effort into the task of motivating their members to accept organizational goals, because this is a powerful determinant of effective work. The picture, however, is not one sided: Individual members or organizations also have goals developing through the interaction of personal motives, expectancies, and the Motivating Potential of the work situation. In both cases organizational members either develop goals selecting one or more of them for action or they accept--more or less--an assigned goal. The selection or acceptance of goals is traditionally described and explained by expectancy models of work motivation, which function well for getting an understanding about the way goals come into being but which do not help to understand the way goals effect performance. In a word, depending on the interactions among personal motives, the motivating potential of work, expectancies, and assigned goals, behavioral intentions develop many of which include one or more specific goals aiming at more or less concrete action outcomes. The difference between an intention and a goal can be characterized on two dimensions: An intention is less concrete than a goal; a goal is more action oriented than an intention.

References
Alderman; M. Kay 2004, Motivation for Achievement: Possibilities for Teaching and Learning, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Brewer, Gene A., and Sally Coleman Selden. 2000. Why elephants gallop: Assessing and predicting organizational performance in federal agencies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 10 (4): 685-712.
Wright, Bradley E. 2001. Public sector work motivation: Review of the current literature and a revised conceptual model. Journal of Public Administration and Theory 11 (4): 559-86.