Motivation Theories: Maslow, Vroom, and Herzberg

This essay explores the theories of motivation including Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Vroom's Expectancy Theory, and Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory. It discusses the different levels of needs in Maslow's theory, the conditions for high productivity in Vroom's theory, and the importance of motivation and hygiene factors in Herzberg's theory. The essay concludes by emphasizing the role of motivation in personal and professional success.

Individual Essay

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Maslow’s Hierarchy needs of motivation theory.........................................................................3
Vroom’s theory of expectancy theory of motivation...................................................................4
Herzberg’s Motivation- Hygiene Theory of Motivation.............................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Motivation is the word that basically means a driving force, desires, wants that
motivates the individual. Motivation is the process of stimulating the emotions of the people in
order to push them towards the accomplishment of the goal the performing the course of action
(Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2020). On the basis of external and internal resource and action and
non action the motivation is divided into four parts extrinsic, identified, intrinsic and introjected.
Motivation involves biological social emotional and the cognitive forces that activate the
behaviour of the individual in order to perform task that helps the person in achieving the desired
goals. Motivation is a kind of attribute that helps the person in maintaining hardworking and goal
oriented behaviour. The motivation improves the efficiency of an individual by directing in
guiding towards the goals thereby improving the overall well-being and happiness . Organisation
it is very important to motivate the employees so that they remain goal-oriented and work more
hard in achieving best from their performance. Motivation helps in increasing the productivity,
ensure loyal work force, organisational efficiency, facilitates direction and much more
(Parashakti and et. al., 2020). In the workplace the motivation factor that stimulated the
behaviour of Employees are desire for money, job satisfaction, team work, recognition, award
and appraisals etc.
Main Body
Maslow’s Hierarchy needs of motivation theory
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one of the most popular motivational theories that
comprises of five hierarchical levels within a pyramid. According to Maslow's in order to
achieve the upper level of needs an individual must satisfy the needs lower down in the hierarchy
(Nasif, 2020). Theory of Maslow is divided into three segments basic needs, psychological needs
and self-fulfilment needs. The five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are discussed below:
 Physiological needs: the physiological needs of the individual are considered as the basic
needs that are vital for the survival of an individual. The elements that are considered
within the physiological needs our food, air, water, shelter, clothing and sleep. In order to
attain the upper level of needs the person must satisfy the basic needs of the survival as

they cannot function optimally without satisfying the biological requirements of the
survival.
 Safety and security needs: the second level safety and security needs which includes the
satisfaction of health, employment, property, family and the social stability of the
individual. Important for the individual to satisfy their safety e-security needs to move
forward to another level of needs.
 Love and belongingness needs: after the satisfaction of physiological and safety needs of
the individual a person is required to feel the friendship love intimacy and sense of
connection from their families and friends in order to satisfy the third level needs. As a
human and individual require a sense of belongingness and emotional connect from the
part of a group he lives with.
 Self - esteem needs: include self worth, respect, achievement, recognition and
confidence. Every individual is required to satisfy the self-esteem needs which include
dignity and living with respect and reputation from childhood to proceeds.
 Self actualization needs: the topmost level of the hierarchy of needs where the persons
need is the morality, creativity, improvement, acceptance among the other people of the
organisation or the society (Carducci, 2020). In this level the person gets the satisfaction
when he realises his personal potential and self fulfilment seeking the personal growth.
Basically it is the desire to become everything one is capable and desire to become in
future.
Vroom’s theory of expectancy theory of motivation
This theory suggest that people will be highly productive and perform their best
performance in two conditions-
 When employees get to know that their efforts leads to company’s success (Chopra,
2019). Here employees get to know that organisation can only achieve success when they
work properly with full efforts. Here, employees are motivated because they are more
concern about their organisation. They know well that in case their company achieve
success then indirectly they will also achieve good reputation because their efforts help
the company to achieve high. That’s why they perform well to help their organisation to
become successful as soon as possible.

 When employees know that their good performance will help them to gain rewards from
company. In this condition, employees get motivated to perform good performance in
organisation to get extra rewards from their managers (Yoes and Silverman, 2021). This
is second expectancy of employees where they expect to get monetary benefits, rewards
and appreciation from their managers when they perform well. Hence, their expectation
helps them to motivate them and due to this expectation only they give their best efforts
to achieve their organisational goal.
This motivation theory leads to increase job satisfaction because this theory helps both
organisation as well as employees to develop. Organisation is developing because employees put
their best efforts in performing their official tasks and employees get benefited because in return
of performing well they get rewards from their organisation. When a company appreciate their
employee’s hard work and provide them what they deserve then employees gets more satisfied
with their job.
Herzberg’s Motivation- Hygiene Theory of Motivation
There is some kind of needs of employees in an organisation (Chiat and Panatik, 2019).
This theory can by understand by its two factors which is explained below-
 Motivation factors- These are the factors at workplace which is considered as important.
The examples of these factors are achievements, recognition, advancement, growth and
many others. It is observed at workplaces that absence of these factors did not impact
much upon employees and their performance but presence of these factors impacts
positive upon the performance of employees. presence of Motivation factors help the
employees to increase their performance because my giving rewards, recognition and
appreciation help them to motivate them and because of this they like to perform more
better to achieve more rewards (Mehrad, 2020). That’s why presence of these factors is
much important at workplaces to motivate workforce time to time.
 Hygiene factors- These factors are those factors at workplace which lead an individual
that how they must do their work properly. The examples of these factors are supervision,
working conditions, interpersonal relationship with work and many others. It is observed
by researchers that the presence of hygiene factors are good at workplace and did not
impact upon performance of employees neither positive nor negative but the absence of
these factors impact negative upon the organisation. Employees get demotivated in case

these factors were not present at workplaces. Absence of supervision, good relationship
and other aspects will impact directly upon employee’s performance. They are not able to
perform well if there is no supervisor. Hygiene factors are important at workplaces
whether it will not provide any impact due to its performance but its absence is extremely
disaster for organisation (Thuy, Hien and Van, 2021).
Conclusion
It is concluded from the above theories of motivation that there are multiple factors that
help the individual in real life as well as in the work life to stay motivated. It is also analysed that
in the organisation it is the role of the leader to motivate their employees and their job roles so
that they feel the willingness to perform in the best of their abilities. Hence, motivation is an
attribute that keeps the individual positive and also encourages the person to also improve the
skills, capabilities in order to achieve success and happiness in personal and professional life.

References
Books and Journals
Carducci, B.J., 2020. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The Wiley Encyclopedia of Personality and
Individual Differences: Models and Theories, pp.269-273.
Chiat, L.C. and Panatik, S.A., 2019. Perceptions of employee turnover intention by Herzberg’s
motivation-hygiene theory: A systematic literature review. Journal of Research in
Psychology. 1(2). pp.10-15.
Chopra, K., 2019. Vroom’s expectancy theory to motivate academic library users in India using
grounded theory approach. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication. Yoes, M.
and Silverman, M.J., 2021. Expectancy Theory of Motivation and Substance Use
Treatment: Implications for Music Therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives. 39(1). pp.61-
68.
Mehrad, A., 2020. Evaluation of academic staff job satisfaction at Malaysian universities in the
context of Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory. Journal of Social Science
Research. 15. pp.157-166.
Nasif, S., 2020. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Parashakti, R.D and et. al., 2020, April. The Influence of Work Environment and Competence on
Motivation and Its Impact on Employee Performance in Health Sector. In 3rd Asia
Pacific International Conference of Management and Business Science (AICMBS
2019) (pp. 259-267). Atlantis Press.
Schunk, D.H. and DiBenedetto, M.K., 2020. Motivation and social cognitive
theory. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 60. p.101832.
Thuy, N.T.T., Hien, P.T.T. and Van, N.T.A., 2021. The Mediating Effect of Work Motivation on
the Influence of Technical Reward against Job Satisfaction in Vietnamese
Monopoly. International Journal of Business and Social Science. 12(1).
Yoes, M. and Silverman, M.J., 2021. Expectancy Theory of Motivation and Substance Use
Treatment: Implications for Music Therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives. 39(1). pp.61-
68.