Organizations and Management: Motivation Theories and Leadership Styles

This document discusses motivation theories like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and McClelland's Acquired Needs Theory, and leadership styles like Laissez-faire and Autocratic in the context of organizations and management. It provides solutions to case scenarios and explains the importance of choosing the right leadership style. The document also includes references for further reading.

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Management
Organization and Management
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8/1/2019

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Organizations and Management
Solution 1
As per the given case scenario, Robert Sim is not feeling motivated being a supervisor at the
second plant in Jurong. He himself communicated and expressed the same in front of his
production manager when he summoned him on call. He expressed his disappointment for
working with the new team at the Jurong Plant. This can be explained with the help of two
important theories of motivation:
 McClelland Acquired Needs Theory
 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017).
In this context, according to Maslow’s theory, the basic requirements of an individual are the
same for each human living at this earth. The theory depicts that basic needs must be fulfilled
in a specific order to keep the work motivation up and healthy for everyone. Here, the
hierarchy of needs might be taken as a series of significant stages which is usually displayed
in the form of a pyramid (Borrego et al., 2013).

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Source: (Goleman, 2010)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory suggests that motivation results from the psychological
review. In addition to that, Maslow extended the idea of including his personal observations
of humans' innate curiosity (Jones, 2013). This theory defines that five basic needs include
self-actualization, self-esteem, safety, love, and physiological are known as Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs which requires to be fulfilled to balance an individual’s motivation at
workplace. In this case, Robert Sim is not feeling motivated because he got shifted to a new
plant at Jurong which was not even discussed with him before offering and giving him that
new appointment. It means that the social needs of Robert Sim which are not getting fulfilled
as per the Maslow’s Hierarchy Theory as they include things like acceptance, love, and
belongings. In Robert’s case, his need for emotional relationships is not getting fulfilled and
thereby it is driving his human behaviour at his new workplace.
On the other hand, Abraham Maslow identified how humans can have basic requirements.
The theory suggests that three motivators are:
 A need for affiliation
 A need for achievement
 A need for power (Swann Jr et al., 2008).
In this way, in Robert’s case as well the theory is directing that different people possess
different characteristics based on their dominant motivator.
Post analyzing the given case scenario it has been found that both the theories are providing
help to provide assistance in order to identify why Robert Sim is not feeling motivated while
he has become a supervisor as follows:
 As per the McClelland's human motivation theory, Robert is having characteristics of
an affiliation person. Based on (Borrego et al., 2013), as it has been found that Robert
wants to belong to his own team or group hence he belongs to the affiliation motivator
category.
 Furthermore, Robert wants to be liked, as well as he often goes along with whatever
the rest of the team members wants to do so that he can comfortably work at his
familiar workplace at Kallang plant.
 Besides, McClelland’s theory helped to reveal that Robert is feeling de-motivated as
he favors collaboration over competition or growth.

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 Finally, both theories are clearly showing that Robert does not like unusual changes,
uncertainty or high risks while working thus he did not like this new appointment at
Jurong plant.
Solution 2
(a) In this context, Jerry Wong used a Laissez-faire leadership style. As we know that
Laissez-faire leaders often offer their team members a lot of freedom. The freedom
can be terms of how they do their work, as well as how they set their deadlines for
allocated work. It has been observed that such leaders support their sub-ordinates with
resources and advise whenever required; otherwise, they do not get involved for
deciding team-roles (Hogg, 2010). In this way, Jerry’s autonomy could lead to high
job-satisfaction for his team members, but unfortunately, it was proved damaging as
the team members did not manage their time well. Apart from this, Jerry’s Laissez-
faire leadership proved wrong for their new venture as their sub-ordinates or workers
were less than one year experienced and thereby did not have the knowledge, skills, or
self-motivation for doing their work effectively (Lazaroiu, 2015).
(b) On the other hand, when the leadership style of Jerry failed then Tom used the
autocratic leadership style while taking over his position for good. As per the
definition, this leadership style is a very strong 1-D style which offers full power or
we can say authority to the manager and leader (Nohria & Khurana, 2010). It has been
found that an autocratic leader can take all decisions without consultation, conducting
meetings and taking opinions from team-members. Thus, Tom started making
decisions without consulting their team-members as wished by all of them, even if
their input would be useful. In the given case, men from Tom’s team did not want to
contribute team input as they were less experienced and less motivated. This is the
reason that Tom realized that team agreement is not necessary for a successful
outcome. This leadership style adopted by Tom was proved useful in this particular
case
(c) As it is clear that Jerry’s style of leadership was found to be ineffective while Tom
Tan’s was more successful. The main reason behind the outcome is that leadership
style needs are different for each case and situation (Jones, 2013). Likewise, the
leadership style adopted by Jerry was not bad even it as a popular leadership style
which is required in so many cases in order to get the best out of the employees.

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However, as it is mentioned in the case that employees in TJ Stamping Pte Ltd were
not so experienced even only three of them had more than one year of working
experience, thus Laissez-faire leadership style got proved wrong. Contrary, Tom’s
autocratic leadership style proved suitable and good for the given scenario because all
men working in his company were looking for guidance and true leadership in order
to be motivated and become efficient workers (Maas, 2014).
(d) In the long run, Laissez-faire leadership style would be more appropriate because
autocratic leaders always delegate the responsibility to their team members and
thereby let them work on their own with minimum or no interference. It is good in the
long-time as Laissez-faire leadership style gives the utmost scope for innovation and
flexibility (Maas, 2014). In a nutshell, people often work best whenever they are not
told what to do but encouraged to work on their own.
References
Bakker, A. & Demerouti, E., 2017. Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking
forward. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), p.273.
Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L.D. & Beddoes, K., 2013. Team effectiveness theory from
industrial and organizational psychology applied to engineering student project teams: A
research review. Journal of Engineering Education, 102(4), pp.472-512.
Goleman, D., 2010. Emotional intelligence. Why it can matter more than IQ. Learning, 24(6),
pp.49-50.
Hogg, M., 2010. A social identity theory of leadership. Personality and Social psychology,
5(3), pp.184-200.
Jones, G.R., 2013. Organizational theory, design, and change. London: Pearson.
Lazaroiu, G., 2015. Employee motivation and job performance. Linguistic and Philosophical
Investigations, (14), pp.97-102.
Nohria, N. & Khurana, R., 2010. Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice. Harvard:
Harvard Business Press.
Swann Jr, W.B., Bosson. & K., J., 2008. "Identity negotiation: A theory of self and social
interaction." 4th ed. London: Pearson.

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