Role of Motivation in Organisational Behaviour

This essay discusses the role of motivation in organisational behaviour. It covers the different ways of motivating employees, including financial and non-financial motivators, and the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The essay also explores Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's Two-factor theory.

Running Head: Organisational Behaviour
Organisational Behaviour
Essay
System04104
9/7/2018

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1
Introduction of Motivation
Role of motivation in the performance of employees is the key to success that derives
the inner force of an employee towards the achievement of organisational goals and
objectives. It does not mean that every person motivates in the same way in an organisation.
Motivation based on the needs of employees and their requirements for accelerating inner
drives to do work in the organisation. Motivation is a methodology that focuses on the win-
win situation between the employees and the organisation (Deci & Ryan, 2012). According to
few management experts, it was assumed that motivation is generated only from outside by
considering external factors, but the recent studies have shown that most of the motivation
forces belong to within individual employees because each individual has the different set of
forces which when they identified and activated, they became motivated.
Various Authors defines motivation in different ways, but it is important to focus here
on those definitions, which focuses on the workplace motivation. Motivation starts with the
basic word ‘motive' it means something that drives a person towards work and he/she will
give his/her best. Therefore, motivation means an act that causes a person or individual to
work. A person becomes motivated in order to achieve their personal as well as
organisational goals.
Ways of Motivation
Motivation refers to those intrinsic and extrinsic factors that determine an employee’s
attitude towards doing something. There are many ways, theories, and models of motivating
employees to do their best in the organisation in order to achieve organisation goals and
objectives. Although motivation can be done basically in two ways: financial motivation and
non-financial. Apart from this, some people believe in ‘the four motivations' concept that are
intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, interojected motivation, and identified motivation
(Reiss, 2012).
When we talk about financial motivators, it means employees paid money for
motivation and rewarded in terms of commission, profit sharing, salary increment, incentives,
Bonus, etc. Monetary or financial rewards are the short-term period in nature. It means
people forget after some times in their career what they get for motivation. This method is an
instant tool for motivating people but the impact of this motivation is not long lasting for

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employees neither for employers (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2012). The most common financial
reward is raising salary or paying a bonus to employees. However, it is accepted that
compensation may be a great factor in the organisation from a work perspective, but it is not
a strong motivator for employees (Richardson, Karabenick, & Watt, 2014). Bonus and
commission pay is the other financial reward which is added to the employees account for the
purpose of motivating them for a particular period of time or particular purpose or sales.
Some organisation uses profit sharing to motivate employees when people are benefited by
sharing in organisational profit apart from their salary or compensation they received after a
particular period of time.
The last example of financial motivator is piecework system, which means that
employees are paid based on production and item they produced. Employees get extra money
when they perform beyond of the set target or production level. This method is good for both
employer and employees because the speed of production will be increased in order to earn
maximum money. However, the disadvantage off this method is that it is only based on those
works, which is countable, and the second disadvantage is that employee rush through the
production process to earn more and it leads to decrease in quality of the product (Lei, 2010).
Unlike financial motivators, non-financial motivators are more effective and long-
lasting approach of a manager to motivate employees in the organisation and it also brings
out the creativity of manager. Such as direct work, appreciation from the boss or manager can
be more effective than a little monetary reward. Public raise, written ‘thank you' or personal
compliment from the boss for the best performance motivate employees more than anything
else does. Promotion in the organisation and giving more power to an individual is more
effective than a little increment in the salary of the employee. It also helps in increasing the
motivation level and also increasing in his/her power will be effective in giving his/her best
in the future (Smith & Shields, 2013).
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs focuses on five basic needs of employees that shown in
the figure. Maslow believed that every person had needs that need to be fulfilled and once it
will be helpful in motivating employees with every level of accomplishment of human needs.
He gave these needs in a triangle shape. Need of every human starts from the bottom of the
pyramid. Every person works in order to achieve the next level of the pyramid and try to
achieve next level until the person will not get the top level of the pyramid. One is not able to
move on to the next level of the pyramid until the needs of the first level are met (Lester,

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2013). While Herzberg's Two-factor theory is related with Maslow's hierarchy of needs
theory and this theory states that mental health of an employee is directly associated to the
employee's performance thus he focuses on work environment and hygiene factors in the
organisation that motivates employees in the organisation.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations
Lepper, Green, and Nisbett in 1963 give four motivators that included intrinsic,
extrinsic, identified, and introjected motivators. Intrinsic factors belong to an individual’s
inner drive of motivation. The intrinsic factor of motivation belongs to self-satisfaction and it
is not the fear of consequences. Extrinsic motivations come from external factors and it
depends on what has been said to do. In self-determination theory of intrinsic motivation,
which refers to doing something because it gives self-satisfaction and will be enjoyable for
self, while an extrinsic factor is doing something because it leads to a separable outcome.
Extrinsic motivation refers to do because of external factors such as money, praise, reward, or
awards (Becker, McElvany, & Kortenbruck, 2010).
Difference between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Motivation Goals
Intrinsic Motivation
It is doing the activity that is
satisfying an individual’s need
and increases his/her self-
confidence by giving immense
pleasure and enjoyment. For
example, playing games, engaging
in a hobby and improvising etc.
are such action doing by a person
because of intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is
focused on intrinsic goals and
outcomes, which is essential
for our personal needs and
value.
Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation is doing
activity is an option and it is done
because to fulfil a purpose. The
action only serves and leads to
accomplishment when this
purpose resembles assumed
Extrinsic motivation focuses
on achieving those goals,
which are not personal and
fulfil or personal or basic
needs.

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values.
In our University, Intrinsic motivation can be self-determination of a student to
perform the best in the exam thus he/she can get a good job that leads to high-quality
learning. In comparison to this according to extrinsic motivation where professor and parents
pressurize their students to give their best and student will not doing the same as their parents
and teachers expect from him/her (Oosterbeek, Praag, & Ijsselstein, 2010). One of my friends
Mr Arnold who is a sports person, intrinsically motivated to play football by the pleasurable
physical feelings of putting down the books and moving around. But when extrinsic factor
motivate them towards the study when he focused on study for such as keeping the
scholarship, maintaining his grades, meeting new people.

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References
Becker, M., McElvany, N., & Kortenbruck, M. (2010). Intrinsic and extrinsic reading
motivation as predictors of reading literacy: A longitudinal study. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 102(4), 773.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Motivation, personality, and development within
embedded social contexts: An overview of self-determination theory. The Oxford
handbook of human motivation, 85-107.
Lei, S. A. (2010). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: Evaluating benefits and drawbacks from
college instructors' perspectives. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 37(2).
Lester, D. (2013). Measuring Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Psychological Reports, 113(1),
15-17.
Oosterbeek, H., Praag, V.M., & Ijsselstein, A. (2010). The impact of entrepreneurship
education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation. European economic
review, 54(3), 442-454.
Reiss, S. (2012). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The teaching of Psychology, 39(2), 152-
156.
Richardson, P. W., Karabenick, S. A., & Watt, H. M. (2014). Teacher motivation: Theory
and practice. UK: Routledge.
Schunk, D. H., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2012). Motivation an essential dimension of self-
regulated learning. In Motivation and self-regulated learning (pp. 13-42). Routledge.
Smith, D. B., & Shields, J. (2013). Factors related to social service workers' job satisfaction:
Revisiting Herzberg's motivation to work. Administration in Social Work, 37(2), 189-
198.