Motivation in Organizational Behavior: Importance and Theories

Motivation
Motivation is the term used in organizational behavior to highlight motive of human resource
towards its working and subsequent deliverance. Motivation is the stimulating factor for human
being to excel in performance. Motivation is mainly depending upon psychological factors to
stimulate human behavior. Basic factors of motivation evolve with following criteria:
 Recognition;
 Satisfaction of job;
 Success;
 Team-work;
 Aspiration for money.
It is the basic prerogative of management to ensure creation of such working environment, which
can force the employees to perform and deliver to the best level of their abilities with motivation.
The role of leadership is important in this aspect. A good leader can initiate motivational process
by encouraging the following ambience for the employees:
 A need or drive felt by the employees;
 Incentive generation to meet the requirement of individual;
 Creation of objective with target of accomplishment to be felt by the employee followed
by recognition.
So, motivation is considered as psychological condition, which focuses on requirements of
human being with subsequent accomplishment by incentive plan with proper framework.
(Guide, nd)
There are five motivational theories found for application in organization. They are Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs theory, Hertzberg’s Two-factor theory, Hawthorne Effect, Expectancy
Theory and Three Dimensional Theory of Attribution. All these theories tried to describe
motivation in the context of organizational behavior with the justification of role of motivation to
get best possible output from employees. (Contactzilla, 2014)
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Motivation is described by different management theories as per above, out of which Maslow’s
Need Hierarchy Model is provided psychological scientific framework to understand the need of
individual. (Ikwukananne & Udechukwu, 2009) This model is represented by a pyramid to
understand the hierarchical structure of needs with its different stages. There are five stages of
needs specified in this model. They are ranked as per their complex nature from the viewpoint of
basic to special needs. The needs are ranked in the pyramid as psychological, safety, love and
belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. These needs are ranked as per the basic needs of
psychological accomplishment in the first tier, safety including financial and social safety in the
second tier, love and belongingness in the form of member of a group with own contribution to
be acknowledged in the third tier, esteem or self-prestige to be evaluated with recognition factor
from other stakeholders of the workplace and society in the fourth tier and self-actualization or
the feeling of own accomplishment towards set objectives of employment and life in the fifth and
top tier of the motivation model of Maslow. (Cherry, 2018)
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In the research article Motivation in Organizational behavior: History, Advances and Prospects
by Ruth Kanfer and Gilad Chen (September, 2016), the authors had critically analyzed different
types of needs evolved in present life of individual and respective prescription to meet them from
the viewpoint of organizational behavior. This literature had reviewed the role of motivation
related to job and organizational culture during the past period to conclude basic inference in the
form of emphasizing on different consciously-highlighted process like self-regulation, objective
choice as per the frame of mind set in earlier period. Motivation in job and organizational culture
is connected with the driving forces, which is originated within and beyond of individual
understanding flowing initiation, route, thrust and period of action. Latest views of motivation
are featuring the views as fixed time-frame accomplishment of objective with recursion and
reciprocation with attitudinal and cognitive system of process followed by respective actions
originated from individual objective. An individual objective is defined as mental reciprocation
of coveted result, within the organization’s hierarchical set-up depending upon interplay between
forces of human being, situation and epigenetic factors. (Kanfer & chen, 2016)
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