Essay Questions - Business
Briefly compare two motivational theories and how they might work together or against one another in the context of achieving some organizational goal.
Brief suggested ideal response - While there are many theories that could be named, two major ones are that of Maslow and Vroom. Maslow is noted for his hierarchy of needs model in which motivation is postulated to be an internal force whose ultimate goal, following the satiation of lower level needs such as food, shelter, and security, is that of self-actualization. Alternatively, Vroom proposes a model based upon external factors. In his expectancy theory of motivation, Vroom indicates that one must have “valence”, or strength of attraction to the reward, “instrumentality” or, an ability or know-how in regards to being able to “do” to behavior, and “expectancy” or, a belief that achievement will indeed result in the fulfillment of the stated or implied reward.
A common example for this might occur in the case in which wages are set at a point at which the base salary might be sufficient to cover a person’s basic needs yet promotions or incentive schemes might be utilized to motivate additional performance as, under Maslow’s theory, the worker might then be motivated to achieve these goals to ‘buy’ or satisfy higher order desires such as driving a particular car or similar. Vroom’s theory might be similarly applied in that all three factors (valence, instrumentality, and expectancy) must be addressed in order for workers to perform certain behaviors. A failure to perform would indicate a defect in one of those three items that could be specifically addressed with the expectation of increasing task performance.
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