management is business
Assignment 2 controlled assignment
1. Briefly explain what is meant by motivation
Motivation is the set of reasons that helps determine to bring a positive
behaviour in a person. There are many practices that motivates and helps trigger
the behaviour of someone in a positive way that can be very helpful.
2. What is a motivation theory?
It is a theory which encourage workers to work harder.
3. Outline the following motivation theories
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Taylor had his ideas put forward in a way that he believed that workers are only
motivated by money, his theory of Scientific Management urged that employees
naturally do not enjoy to work and hence they are required close supervision and
strict control. Hence managers should break the longer tasks into smaller ones
and employees should be handed the right equipment and adequate training so
that they can work efficiently on one particular task rather than worrying about
the longer ones. Employees are then paid according to the number of items they
manufacture in that given time period, which is called piece-rate pay. As a result
employees are motivated and more focused in the production as they are paid
for the products they manufacture. Many business today use Taylors theory as
they saw the increased income generated due to the productivity which also
overcomes the expenditures of the business as during the same number of hours
everything is used the same but the productivity increases.
Abraham Maslow
Maslow along with Frederick introduced New Human Relation School in the
1950’s that concentrated on the psychological needs of employees. Maslow
introduced a theory that had five levels of human needs which employees desire
once they reach the most basic one. This is just like a structure of a pyramid
where the most basic needs are at the bottom and once the employees achieve
the first one then he would be fully motivated to work on the second one that is
higher amongst the hierarchical structure on the pyramid. For example an
unemployed employee would require job so that he can feed his family and once
that is achieved he would like to secure his place in the business.
Frederick Herzberg
Frederick Herzberg (1923- ) worked very closely with Maslow and believed the
two-factor theory of motivation. He urged that there were certain factors that a
business could introduce that would directly motivate employees to work harder.
However there were also factors that would de-motivate an employee (Hygiene
factors) Motivators are more concerned with the actual job itself. For instance
how interesting the work is and how much opportunity it gives for extra
responsibility, recognition and promotion. Hygiene factors are factors which
'surround the job' rather than the job itself. For example a worker will only turn