Read this “Essay on Motivation” (624 Words)!
The subject of motivation is one of the most important and widely studied topics in the field of management and organizational behaviour. One of the most frequently used terms among managers is “motivation”.
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The level of performance is often tied with the level of motivation. Accordingly, work effective managers are concerned about motivation because the work motives of employees affect their productivity and quality of their work.
People differ by nature, not only in their ability to perform a specific task but also in their “will” to do so. This “will” to do is known as motivation. By understanding a person’s ability and his motivation, a manager can forecast his performance level. Motivation and ability interact in a multiplicative manner to yield performance, so that:
Performance = Ability X Motivation
This means that if either ability or motivation is zero, then the resulting performance is zero. However, people with less ability and stronger “will” may be able to perform better than people with superior ability and lack of “will”, because people with high motivation learn to become capable while superior ability may not induce any motivation.
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The force of motivation is a dynamic force, setting a person into motion or action. The word motivation is derived from “motive”, which can be defined as an active form of a desire, craving or need which must be satisfied. All motives are directed towards goals, and the needs and desires affect or change a person’s behaviour which becomes goal oriented. For example, if you ordinarily do not want to work overtime, it is quite likely that at a particular time, you may need more money (desire), change your behaviour, work overtime (goal oriented behaviour) and satisfy your needs.
Motivation is defined by Viteles as follows:
“Motivation represents an unsatisfied need which creates a state of tension or disequilibrium, causing the individual to move in a goal directed pattern towards restoring a state of equilibrium by satisfying the need”.
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Motivated people are in constant state of tension. This tension is relieved by drives towards an activity and outcome that is meant to reduce or relieve such tension. The greater the tension, the more activity will be needed to bring about relief and hence higher the motivation. Thus the basic motivation process can be depicted as follows:
The concept of motivation has three basic characteristics. These are:
a. Effort:
The amount of effort put into the activity identifies the strength of the person’s work related behaviour. Hard work usually reflects high motivation and high motivation is crucial to success and achievement. For example, a student who works very hard to get top grades can be referred to as highly motivate. Similarly, a professor who is engaged in research and publishes many high quality articles and books is exerting extensive efforts related to his job.
b. Persistence:
Motivation is a permanent and an integral part of a successful person. Its second characteristic is persistence in the efforts. Motivation is continuously goal oriented so that once a goal is achieved, a higher goal is selected and efforts are directed towards the higher goal. For example, a professor who publishes simply to get a promotion and then stops or reduces research efforts would not be considered as highly motivated. Accordingly, high motivation requires persistent efforts.
c. Direction:
Persistent hard work determines the quantity of effort while direction determines the quality of the anticipated output. All efforts are to be directed towards goal achievement. This would ensure that the persistent effort is actually resulting into expected outcomes. For example, a quality control inspector in a manufacturing organization is consistently expected to direct his efforts in discovering defects in the produced items so that the organizational goal of high quality output is met.