A Question of Motivation

A Question of Motivation

Summery

      The case is about two college students (Alex & Stephanie) who work fulltime in a supermarket to pay for their tuition fees. Both are managed by different managers, Alex’s manager Dan, he is very restricted when it comes to his approach in managing Alex, and according to philosophy of management Dan follows theory X. Jonathan’s approach is more flexible in managing Stephanie which is the reason why she’s always motivated to come with a smile to her job unlike her friend Alex, and according to philosophy of management Jonathan follows theory Y.

 Alex’s manager Dan doesn’t pay his employees fairly, for instance, he gives Denise a higher salary than Alex for doing the same tasks which harms the distributive justice theory. Also, Alex doesn’t feel that he is welcomed to talk to his manager Dan about their issues and Dan doesn’t give explanations about his decisions which violate procedural justice theory. Furthermore, Alex doesn’t feel that he is being treated with dignity he is constantly receiving bad comments from Dan which lead to his reaction when he knocks Dan’s lunch to the floor that’s all due to his feeling of lower sense of interpersonal justice. He believes that the good strategy in doing the job in better way is to assign the same work each day for each employee so they will learn from repeating of the work, but this make Alex feels bored .In addition, there was no motivation or appreciation for hard work. To sum up, he was breathing down in Alex's neck, so that result Alex feels high level of negative stress and dissatisfaction, and he thinks about leaving the job.

Stephanie's manager Jonathan he is desirable boss because of his strategy in managing work. He gives different duties each and every week to his employees, he applied Job rotation in which this strategy improved job satisfaction, enhanced productivity and quality, and decrease turnover of employees. According to situation of The Culinary center, arise new concern about the difficulty of keeping expensive ingredients in the stock. Jonathan assist his employees in this concern by let employees notify him when item is running low, and he gives his employee a chance to reorder items from suppliers , so he enriched their job in which  employees are given additional responsibility over their tasks and decisions associated to their job, and  he expand their knowledge about operating the supermarket. In addition, he applies expectancy theory; Jonathan motivates Stephanie in doing her job by giving her challenges and goals to accomplish, encourages her by bonus, also Jonathan trust Stephanie's work and give her the full responsibility in doing her job. For all of these motivation strategies Stephanie feel comfortable and enjoys working by doing the best of her and being committed to the supermarket.