Motivation Case

UNIVERSITY DEGREE MANAGEMENT STUDIES

Using relevant theories and examples explain how motivation can affect employee's commitment and performance at work?

Motivation originates from the word 'move' and refers to the internal drive necessary to steer people's actions and behaviours towards goals. This 'force' is the degree to which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specified behaviours (Mullins 2005). However, motivated behaviours are voluntary choices controlled by the individual and can have multiple-step processes that move a person towards a specific goal. In a business environment, the manager/supervisor (being the motivator) wants to influence the factors that motivate their employees so that they perform at higher levels of productivity. Although there are many various theories which attempt to explain motivation, there still seems to be no precise answer to what exactly motivates people to work well. I aim going to identify (backed with an appropriate examples) the most common and effective type(s) of motivation with results to prove.

As mentioned before, there are various theories of motivation for managers to use, and it tends to be extremely difficult to choose just one or two ways that motivate all of your employees. However these theories can be separated into two main groups which are the Content Theory of motivation and the Process Theory of motivation. "Content theories place emphasis on the nature of needs and what motivates.....Process theories emphasise on the actual process of motivation" (Mullins 2005) Judging from the definitions its clear they are basically summed up in a nut shell however to truly understand in more depth we must go over the 4 dominant Content theories which include:

* Maslow's Hierarchy of needs model

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