The Hawthorne Effect: The Components Of Motivation In The Workplace

The variety of jobs offered in the world can create the assumption of people enjoying their work, but this is not entirely true, motivation is the key a happy workplace. In a workplace, efficiency is always related to the organization’s main goal, employers must motivate their employees in order to have an efficient working environment. As a result, employees are motivated to work and enjoy the work they are doing. Employees are effected by this issue because motivation is a big part of their job and having a job where there is no motivation can eventually have a negative impact on the employee. The Hawthorne Effect can be used to describe the motivation of employees in a workplace, which states that some people tend to work harder when they

There are three main components to this theory, Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valence, these components separate what exactly motivates the employee. Expectancy is the “belief that increased effort will lead to increased performance” (“Vroom expectancy motivation theory,” 2016). Every task or assignment has an expected outcome, based on the amount of effort put in. Instrumentality is related to “the person’s perception of the probability that performance will lead to a specific outcome” (Lee, 2007). The individual attaches a certain possibility with the completion of this task. Such as excelling a task in order to receive a promotion or be recognized for the amount of work put in. Vroom defined valence as ‘‘affective orientations toward particular outcomes’’ (Lee 2007). Which simply states the importance given to a specific task. There is a difference of satisfaction in the outcome on the basis of valence. According to Vroom if these three criteria are met the employee will be motivated to d a certain job. It can be applied to many other situations such as focusing really hard on a certain class related to a chosen major and expecting a good