The Theories Of Motivation

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As a manager, a major factor in your success is your ability to motivate the employees that work for you. If you cannot motivate your employees, you will most likely be an ineffective manager. Motivations are complex, resulting in a variety of theories focused on the topic. Content theories of motivation focus on the individual needs of people being the driving motivational force (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). These theories fail to account for individuals’ interactions with their environments and how they influence motivational factors, process theories of motivation attempt to encompass these influences (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). A myriad of factors influence what motivates individual employees, but often financial compensation is a huge motivating factor and the perceived fairness of that compensation. …show more content…

Pay can either be a motivating factor leading to increased job satisfaction, or conversely a hygiene factor leading to dissatisfaction if an employee does not feel like they are being paid equitably (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). It would be impossible for an employee to evaluate their salary without placing it within the context of other employees or the perceived fairness compared to others. Adam’s equity theory of motivation focuses on whether an employee feels the outcomes related to what they contribute are fair, which gains context through a comparison of the perceived fairness of other similar employee’s outcomes (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). The perceived fairness in compensation can be further explained through the concept of distributive and procedural justice. Hartmann and Slapnicar (2012) simplify these concepts’ relationship to pay as distributive justice is based on the perceived fairness of the pay compared to others and procedural justice is based on the fairness of the process to establish

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