Need-Based Motivation
According to need-based theories, people's efforts go toward fulfilling their most urgent needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is perhaps the best-known theory in this category. It suggests that needs drive behavior. Managers can motivate employees by identifying their needs and helping satisfy them. There are five need categories: physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualization. Basic needs must be met before the individual will be motivated to seek higher order activities such as creative work. Frederick Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory is another need-based theory. According to him, people are driven by two sets of factors. Hygiene factors are part of the job context and prevent dissatisfaction but do not motivate people. Working conditions, salary and safety are among these factors. Motivators such as achievement and recognition are intrinsic to the job. These factors encourage employees to work harder.
Cognitive-Based Motivation
Cognitive theories of motivation suggest that behavior is determined by beliefs, expectations, values and other mental conditions. For example, the expectancy-value theory proposes that the amount of effort employees will expend on a task is the product of their expectation of success at the task and the value they attach to it. Attribution theory is another cognitive-based theory that explains how individuals interpret events. People attribute causes to others’ behavior to understand why they behave in a certain way. There are two types of attributions. An internal attribution suggests that a person behaves in a certain way because of something about the person such as attitude or personality. An external attribution suggests that the person behaves that way because of something about the situation.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsically motivated people engage in an activity because they are interested in and enjoy the activity. Extrinsically motivated individuals get involved in an activity because of external reasons such as a reward. Some theories of motivation emphasize these differences. For example, according to self-determination theory, extrinsic incentives may even undermine performance at an inherently interesting activity. This is because humans have a basic need for competence and self-determination. People seek challenging activities and ﬁnd these activities intrinsically motivating. Unnecessary external control and negative competence feedback may harm this tendency.
Critique
Need-based theories try to motivate employees by helping fulfill their unmet needs. A serious flaw with this approach is that it views the glass half-empty. Two problems arise from this perspective. Firstly, organizational motivators do not always help fulfill an employee’s needs, because work life is only one aspect of an employee’s life. Secondly, the half-empty approach of motivation ignores the employee’s strengths. External motivators may lead to the mentality that professional satisfaction is all there is to well-being. This may have a negative effect on other domains of an employee’s life such as family life. On the other hand, critics of the cognitive-based theories contend that motivation is need-based. They argue that people mostly behave in response to urgent needs rather than cognitive factors.
References
- Human Resource Management; Trevor Amos, Adrian Ristow, et al.
- Principles of Management; Mason Carpenter, Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan
- Annual Review of Psychology; Motivational Beliefs, Values, and Goals; Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Allan Wigﬁeld
- University of Twente: Attribution Theory
- Do Need-Based Motivation Practices Make Happy Employees? Integrating the Supply Chain of Happiness with Employee Motivation; C.N. Wickramasinghe, et al.
Photo Credits
- John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty ImagesKyrie Irving sure talked a good game during his introductory press conference with the Celtics. On first reflection, it was fair to wonder if he had talked a little too good of a game.
Kyrie Irving sure talked a good game during his introductory press conference with the Celtics.
On first reflection, it was fair to wonder if he had talked a little too good of a game.
Amid reports the four-time All-Star wanted out of Cleveland, and away from LeBron James and the defending Eastern Conference-champion Cavaliers so he could run his own show and have his own star shine brightest, he indicated his motives were actually the opposite as he sat in the shadow of the TD Garden parquet, and just a few feet from where he and the Cavs celebrated winning the East title four months earlier.
“Is there ever such thing as one person carrying the whole team?” Irving questioned. “I don’t think so. When you have a collection of individuals where we’re all having one mission, and one goal, and collectively getting better, there are a lot of moving parts. You have to depend on those moving parts to do their job to their ultimate ability.”
The real question was whether what sounded good in theory would hold true in reality.
Would he really be able to take a backseat to his teammates on nights when they had it rolling and he perhaps did not? Would he be able to buy into a system that asked him to play defense in a way he had not always been asked to in his career, and share the ball in a way that could seem counter-intuitive in a league where you generally want the ball in your best player’s hands as often as possible?
Would he trust the youngest players on a rookie-laden roster even when they made inevitable mistakes? Would he put his trust in Brad Stevens as the coach after playing on Cleveland teams where coaching was often marginalized by the sheer magnitude that is everything LeBron James?
“It’s our job to bring the best out of one another every single day,” he insisted. “That’s been echoed throughout this organization over the years through the players and the tradition that is here in Boston.”
And, so far at least, Irving has proven to be a man of his word when it comes to being the leader of men in Boston.
Through a training camp and preseason of adjustments with a dramatically overhauled roster, and the shocking opening night that saw fellow All-Star Gordon Hayward taken from the floor on a stretcher after dislocating his ankle and fracturing his tibia in gruesome fashion, Irving has appeared to back up all the press conference talk that might have originally come across as fanciful rhetoric.
After the Celtics lost their first two games, and were down four points at the half against the Philadelpha 76ers in their third, Irving did tell off a fan who asked, “Where’s LeBron?” as he walked through the halftime tunnel.
But he came back to lead the Celtics to victory that night — and they haven’t lost since.
Irving was unapologetic — except to “the kids” who may have heard his profane response to the Philadelphia fan — and paid his fine. Then he went right back to work in helping build the Celtics in the pursuit of “something bigger than myself” — just as he had pledged to do that day at TD Garden when his resolve had yet to be tested.
If anything, he has been better than advertised both from a leadership and playing perspective.
Irving has played off the ball in favor of Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier for long stretches as they’ve anchored the offense. He has acted as a facilitator to help Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum mature their games at a furious pace for their years.
He has taken a secondary role at times, like in Sunday’s victory in Orlando when he sensed everyone on his team had this one. He has taken over at times, like in Friday night’s comeback from 18 points down in Oklahoma City, and in Monday night’s slugfest in Atlanta when he scored 35 points with seven assists against the Hawks on the second night of a back-to-back.
In the process, he helped the Celtics become the first team in NBA history to lose their first two games of the season, then win their next seven, then eight, and now nine straight games heading into Wednesday night’s contest against the Los Angeles Lakers at TD Garden.
It’s still far too early to make any definitive judgments on this team, and Irving’s ability to walk the lofty line he has set out for himself as a player and as a different type of NBA superstar in Boston.
But the initial returns have been nothing but reassurance that all that talk that sounded good in theory might just genuinely work after all.
Scott Souza can be reached at ssouza@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Scott_Souza.Mexico is readying itself for the worst in the wake of US President-elect Donald Trump’s comments over the weekend that he intends to deport up to three million undocumented people, most of them Mexicans, as well as to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The Mexican government fears the Trump presidency’s economic impact most of all. The value of the Mexican peso has fallen by 15% against the dollar since November 9, while Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico’s economy minister, has said that now is not the time to discuss NAFTA, which among other things lifted import tariffs with its two northern neighbors.
Signed in 1993 by the United States, Canada and Mexico, NAFTA has seen Mexican exports to the United States rise by 80%, with a wide range of industries, many of them in high-tech sectors such as aviation and the automotive industries, developing throughout the country. Guajardo has not said whether Mexico has put together a team of negotiators to respond to any imminent move by Trump to restructure the trade deal. Should Washington push for changes, Mexico may bring the matter before the World Trade Organization.
In the