Glossary of Motivation – What is Inside?

My class in Organizational Development was very boring. I could never get into the concepts and the ideas that my professor always babbled about. I tried my best to concentrate and to listen to him but nothing could ever get through my head. I did not exactly know if it was my professor or if organizational development was just as exciting as a computer bug, what I knew at that time was that the class was the perfect antidote to my insomnia.

Then my professor announced that we were supposed to research and write on motivation. I groaned at the thought and silently muttered “GREAT – a boring paper on a boring topic, what fate could be worse than this?” To my surprise however, once I started raiding the university’s library for resources and scavenging online databases for the write-up, I discovered that motivation is actually an interesting topic. I also found out that there are a number of internet sites with a glossary of concepts in motivation. But what in the world is a glossary of motivation? It’s basically a list of theories and terms that are relevant to the subject. Below is a preview of what a glossary of motivation looks like.

• Motivation – Daft (1997) states that motivation generally comes from internal or external forces that either awaken or increase a person’s enthusiasm to pursue a particular action, whether it may be related to his academics, employment or personal life. Similarly, motivation is also defined as an individual’s ability to change his behavior and attain a specific life goal.

• Motivational Principles – Quick (1985) emphasizes that there are four principles that are quintessential to motivation. First in line are the reasons that a person may have for doing whatever it is that he is doing. This is followed by the same individual’s belief that the goal of his action is for his own welfare. Therefore, if a person does not deem it necessary to engage in a behavior because the behavior will not do him any good, he will not engage in such. The third principle revolves around the attainability of the person’s goal. Finally, the conditions under which a behavior is executed may affect an individual’s motivation in carrying it out. For instance, if the behavior involves too much risk – e.g. the possibility that an individual may lose his fiancée if he accepts the division office managerial promotion at his job and move to another state – he may think twice before making his decision. If he values his career over his personal relationship, then he is likely to perceive the promotion as a motivating factor and is also likely to accept the position.

• Intrinsic Motivation – Intrinsic Motivation is a type of motivation. It includes the person’s need to achieve or need to fulfill and his interest in the pursuit of an action. Here a person may say that he is doing something because he enjoys it and it is in concordance with his perception of doing things and doing them well, whether or not there are specific rewards.

• Extrinsic Motivation – Another type of motivation is one that is rooted on external factors, thus the term extrinsic motivation. There are people who are motivated to complete a task because of the incentives that are attached to them – rewards which may be monetary or in kind, praises from one’s boss or promotions in one’s job or academics. For instance, there are students whose grades are in tiptop shape not because they like having an exemplary record for the sake of it but because their parents reward their consistent excellent performance. These rewards may be anything from gift cards to a substantial allowance increase or even a new car. Sometimes though, instead of rewards, external coercion may force a person to engage in an action. This external factor may be seen as a punishment or a necessary action that is forced on an individual. A divorced parent then may pay alimony to his spouse and children due to impositions of the law rather than due to his own accord.

• Identified Regulation – When one engages in an action that is a vehicle to his goal, this is known as identified regulation. Hence a person, who normally does not kiss the ass of anyone, may do exactly this in order to get his objective. For instance, a reporter who may not agree with a political candidate’s program may attend the latter’s rallies and campaigns in order to line up an interview with him because the interview may be the big-break that the reporter has been waiting for.

• Integrated Regulation – In motivation, integrated regulation simply says that a person does a behavior because it represents who he is and what he stands for. This is common among volunteers in non-profit organizations wherein members volunteer because the act is in their blood, even when they do not receive enough stipends for it.

• Introjected Regulation – People who carry out behaviors because of the tension or pressure that they feel within if they do not carry out the said behaviors are considered as using introjected regulation. With this as their reference then, there may be wealthy individuals who would give to charity because they feel guilty of their wealth if they do not do so.

• Self-motivation – A person may be naturally gifted or intellectual and yet may find himself as consistently unmotivated to do something about his life or about his studies. Here then the role of self-motivation is underlined wherein it is believed that a person’s expectations, drives and desires set the stage for him to become motivated and act towards obtaining these things.

• Effectance Motivation – Otherwise known as mastery motivation, effectance motivation refers to obtaining mastery or competence in a particular field, the effects of the individual’s success rate or failure rate to this mastery and the influence of such mastery on the individual’s environment. Here, questions such as “how can failing at a particular thing, say a higher level college course, affect the person’s motivation to succeed in it?” arise.

• Unconscious Motivation – People may have motives or desires that they may not be aware of but may be the reasons why they keep on doing a specific behavior. For instance, a union representative may be motivated to fight for the rights of the employees because of his unconscious animosity towards big corporate owners. He may think that his motivation to work is simply because he believes in the cause, but through psychoanalysis, the animosity may surface as the real reason for his behavior.

• Workplace Motivation – As the term suggests, any and all companies need motivation in the workplace. Without motivation, employees will not perform at par with the expectation of their employers. Good business owners then are those who initiate motivation among their people in order to attain their businesses’ objectives.

• Hawthorne Effect – This notion indicates that when employers pay attention to their workers and the workers’ needs are satisfied, work motivation is increased and productivity is also increased. Hawthorne Effect derived its name from the 1920’s to 1930’s studies on employee productivity that Harvard University researchers carried out at an electric plant in Illinois, United States.

• Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory – Herzberg created a motivational theory that outlined factors that resulted to job motivation and avoided job dissatisfaction. Job motivating factors included those that kept workers happy and satisfied and therefore more efficient while factors that prevented job dissatisfaction were those that did not make the workers satisfied but neither made them unhappy. Under the first category one can find rewards or incentives such as monetary bonuses for a job well-done and under the second category one can find adequate salary, which is necessary to keep a person from becoming dissatisfied. Additional money could increase worker motivation while a sufficient income can keep unhappiness away.

• Hierarchy of Needs – Established by Abraham Maslow, this theory emphasizes an individual’s needs in life that would motivate him to act. The needs are categorized from lowest to the highest in a pyramid pattern. The bottom part of the pyramid consists of a person’s physiological needs such as air, food or shelter. Above these are the needs for security and safety, topped by belongingness and love, then by esteem and finally by self-actualization. People must achieve the lower level needs (physiological and safety) before they can be motivated to progress in the hierarchy. Hence, one must have a sense of belongingness and must feel loved before he can achieve a sense of esteem for himself and before he can fully actualize his potentials.

• Cognitive Dissonance Theory – In motivation, a person may be compelled to engage in a behavior that would reconcile dissonance among his ideas or thoughts, otherwise known as cognitions. For example, if a person’s principle is to never be dishonest and the cashier at a shop accidentally gives him more change than he is supposed to receive, he is more apt to return the extra change compared to someone whose principle may not be similar to his.

• Drive Reduction Theory – The term drive refers to a person’s biological need that would make him spring into action. For example, if a person is hungry, he is motivated to look for food and reduce the hunger that he is experiencing.

• Incentive Theory of Motivation – This theory utilizes rewards for the purpose of increasing the occurrence of a behavior. These rewards are termed as such because of the positive association that a person has about them. If social service then is rewarding for an individual, then he may be motivated to follow a career path that would allow him to become more intimately involved with the field.

• Goal Setting Theory – Oftentimes a person needs a clear goal in order for him to feel that he has a purpose. When motivation comes from the desire to reach a goal, this is known as falling under the Goal Setting Theory. An archaeologist then who feels that his goal in life is to discover something new will work on this discovery and will feel satisfied once he has discovered it even if he does not receive recognition or fame for it.

• Motivation Training – Motivation training describes many programs and approaches that can be used in order to control motivation and increase it. From reconstructing faulty thinking to actual behavioral modification, these programs take into account the various factors that underlie motivation including a person’s history, physical activities, perceptions and such.

• Organization – Although not always scientifically backed, organizing one’s tasks and goals is a pragmatic approach to motivation. When one has a list of the responsibilities he has to do and the things that he has already done, he may be motivated by the actual physical evidence of how much he has already accomplished and would then set for more work.

The above bulleted items are only some of the concepts that I was able to find in a glossary of motivation. There are, however, numerous other resources that one can exhaust if he can’t find what he needs from my list. As for me, the paper I wrote for my organizational development class turned out pretty well. How can I claim this? Well, let’s just say that for the rest of the term, my professor went out of his way to encourage me to become published.

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