Motivation Theories

Scientific Management is also known as Taylorism. Fredrick Winslow Taylor wanted to divide the work process into small, simple and separate steps (Division of Labor). Division of Labor meant every worker only had one or two steps, this was created to boost productivity. Taylor also believed in Hierarchy, he wanted a clear chain of command that separated the managers from workers. He did this so managers would design work process and enforced how the work was performed and employees would simply follow directions. Taylor wanted to select and train high performing workers or first-class employees and match them to a job that best suited them. Taylor believed the most productive workers should be paid more. Employees who could not meet the new higher standard were fired.

Motivation is the force that makes us do things, whether accomplishing personal goals or completing tasks at work. Most people are motivated as a result of their individual needs being satisfied, which gives them the inspiration to perform specific behaviors for which they receive rewards (Kinicki & Williams, 2011). These needs vary from person to person, as everybody has specific needs to be satisfied. When we consider factors that determine the motivation of employees, many of us think of a high salary. This answer is correct for the reason that some employees will be motivated by money, but mostly wrong for the reason that it does not satisfy other needs to a lasting degree (Bizhelp24, 2010). This supports the idea that human

A theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual.”

Frederick W. Taylor was ahead of his time for his concept of Scientific management. It was a revolutionary way of running a business, that swept all over the globe, and his ideas were applicable to many different industries. Substituting disorder and conflict for a new untested method of control, cooperation, and science. Taylor understood there were no incentives for working harder. Knowing this, he payed workers based on output, allowing workers to make more money on any given day. It seemed like everyone would enjoy and prosper under this system, but that was not the case. Workers liked the opportunity to make more money in this system but many of them resisted this new idea. Being under constant supervision made work much harder for them.

1911, featured a daily time clock, calibrated to the hundredth of an hour. It was a ten-hour

He believed that these employees were easily replaceable for less pay. These kinds of procedures and ideas created an environment that was ripe for alienation. In an attempt to satisfy workers, “In return for a workers lost dignity, freedom, power and skill, Taylor promised higher pay” (Hoopes 48). Taylor also created the “differential piece rate” (Hoopes 38) which would further alienate workers from each other, claiming it improved production. Overall, Taylor’s theory of scientific management created a good environment for business owners but it only fueled alienation between the workers and the workers and society.

Frederick Taylor 's theory of motivation states that most workers are motivated solely by the pay they receive for the work they do. Taylor stated “that most workers do not enjoy the work they do and only perform when given the direct reward of monetary payment”. This theory lost favour over time because workers became annoyed and production was halted due to strikes by frustrated employees.

The first theory that I am looking at is the Taylor theory of motivation, the basic definition of this theory is that people are motivated to work due to pay and that without this motivation there would be no reason for them to want to work. The theory states that workers get paid per product/ item that they produce so as to maximise the productivity of the workers (piece rate pay). These days this theory is generally considered wrong since there are many people who like working in their jobs and the idea of piece rate pay will mean more products are produced but their quality will lower due to the rush to produce as many as possible. Despite the problems with this theory however it is still believed that pay is a motivator, One stop obviously couldn’t use piece rate pay since the job is a service based job however the business did recently raise the wage that they were paying workers from around £6.55 to £6.70; they did this believing that by paying an increased wage which is decently higher than the minimum wage that worker retention could be increased while also giving workers a consistent reason to be more motivated. It will take more time before we will truly see if this actually works but even then what One Stop did is not what would be called the Taylor theory.

Human Resources is dependent on the success, happiness, and contentment of employees that keep the business on course. Motivation is one of the best ways to push employees forward while making sure everyone is in a comfortable position in their job. Motivational theories just attempt to explain what motivates or makes people act the way that they do. The goal of understanding these theories and their outcomes is to ensure a better performance from each employee, and to give each of those employees the best situation they can have in the workplace. Visionaries such as Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, and Henry A. Landsberger also brought forward new ways of management and ways to handle internal situations that changed the landscape of human resources as a whole. Motivational theories instituted in the workplace have a commonly positive effect on both employees and management, showing that it is important to strive for proven motivational practices.

Based on the journal that I found, motivation have the two views of human nature. First one, viewed of people as basically lazy and work shy held them to externally stimulation echoes by Taylorism. The other one, the people work well for their own sake, as for social and monetary benefit is internally stimulated motivation that echoes by Hawthorn. The major researchers into motivation in work that taught the business student were Maslow, Herzberg, Vroom, Alderfer, McClelland and Locke.

Taylor imagined that workers would be able to make out the relationship between completion of more work in units and the economic rewards been increased. Taylors work as described by (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) depicts how theories were to take place at shop floor levels, then how facts were substituted for opinion and guess work. Henri Fayol, his fellow classical writer had a different perception which looked at organisation from top to bottom. The pace setters of classical theories had engineering background hence derived theories with scientific approach. (Buchanan and Huczunski, 2004). (Cole, 2004) talks about how the production environment under the classical theory in America had created difficulties, where labour force were skint, uneducated, and in quest of making economic fortunes. (Lemak, 2004) point out how the classical management has had

Taylor's own name for his approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive, tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work (which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed by those in charge as "loafing" or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined, was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their productivity would go up.

In 1911 the engineer Frederick Taylor published one of the earliest motivational theories. According to Taylor’s research, people worked purely for money. In the early years of the car assembly industry, work on a production line was based on producing quantity and was repetitive. Workers were paid ‘piece rate’, that

The behaviour of an individual at a particular moment is usually determined by his strongest need. Psychologies claim that needs have a certain priority. As the more basis needs are satisfied, an individual seeks to satisfy the higher needs. If his basic need sere not met, efforts to satisfy the higher need should be postponed.

One of the first authors that dealt with the sources of motivation was Frederick Taylor who focussed on the overall productivity of an organisation. He linked this productivity to the effort an employee puts into their work which in turn is dependent on monetary rewards (Taylor, 1911). This theory was established in the context of the industrial age and thus is outdated for today’s analysis but it still provides a basic assumption which is often referred to by other authors. The total neglecting of a worker’s intrinsic motivators is a starting point for discussion for authors that conducted research in that area after Taylor.