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Motivation Views, Reward Systems and Organizational Mission

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Please provide 100 word response for each and provide references where required. This will give me enough to work with to answer these questions successfully.

Discussion Question #1: Compare two different views on motivation and examine the implications of these approaches for organizational reward systems.

Discussion Question #2: Imagine that you are the HR director for a large firm and that the CEO asks you how the organization should evaluate how best to align its reward system with employee values and expectations. What would you respond with and why?

Discussion Question #3: Evaluate an organizational reward system (for example run a search on the web on a company such as Google to find out about their reward system and mission) and how it relates to the organization's mission.

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Solution Summary

This solution discusses three specific human resource (HR) topics including: compares two different views on motivation (e.g. Maslow and Hertzberg) and examines the implications of these approaches for organizational reward systems; explains how best to align its reward system with employee values and expectations and evaluates an organizational reward system, including how it relates to the organization's mission.

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Hi,

Interesting questions! Let's take a closer look.

RESPONSE:

1. Discussion Question #1: Compare two different views on motivation and examine the implications of these approaches for organizational reward systems.

Let's look at the first two Maslow and Herzberg.

1. Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

According to Maslow, employees have five levels of needs (Maslow, 1943): physiological, safety, social, ego, and self- actualizing. Maslow argued that lower level needs had to be satisfied before the next higher level need would motivate employees. Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs, which suggests that individual needs exist in a hierarchy consisting of physiological needs, security needs, belongingness needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. Physiological needs are the most basic needs for food, water, and other factors necessary for survival. Security needs include needs for safety in one's physical environment, stability, and freedom from emotional distress. Belongingness needs relate to desires for friendship, love, and acceptance within a given community of individuals. Esteem needs are those associated with obtaining the respect of one's self and others. Finally, self-actualization needs are those corresponding to the achievement one's own potential, the exercising and testing of one's creative capacities, and, in general, to becoming the best person one can possibly be. Unsatisfied needs motivate behavior; thus, lower-level needs such as the physiological and security needs must be met before upper-level needs such as belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization can be motivational (http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Mar-No/Motivation-and-Motivation-Theory.html).

Implications for the organizational rewards system are obvious. According to the implications of the hierarchy, individuals must have their lower level needs met by, for example, safe working conditions, adequate pay to take care of one's self and one's family, and job security before they will be motivated by increased job responsibilities, status, and challenging work assignments. Despite the ease of application of this theory to a work setting, this theory has received little research support and therefore is not very useful in practice (http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Mar-No/Motivation-and-Motivation-Theory.html).

2. Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory.

Frederick Herzberg developed the motivator-hygiene theory. This theory is closely related to Maslow's hierarchy of needs but relates more specifically to how individuals are motivated in the workplace. Herzberg's work categorized motivation into two factors: motivators and hygienes: Motivator or intrinsic factors, such as achievement and recognition, produce job satisfaction. On the other hand, Hygiene or extrinsic factors, such as pay and job security, prevent them from being dissatisfied (Source: http://www.joe.org/joe/1998june/rb3.html). Based on his research, Herzberg argued that meeting the lower-level needs (hygiene factors) of individuals would not motivate them to exert effort, but would only prevent them from being dissatisfied. Only if higher-level needs (motivators) were met would individuals be motivated (http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Mar-No/Motivation-and-Motivation-Theory.html).

The implication for managers of the motivator-hygiene theory and the reward systems is that meeting employees lower-level needs by improving pay, benefits, safety, and other job-contextual factors will prevent employees from becoming actively dissatisfied but will not motivate them to exert additional effort toward better performance. To motivate workers, according to the theory, managers must focus on changing the intrinsic nature and content of jobs themselves by "enriching" them to increase employees' autonomy and ...

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