Motivation in the Organization
The concept of organizational behavior seeks to understand how the modern organizations operate from various perspectives such as the relationship between employees and other agencies. The subject also encompasses theories that expound on the structure of firms, strategy, and management functions. In addition, there are many concepts in the study of organizational behavior such as decision-making, motivation, leadership issues, team building, and others such as job satisfaction (Boundless, 2016). Motivation is essential for the organization and employees’ performance.
Motivation Defined
In the organization, the term motivation is defined as a force behind employees urge to attain particular goals, objectives, and responsibility set by the company. Managers in the organization use many incentives such as enhanced remuneration, conducive working environment to motivate employees and inspire productivity (Ball, 2012).
Usefulness of Motivation in the Organization
Motivation is useful for managers and workers in the organization. When employees are motivated, they are more likely to generate higher value and achieve more for the team. Therefore, management of motivation led to greater and improved output (Boundless, 2016). According to Al Jasmi (2012) motivated workers improve the capability of the firm to attain its goals, mission, and workplace objectives.
In addition, it enables the organization to build a robust and stable organizational culture. This is because the employees view themselves as strategic partners, and this increases their commitment to perform better and further enhance the level of loyalty. In the end, employees are motivated to produce quality products, customer satisfaction and consequently increase in revenue (Jasmi, 2012). Other than consumer satisfaction, it also promotes job satisfaction because the needs, desires, and want are met. Lack of job satisfaction has a direct effect on the company productivity and quality of goods and services offered (Ball, 2012).
Motivated employees are very dynamic regarding work, industry relationship, and profit. As such, it leads to a better public image, industrial relations, firm stability, and development (Ball, 2012). On the other hand, motivation leads to workers satisfaction in the organization. For instance, it makes employees goal oriented in fulfilling both personal and organizational needs. Motivated employees have a higher level of innovation, quality work, and efficiency. Besides, the cost of motivating employees is minimal as compared to the outputs of motivation and hence an advantage for the organization because there is not paid personnel required in motivating employees (Boundless 2016).
Strengths and Weaknesses of Motivation
There are weaknesses and strengths of motivation in the organization. One of the strengths is that it creates a force that pushes workers to achieve a particular result and further inspire them to honor their responsibility (Ball, 2012). These happen even in the absence of the manager’s supervision. Industry dynamism is also a strength of motivation. The fact that the business environment is rapidly changing requires motivated employees who can adapt to changing markets and workplaces. Therefore, the aspect of motivation is paramount for organization survival (Jasmi, 2012).
Motivation is essential in the utilization of skills and knowledge needed by the enterprise. When employees have the required skills and knowledge, motivation enhances the ability to utilize them to perform better, efficiently, makes them concentrate on their missions and objectives. Therefore, the absence of motivation can paralyze the operations; reduce productivity, and hence little revenue generated in the process (Jasmi, 2012).
However, there are myriads of weakness produced by motivation. Motivation depends on the management to initiate it and guide the employees. This is because it is a business strategy to attain specific goals that are known to the management only. As such, workers must be pushed to move in a particular direction that must be rewarded. Therefore, without the control, and rewards, workers cannot drive themselves to perform the tasks (Clark, 2003).
Motivation in the organization is a tool for managing and sustaining certain desired behaviors. Even with management input and rewards, the targeted objectives may not be attained (Clark, 2003). This is because, different employees have specific desires, and needs which translate to varying motivating factors that are not known by the organization. Research and literature tend to focus on incentives such as monetary rewards. Existing models do not clarify or agree on what causes motivation (Shanks & Dore, 2007).
What Makes Sense and What Does Not
In relation to motivation, the fact that motivation increases productivity, revenue and other performance makes sense. However, it does not make sense is to believe that incentives such as better remuneration, good working environment drives motivation. In some cases, workers who are poorly paid perform better than others who receive enhanced packages (Shanks & Dore, 2007).
Unaddressed Gap
Models of motivation have explored many factors, but there is not a single researcher who has dealt with the relationship between motivation and personal beliefs. Different people have different beliefs, and this makes it complicated for scholars to understand how to spark motivation effectively. In many cases, there are differing needs and desires of employees. Therefore, there is a gap on how to sufficiently motivate workers by understanding the specific factors that drive them. Researchers have mostly focused on universal factors such as pay package, recognition, and others. In the changing business environment, and multi-cultural workplace organizations should strive to discover the best technique of causing motivation (Clark, 2003).
Application of Motivation in the Workplace
There is various ways motivation can be applied to produce desired results. An example is to increase innovation through motivation. This will be done by determining ways of convincing people to do something different and unique for the organization. This will include making them invest their mental effort and provide evidence to them the outcomes of their effort will not only be beneficial to the team only but also to them. In such a scenario, the best thing is to introduce them to a new environment with challenges to make them create solutions to problems.
References
Al Jasmi, S. (2012). A Study on Employees Work Motivation and its Effect on their Performance and Business Productivity. Doctoral dissertation, British University in Dubai.
Ball, B. (2012). A summary of motivation theories. Retrieved February, 10, 2016.
Boundless (2016). Boundless Management. Retrieved from
Boundless (2016). Boundless Management. Retrieved from
Clark, R. E. (2003). Fostering the work motivation of individuals and teams. Performance Improvement, 42(3), 21-29.
Shanks, N. H., & Dore, A. (2007). Management and motivation. Fonte: http://www. jblearning. com/samples X, 76373473.
