Motivations

The job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through employees. To do this the manager should be able to motivate employees. But that's easy said than done! Motivation practice and theory are difficult subjects, touching on several disciplines. In spite of enormous nature , basic as well as applied, the subject of motivation is not clearly understood and more often than not poorly practiced. To understand motivation one must understand human nature itself and there lies the problem! So in this discussion I will focus on the the needs theories, Cognitive theories and the Reinforcement theory whch are the tools the manager need. APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION Theories are ways that we try to explain and understand complex and abstract issues and ideas. Abstract ideas are ideas like truth or love. They are very difficult to talk about because they are very hard to describe and define. They are not clear cut or concrete. Motivation is a fairly difficult area and there are a number of theories which have been developed to try to explain why people behave in the ways that they do and to try to predict or guess what people actually will do, based on these theories. Basically there are two general approaches to motivational theory. Content theories - what makes people tick. what turns them on or off. Process theories - how and by what goals people are motivated. CONTENT THEORIES These theories suggest that people have certain needs and/or desires which have been internalised . (This means that as we have grown up we have learned that these are things that we want and need and we come to believe it so strongly that we think that it is a natural thing to want these things.) These theories look at what it is about certain people that make them want the things that they do and what things in their environment will make them do or not do certain things. For example why would a person who was getting a lot of money for a job still be unhappy? Maybe there are other things which they consider to be more or equally important such as the work environment or the friendship and support of the people that they work with.