What is Motivation?
The Puzzle of Motivation: Dan Pink
Core Motivational Theories
McClelland's Achievement-Based Motivational Theory and Models
McClelland's Achievement-Based Motivational Theory and Models
David McClelland pioneered workplace motivational thinking, developing achievement-based motivational theory and models, and promoted improvements in employee assessment methods, advocating competency-based assessments and tests, arguing them to be better than traditional IQ and personality-based tests.
His ideas have since been widely adopted in many organisations, and relate closely to the theory of Frederick Herzberg.
Three Types of Motivation
David McClelland is most noted for describing three types of motivational need, which he identified in his 1961 book, The Achieving Society:
- Achievement motivation (n-ach)
- Authority/power motivation (n-pow)
- Affiliation motivation (n-affil)
These needs are found to varying degrees in all workers and managers, and this mix of motivational needs characterises a person's or manager's style and behaviour, both in terms of being motivated and in the management and motivation of others.
1. The Need for Achievement (n-ach)
- The n-ach person is 'achievement motivated' and therefore seeks achievement, attainment of realistic but challenging goals, and advancement in the job.
- There is a strong need for feedback as to achievement and progress and a need for a sense of accomplishment.
2. The Need for Authority and Power (n-pow)
- The n-pow person is 'authority motivated'. This driver produces a need to be influential, effective and to make an impact.
- There is a strong need to lead and for their ideas to prevail.
- There is also motivation and a need towards increasing personal status and prestige.
3. The Need for Affiliation (n-affil)
- The n-affil person is 'affiliation motivated', has a need for friendly relationships and is motivated towards interaction with other people.
- The affiliation driver produces motivation and needs to be liked and held in popular regard.
- These people are team players.
McClelland's Three Types of Motivation Practical Application
McClelland said that most people possess and exhibit a combination of these characteristics. Some people exhibit a strong bias to a particular motivational need, and this motivational or needs 'mix' consequently affects their behaviour and working/managing style.
- Mcclelland suggested that a strong n-affil 'affiliation-motivation' undermines a manager's objectivity, because of their need to be liked, and that this affects a manager's decision-making capability.
- A strong n-pow 'authority-motivation' will produce a determined work ethic and commitment to the organisation, and while n-pow people are attracted to the leadership role, they may not possess the required flexibility and people-centred skills.
- McClelland argues that n-ach people with strong 'achievement motivation' make the best leaders, although there can be a tendency to demand too much of their staff in the belief that they are all similarly and highly focused and results-driven, which of course most people are not.
McClelland's Theory Experimental Evidence
McClelland's particular fascination was with achievement motivation, and this laboratory experiment illustrates one aspect of his theory about the effect of achievement on people's motivation.
McClelland asserted via this experiment that while most people do not possess strong achievement-based motivation, those who do, display a consistent behaviour in setting goals:
- Volunteers were asked to throw rings over pegs rather like the fairground game; no distance was stipulated, and most people seemed to throw from arbitrary, random distances, sometimes close, sometimes farther away.
- However, a small group of volunteers, whom McClelland suggested were strongly achievement-motivated, took some care to measure and test distances to produce an ideal challenge - not too easy, and not impossible.
- Interestingly a parallel exists in biology, known as the 'overload principle', which is commonly applied to fitness and exercising, ie., in order to develop fitness and/or strength the exercise must be sufficiently demanding to increase existing levels, but not so demanding as to cause damage or strain. McClelland identified the same need for a 'balanced challenge' in the approach of achievement-motivated people.
McClelland contrasted achievement-motivated people with gamblers and dispelled a common pre-conception that n-ach 'achievement-motivated' people are big risk-takers. On the contrary, typically, these individuals set goals which they can influence with their effort and ability, and as such, the goal is considered to be achievable.
This determined results-driven approach is almost invariably present in the character make-up of all successful business people and entrepreneurs.
Characteristics and Attitudes of Achievement-Motivated People
McClelland suggested other characteristics and attitudes of achievement-motivated people:
- Achievement is more important than material or financial reward.
- Achieving the aim or task gives greater personal satisfaction than receiving praise or recognition.
- Financial reward is regarded as a measurement of success, not an end in itself.
- Security is not a prime motivator, nor is status.
- Feedback is essential, because it enables measurement of success, not for reasons of praise or recognition (the implication here is that feedback must be reliable, quantifiable and factual).
- They constantly seek improvements and ways of doing things better.
- They will logically favour jobs and responsibilities that naturally satisfy their needs, i.e. offer flexibility and opportunity to set and achieve goals, e.g., sales and business management, and entrepreneurial roles.
McClelland firmly believed that achievement-motivated people are generally the ones who make things happen and get results and that this extends to getting results through the organisation of other people and resources, although as stated earlier, they often demand too much of their staff because they prioritise achieving the goal above the many varied interests and needs of people.
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Herzberg's Motivation Theory
Frederick Herzberg Background Information
Life
Frederick Herzberg (1923-2000), a clinical psychologist and pioneer of 'job enrichment', is regarded as one of the great original thinkers in management and motivational theory. Frederick Herzberg was born in Massachusetts on April 18, 1923. His undergraduate work was at the City College of New York, followed by graduate degrees at the University of Pittsburgh. Herzberg was later a Professor of Management at Case Western Reserve University, where he established the Department of Industrial Mental Health. He moved to the University of Utah's College of Business in 1972, where he was also a Professor of Management. He died in Salt Lake City, on January 18, 2000.
Work and Research
Frederick Herzberg's book ' The Motivation to Work ', written with research colleagues Bernard Mausner and Barbara Bloch Snyderman in 1959, first established his theories about motivation in the workplace. Herzberg's survey work, originally on 200 Pittsburgh engineers and accountants remains a fundamentally important reference in the field of studying Motivation. While the study involved only 200 people, Herzberg's considerable preparatory investigations, and the design of the research itself, enabled Herzberg and his colleagues to gather and analyse an extremely sophisticated level of data.
Survey and Interviewing Methods
Herzberg's research used a pioneering approach, based on open questioning and very few assumptions, to gather and analyse details of 'critical incidents' as recalled by the survey respondents. He first used this methodology during his doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh with John Flanagan (later Director at the American Institute for Research), who developed the Critical Incident method in the selection of Army Air Corps personnel during the Second World War.
Herzberg's clever open interviewing method gleaned far more meaningful results than the conventional practice of asking closed (basically yes/no) or multiple-choice or extent-based questions, which assume or prompt a particular type of response, and which incidentally remain the most popular and convenient style of surveying even today - especially among those having a particular agenda or publicity aim.
Herzberg also prepared intensively prior to his 1959 study - not least by scrutinising and comparing the results and methodologies of all 155 previous research studies into job attitudes carried out between 1920 and 1954.
The Development of Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory
The level of preparation, plus the 'critical incident' aspect and the depth of care and analysis during the 1959 project, helped make Herzberg's study such a powerful and sophisticated piece of work. Herzberg expanded his motivation-hygiene theory in his subsequent books: Work and the Nature of Man (1966); The Managerial Choice (1982); and Herzberg on Motivation (1983).
Significantly, Herzberg commented in 1984, twenty-five years after his theory was first published:
"The original study has produced more replications than any other research in the history of industrial and organizational psychology." (source: Institute for Scientific Information)
The absence of any serious challenge to Herzberg's theory continues effectively to validate it.
- Herzberg's central theory is very relevant to the modern understanding of employer/employee relationships, mutual understanding and alignment within the Psychological Contract.
- It also provided some foundations and basic principles of Nudge theory - a powerful change-management and motivational concept which emerged in the 2000s.
Herzberg's Motivation Theory
Frederick Herzberg (1923-2000), a clinical psychologist and pioneer of 'job enrichment', is regarded as one of the great original thinkers in management and motivational theory.
Two Factor Theory and Significance
Herzberg was the first to show that satisfaction and dissatisfaction at work nearly always arose from different factors, and were not simply opposing reactions to the same factors, as had always previously been believed.
In 1959 Herzberg wrote the following useful phrase, which helps explain this fundamental part of his theory:
"We can expand ... by stating that the job satisfiers deal with the factors involved in doing the job, whereas the job dissatisfiers deal with the factors which define the job context. "
Graphs of Herzberg's Theory and Findings
For a graphical presentation of this principle, see:
The 2008 diagram is based on the total percentages of 'First-Level' factors arising in Herzberg's 1959 research of high and low attitude events among 200 engineers and accountants, encompassing short and long-duration feelings.
While Herzberg's overall conclusions were clear and consistent, the statistics from Herzberg's study can be interpreted in many different ways in their finer details, because of the depth and layering of Herzberg's survey methodology and analysis.
- For full details of the Herzberg study figures, and to fully appreciate the complexity and subtlety of his findings, see Herzberg's book The Motivation to Work.
Herzberg considered the following perspectives to be important:
- High and low attitude (basically satisfaction and dissatisfaction, also defined as motivators and hygienes or hygiene factors)
- Short and long-term duration of feelings (of high/low attitude effect)
- First and second-level factors (i.e., main causal factors, and secondary factors deriving from the main stimulus, identified by further probing during interviews)
- The interrelationship of factors
These different perspectives obviously provided (and still provide) endless ways to analyse and present the results, although as stated already the main conclusions remain consistent.
The purpose of the diagram (either version) is to illustrate how Herzberg's research showed that certain factors truly motivate ('motivators'), whereas others tended to lead to dissatisfaction ('hygiene factors'). According to Herzberg, people have two sets of needs; one as an animal to avoid pain, and two as a human beings to grow psychologically.
- He illustrated this also through Biblical example: Adam after his expulsion from Eden having the need for food, warmth, shelter, safety, etc., - the 'hygiene' needs; and Abraham, capable and achieving great things through self-development - the 'motivational' needs.
- Certain parallels can clearly be seen with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Implications of Herzberg's Research
Herzberg's research proved that people will strive to achieve 'hygiene' needs because they are unhappy without them, but once satisfied the effect soon wears off - satisfaction is temporary.
- Then as now, poorly managed organisations fail to understand that people are not 'motivated' by addressing 'hygiene' needs.
- People are only truly motivated by enabling them to reach for and satisfy the factors that Herzberg identified as real motivators, such as achievement, advancement, development, etc., which represent a far deeper level of meaning and fulfilment.
Examples of Herzberg's 'hygiene' needs (or maintenance factors) in the workplace are:
- Policy
- Relationship with supervisor
- Work conditions
- Salary
- Company car
- Status
- Security
- Relationship with subordinates
- Personal life
Herzberg's research identified that true motivators were other completely different factors, notably:
- Achievement
- Recognition
- Work itself
- Responsibility
- Advancement
Note. Herzberg identified a specific category within the study responses which he called 'possibility of growth'. This arose in relatively few cases within the study and was not considered a major factor by Herzberg. When referring to 'growth' or 'personal growth in terms of Herzberg's primary motivators, 'growth' should be seen as an aspect of advancement, and not confused with the different matter of 'possibility of growth'.
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