Internal Motivation: The Impact on The Autonomy and Independence of Employees

Introduction

Research has emphasized that organisational performance and improvement are highly influenced by employee motivation. This essay is therefore going to discuss the extent to which organisations can influence or affect employees’ motivation to enhance job satisfaction and the overall performance of the organisation. Content theories that discuss the basics of what motivates people and process theories that discuss how people are motivated and what ways to motivate them will be talked about. Earlier content theories such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggested that basic human needs were arranged hierarchically, and individuals seek to satisfy these needs one after the other in order to achieve job satisfaction. The theory came under heavy criticism by various authors thus, the essay looks at other theories that would help in the understanding and influencing of employee motivation. These include the equity theory, self-determination theory, cognitive theory and many others. However, in certain instances, organisations may not be able to affect employees’ motivation and factors that may aid this are discussed as well.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory

Maslow initially suggested five basic human need categories that would describe what motivates human behaviour and are arranged hierarchically from the bottom to the top. These categories include; physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and finally self-actualization needs.

Physiological needs are placed at the bottom of the pyramid and these include fundamental needs such as food, water and shelter. Maslow’s theory suggests that organisations must therefore provide employees with earnings that would enable them to afford these needs to enable them to make a meaningful contribution to the organisation. Safety needs are placed on the next level and are activated when physiological needs are met. They basically refer to the need of employees to work in a safe environment free from harm. Social needs are the third level of needs that are activated after safety needs are met and they refer to the need by employees to feel loved and accepted by co-workers or colleagues and participation in social events. Esteem needs are on the fourth level of the pyramid and these represent the need for the approval of others, self-respect, and recognition. Organisations could therefore introduce award ceremonies to recognise hardworking employees. Finally, at the top of the pyramid is self-actualisation which refers to an individual reaching their full potential and becoming valuable assets to the organisation. Maslow claimed that the lowest need at the bottom had to be fulfilled before the need above it and so on. According to Maslow, one needs to know where an employee is on the hierarchical pyramid in order for organisations to understand how to him or her and focus on meeting each of those needs at every level. Thus, if organisations want employees to reach their full potential and be creative at work, they would have to fulfil all the needs starting from the bottom of the pyramid.

Although Maslow’s theory has had a significant impact in the field of organisational behaviour, especially in terms in employee motivation, it is heavily criticised by various authors for several reasons, one of them being the lack of empirical data to support Maslow’s conclusions and measurement of satisfaction of an individual’s needs is not always possible. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory assumes that all employees are the same and have similar needs yet that is not the case, people are different, and some needs may be less important for some people and more important for others. According to some researchers, human needs may not necessarily follow a hierarchical order and before certain needs are satisfied or fulfilled, others may arise. It is important for organisations to look at the process theories that can help them examine how employees’ needs influence their behaviour and in turn how best to motivate them. One of the theories to aid in doing so is the cognitive evaluation theory.

The cognitive evaluation theory suggests that tangible or extrinsic rewards diminish feelings of autonomy or independence and further suggests that high levels of autonomy influence intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is described as employees doing a work-related activity because they are interested and gain satisfaction from while extrinsic motivation requires rewards both tangible and verbal not from the activity but from the results that the activity leads to. The theory assumes that employees need to feel autonomous and competent, therefore factors that promote autonomy and competence would enhance intrinsic motivation. The self-determination theory confirms the existence of these distinct types of motivation namely; intrinsic and extrinsic and both are important in determining the behaviour of human beings. The self-determination theory further distinguishes between controlled motivation and autonomous motivation. Controlled motivation is mainly comprised of external regulation which is considered the most extrinsic form of motivation. This type of motivation is due to direct external control where an individual does an activity explicitly for external rewards or fear of punishment. On the other hand, autonomous motivation is the type of motivation that describes behaviour that comes from internal sources and individuals act because they want to, they value and respect the reasons for their behaviour. Employees driven by autonomous motivation are associated with achievement, persistence and effort. Research has shown that employees found challenging activities increase autonomy and thus organisations could make work for employees more interesting and engaging by making it more challenging. According to, positive feedback facilitated intrinsic motivation and improved competence because it made people feel responsible for their good performance. Organisations could use this research to ensure positive feedback is given to employees to increase motivation.

However, the cognitive theory does not put into consideration that all employees work to earn money and therefore using monetary rewards as the main motivational strategy would appeal to most employees. The cognitive theory implies that managers ad researchers would have to focus on one type of motivation or the other. That is, either they promote intrinsic motivation through engagement and empowerment while minimizing extrinsic motivation or they focus on extrinsic motivation through rewards and ignore intrinsic motivation. The theory does not consider the fact that managers can use both types of motivations at the same time. Although the self-determination theory has a lot of empirical support, there are some debates and criticisms about it. For example, some researchers believe that autonomous motivation is less likely to be achieved in the work environment due to the focus on compensation and recognition at work. Other researchers also claim that the theory ignores the fact that extrinsic rewards given such as salaries, independent of tasks, do not necessarily undermine autonomous motivation as the theory suggests.

In relation to autonomous motivation, organisations can affect employees’ motivation through the job characteristics theory. Hackman & Oldman proposed that five characteristics enhance the motivational potential of jobs and are influential in job satisfaction and employee motivation. These characteristics include; skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and job feedback. This theory focuses on promoting internal motivation in employees through the development of skills, job feedback and offering employee independence and autonomy, freedom to make decisions and performance feedback. According to research by Gagne, job characteristics promote autonomous motivation in employees. However, the theory ignores how dynamic jobs and have become overtime leading to dynamic job characteristics that may vary across work situations. The theory also ignores the individual differences amongst employees and not all may react similarly to motivating job characteristics and these differences may moderate effects on employees.

Organisations can affect employees’ motivation by ensuring organisational justice to promote job satisfaction and motivation. Fair procedures and interventions in an organisation promote the perception of fairness and thus lead to work involvement and motivation.

The Equity theory affirms this by stating that individuals seek and value fairness in organisations. It further states that employees’ perception of inequity in payment on performance in comparison to other employees may lead to tension. Adding onto the equity theory, argued that the more monetary inducement is given to an employee, the more the employee reciprocates by being committed and motivated to the organisation. However, researchers have claimed that organisational justice and equity theory ignores that individual differences may lead to variance in perceptions about what employees think is ‘fair’ or influence their justice perceptions.

However, there are factors that affect employee motivation that organisations have no control over and one of these important factors is personality. The personality of employees is an influential factor in employee motivation. This is because people are different in some respects and therefore motivational strategies may not work on everyone in the same way. Researchers agree that there are individual differences in motivation, and this can be explained through the big five models. The model includes; Neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience. Extraversion represents the ability to be sociable, positive and dominant. Such people usually enjoy their jobs and are more likely to find them rewarding and are considered to respond to extrinsic motivation. Neuroticism represents being temperamental, anxious and having poor emotional stability. These individuals tend to be less goal-oriented, and competitive and may therefore be harder to motivate. Conscientiousness represents being organised, on time, task-focused and dependable. Researchers believe that this trait represents a work involvement tendency and is, therefore, more likely to respond to intrinsic motivation. It is important that organisations take employees’ personalities into account because they determine the work ethics of employees, engagement, efficiency and motivation.

Although personality is an important aspect to consider, the personality job fit theory offers a way for organisations to ensure compatibility between individuals and jobs or tasks. The theory states that a good fit between an individual’s traits and their job will lead to higher job satisfaction which will positively influence job performance. The basis of the theory is that if an individual’s personality and workplace fit, then they are more likely to engage in their work more and enjoy their jobs. The theory focuses on how individuals pick jobs or organisations based on access to rewards and their ability to satisfy their motivational needs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, organisations can affect employees’ motivation to a larger extent as shown by Research that has emphasized organisational success is strongly associated with employee motivation. Through intrinsic motivation, employees are able to be autonomous and independent which improves job satisfaction and organisational performance. However, to a smaller extent, organisations may not be able to affect employee motivation unless they consider personality when motivating employees. Different people have to be motivated differently in order for organisations to see results for example, conscientious people are more likely to respond to intrinsic motivation while extraverts are more likely to respond to extrinsic motivation and neurotic people may not be able to be motivated at all.

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