Introduction to Motivation

Organizations are made of people. Organizations have to be concerned with what should be done to accomplish sustained levels of performance through people. This makes it necessary to assigning close attention to make sure how individual can best be motivated through such means as incentives, rewards, leadership and the work they do and organizational context within which they carry out the work. The objective of developing a suitable motivational atmosphere is to make sure that the people in the organization are sufficiently motivated to deliver performance in agreement with the expectations of the management. Various models suggest that motivation is started by the conscious or unconscious recognition of unsatisfied needs. This need will lead to the need for achieving something that satisfies the needs. Goals are decided and Behavior pathway is selected which will achieve the goal. If the goal is achieved, the need will be satisfied and the goal directed Behavior is likely to be expected for satisfying the same needs later.

Motivation is a process, which explains an individual’s intensity, direction and persistency of efforts towards achieving a goal. This is one of the most common researched topics in Organizational Behavior. We can call motivation as a fluid subject and therefore there is a necessity to motivate employees continuously with more innovative ways from time to time. Hence, history tells us development of several motivation theories. Maybe each one of them has a background or an environment in which it has been successful under the circumstances. There are two types of motivation:

• Intrinsic Motivation: It points to self, generated factors that influence people to behave in a particular way or to move in a particular direction. These factors include responsibility, freedom to act, scope to use and develop skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work, opportunities for advancement etc.
• Extrinsic Motivation: Efforts made by others to motivate people. This may be e.g.: reward, punishment, appreciation etc.