People as well as organizations are motivated to move from one status to another. This urge for advancement is the internal constrain that catalyzes human behaviours and growth. Trigger on human behaviours depends on the workplace inspirations. There is various motivation theories concern with interpreting how human beings behave at the workplace. Arguably there is need to understand the constraints affecting modern work-life and stress at the workplace.
The motivational theories may not be universally acceptable but they are important in studies concerning individual and organizational behaviour in modern workplaces. This paper addresses the effects of modernization at the workplace and its outcomes on individuals and organizations. How can the motivation be important on implementation of organization’s goals and addressing individuals’ needs especially in the twenty first century?
Introduction
Today’s business world requires employees who are ready to share knowledge. This has emerged as an urgent business need and a measure of maintaining high-level role of intelligence. The biggest challenge to the individual is the need brings about the individual obligation to be equipped with the latest technological sophistication.
Most work environments today are technologically oriented. There is however very little indication that majority of the companies or organizations are working to meet employee’s needs to motive them to achieve the organizations’ goals through assessing their behaviours. The firms expect employees to workout any newly implemented systems at their own peril and struggle.
Most managers are result oriented who lack consideration for their achievement. This leaves the employees with the task of figuring out how the new technology should workout.
Effects of Motivation Theories at the work place
The personal view of the workplace determines individuals’ behaviours during the process of undertaking a task. According to McGregor, the human elevation of entrepreneurship indicates that, some people have an inherent dislike of specific jobs or tasks and they literally try to avoid various chores, which seem stressful to them. As a result, this is a major impact on the organization’s social, cultural and economical growth. Another major impact of this notion is the effect of the individuals’ need to overcome or control the situation at hand.
An average human being would prefer guidance to making individual decisions rather that being responsible over bad decisions at the work place. Responsibility comes with the need to be ambitious other than rely on job security. This is not only an effect on the individual who lacks career and economical growth but also the organization. The organization run by low-minded individuals lack chances for economical growth.
The assumptions or arguments based upon this theory indicate the need for a managerial choice between tough administration and control or softness in governance to enhance harmony at the work place.
Today the latter situation merely exists, In line with McGregor (1984); this presumption does not bestow employees with the required high working motivation in the aim of fulfilling goals more than the need to ensure they receive financial remunerations. The employees behave in an unanticipated manner thus depriving the organization its goals.
The organization is capable of maximizing the potential of the employees by first addressing certain workplace conditions especially during the complex modern business world. Today people are not in a position to seek and accept responsibility as a way of achieving job or career satisfaction.
This is due to the huge work requirements and in-turn low returns. The organization can only receive commitment and good results if the employees involved feel satisfied and motivated. These problems at the work place are solvable through creativity, imagination and ingenuity, which in consideration are the drives towards accepting liability for development.
Proper treatment of the employees makes them to act by directing themselves towards commitments of the organizational goals, vision and mission. According to MaGrgor (1984), views over employees’ management, any member of staff is not ready to accept punishment in terms of poor working conditions or forceful control over performance.
The humble treatment by the employer towards the employees would sound ambiguous and unachievable particularly in large organizations. As much as it is effective in administrating managers or professionals due to its nature of conductively supporting participative problem solving procedures, it can work for junior employees as well.
Modern work places are full of commanding managers who want to exercise their authoritative rights thus offending and depressing the junior workers most of whom would be humble in fear of accusations over insubordination. This major effect comes about because today’s employees lack of security in the work force. The job that one does is the only security thus the fear for losing it. The blame would be the low rates of returns. The income has various deductions to a point of denying the earner a chance for personal investment.
People have endless need or urge to control others and this can lead to misery or failure in the workplace. It is very crucial to assign responsibilities in order to control tasks. One person is not supposed to control everything in the organization. The power distribution strategy promotes growth due to proper decision-making procedures.
In most work places today, the consultation of general employees over problem solving occur only when it is the last and only option especially when the required information is technical in nature. Employees feel emotionally important and positively motivated towards their jobs if consulted over issues affecting the organization especially when it concerns their lines of duty.
In the modern life, technology advancement, require quick upgrading of personal skills. This issue make most managers to feel threatened by other junior staff over their job titles. ( Reitman and Schneer, 2008) Research has indicated this as a major source of conflicts and disagreements over desirable results of a task.
This situation mostly affects the organization’s growth because of managers abandoning the most desirable results as irrelevant since they pose as challenges over their careers. According to McGregor (1984), proper management calls for requesting explanations over complex matters or issues at hand for full understanding of purpose of action. This procedure put forth the character-trends and empowerment for improved working methods. (McGregor, 1984)
Improved results in the workforce are achievable if employees are elevated to a view of being in charge and having a respectable and important position along the management hierarchy. His is termed as “participative management of problems solving” which is evidently better compared to the authoritarian system of leadership.
According to McGregor (1984), Staff members only contribute towards the organization’s growth if the managerial treatment indicates responsibility and value of the employees.
Effects and outcomes of stress in the workplace on individuals
Today, people are fighting to achieve or seek excellence and appreciation over their offers to the organization. The overtime experiences are the determinant forces over human needs. By nature, majority of people are high achievers seeking excellence, frequent recognition and appreciation. Unlike the olden days, today’s employees are not ready to take the significant risks, which have high chances of career gain.
Secondly, human needs require them to search for affiliation to harmonize relationships with others and create compliance with instances that assist them to stand out from the crowd. Some people will shy away from seeking approval and recognition form fellow workmates but will rather try to find relationship that harmonize their association with others.
Today’s work setting has created power seekers who aim at controlling others and seeking higher achievement in the administration ladder without considering professional achievements. The need to achieve higher power control or higher career goals calls for one to hunt for agreement and compliance among fellow employees or management. If people try to understand the need for professional experience, then they appreciate their social, educational and the category, which they belong to and this would enable them curb the excessive personal predispositions at the workplace. (Maslow, 1987)
Than logical facts, personal feeling affects thoughts of people at the work place. If initiated, the personal feelings tend to stick because they are independent of facts and evidences. They are emotional preferences, which tend to stay put even when the original thoughts are invalid of the situation at hand.
The managers ought to initiate some rational or logical sense into the employee to get them emotionally involved or engaged in a task. The establishment of emotions leads to removal or ignorance of the rational thoughts yet the rationality behind one’s feelings plays an important role in reasoning.
Research indicates that personal attitudes and behaviours at work are the root cause of uncharacteristic behaviours at the work place. It is rare to find someone who has positive attitude towards work. The attitude mainly lowers self-motivation and disfigures key organizational goals or mission.
If constrained to specific circumstances, attitudes deteriorate consistency, social desirability and personal experiences. It is important for managers to monitor such reactions or behaviours other than assuming that the attitude would workout to the desired performance. According to Maslow, (1987), the undesired attitude often causes confusion at the work place.
People at the work place will behave as though the challenges involved do not belong to them. Attributing the cause of events in the workplace creates a big sense of control. Today the workplace is full of the blame game because of the habit of attributing the problems to internal and external factors.
A person will blame the internal personality factors or the external factors when the errors seem to incline to their side. This is a personal trait, which if not curbed, can cause the organization to suffer from economically stunted growth. For instance if a team wins in a competition, the supporters will state, “we won” while when the team loose they say “they lost” and not “we lost” or they say “the other team won”. Naturally, no one wants to say we lost. Emotional and motivational factors drive the personal attributions.
People often face with the challenge of having internal over external attributes. Making internal attributions about others within the organization damages the trust among employees. The repetitive problem leads to cognitive dissonance of an organization sticks when the blame persists. People can only take care of these vice if they are in position to eliminate the incorrect attributions. (Maslow, 1987)
In the world of technology, the difference of opinion usually referred to as dissonance, is a powerful motivator which enables us to change conflicting believes or actions. Dissonance creates a feeling of painful tension due to conflicting thoughts.
It solely depends on the importance of the subject matter, amount of tension on the dissonant mind and the inability to rationally control and resolve the conflict. People will have a strong dissonance when the personal believe is strong and they act centrally to that believe. Cognitive dissonance is a strong central mechanism appearing in most situations and it increases with importance or impact of the decision, which in most cases is difficult to reverse.
The feeling of uneasiness in the workplace ought to send aside so that the affected can find persuasive ways to change believes personal values, attitudes and behaviours. (Maslow, 1987) When personal inner feelings are in alignment, then it is easy for one to achieve a comfortable condition. In order to control conflicts in an organization, one would deny, ignore and rationalize excuses over performance.
Other ways of controlling the conflicting situations may include separating entities, transcendence, changing the entities or persuading. There is need for managers to show how the conflict may affect other important social norms of the organization. The commonness of inconsistency today calls for deeper thoughts regarding other people’s potential ability in the workplace with relation to the undertaken task. (Romando, 2007)
The other burning issue in the work place involves setting goals. The employees find set goals they might not be able to achieve. They need to be involved so that they participate in laying down understandable, unambiguous but challenging, and achievable goals.
In relation to Romando (2007), organizational goals include directional objectives in which case motivation aims at arriving to particular conclusions. Organizational goals enable employees and employers to narrow down their differences to think over and support a conclusion. People become optimistic on the subject of achieving goals when deliberation is non-existent.
Such a setting creates motivation due to the anticipated ability to arrive to a possible conclusion that supports advancement especially when the cost of being inaccurate seems to be very high. Unpredictably, investors are willing to invest more if the efforts are inclining to high and accurate goals.
The organization’s chances of advancement depend upon influences over choices concerning beliefs and decision-making regulations. Accurateness of goals causes complex responses thus making people to think purposefully about their actions. According to Romando in 2007, personal preference entails the ultimate choice.
While probing Maslow’s work Romando (2007) explained that, Maslow’s research over human behaviours in the workplace explains the ERG management theory. It is a satisfactory theory that examines organizational leadership style from a humanistic philosophical perspective.
“Abraham Maslow, author of Motivation and Personality, views people from a holistic perspective and delineates a hierarchy of human needs as physiological, safety, esteem, self-actualization, belongingness and love. This he simplified into three sets of needs: Existence, Relatedness and Growth (hence ‘ERG’).”
People need to seek social growth at their work places because this is the basis for creativity and hence the organization is physical, social, cultural and economical growth. Social growth also enhances the sense of completeness and fulfilments. (Romando, 2007)
Conclusion over Job Satisfaction
Current stress or stains at the workplace build up due to inefficient job satisfaction. The situation may be caused by the overall degradation of the economy thus the financial strains among organizations, low income, low resources, high rates of conflicts among workers, poor decision making procedures, fear for break-down and job dissatisfaction.
Reduction of stain entails achieving satisfaction or changing the approaches used towards work. “People either take work as a job mainly for financial rewards but not interest, as a career where interest is advancement on the career ladder or as a calling where the focus is on the work itself other than advancement or financial fulfilment.”
People should gather some good behavioural patters such as having mechanisms for improving personal skills, coming up with personal projects and enhancing good rapport with co-workers to gain knowledge and encounter new challenges.
There is urgent need for people to learn the concepts of braking job monotony such as engaging in volunteer work to meet new challenges and make best out of the difficulties encountered as a way of managing stress. (MFMER, 2006)
Today’s challenges involve the turbulence on careers which often involve changes of employers, location, and occupation. In line with Reitman and Schneer (2008), emphasis for better stress free work environments depends on organizational governance or accountability.
The global economy remains competitive, the technology pervasively require advancement; knowledge-based firms continue to mutate thus the needs for dynamism in the workforce. “In order to support individual behaviours organizations should embrace the realities of 21st century careers and recognize the importance of programs and policies that enable the careers of their employees such as part-time options, job sharing, free-time, and telecommuting.” (Summers and Hyman, 2005)
References
Mayo foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER). (2006). Web.
McGregor, D. (1984) the Human Side of Enterprise. McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Web.
Maslow, A. (1987). Motivation and Personality (third edition). HarperCollins College Div.
Reitman, F. and Schneer, J. (2008). Enabling the new careers of the 21st century. Organization Management Journal. Web.
Romando, R. (2007). Motivation Theory. Web.
Summers, J and Hyman, J. (2005). Employee participation and company Performance: Joseph rowntree foundation. Web.