UNIT 2.

WORK AND MOTIVATION

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After you have read and studied this unit, you should be able to
 Discuss the importance of motivation.
 Compare and then summarize various theories of motivation.
 Know how to motivate people in specific situations.

KEY TERMS

Motivation: factors that influence the behavior of workers towards achieving business goals.
Motivation can be increased by:
a. monetary rewards
b. non-monetary rewards
c. introducing ways to give job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction: The enjoyment a worker gets from feeling that they have done a good job.
There are three ways to motivate workers to be more committed to their job and work more
effectively:
Job rotation (swapping workers round and only doing a specific task for a limited
time before swapping round again).
Job enlargement (extra tasks are added to the job to make it more interesting)
Job enrichment (adding tasks that require more skill and/or responsibility)

Theory X: The average person does not like work. Workers must be constantly supervised so
they will work. Motivation is from external factors, e.g. pay schemes where the workers are
paid more for increased output.

Theory Y: The average person is motivated by internal factors. To motivate workers, you
need to find ways to help workers take an interest in their work, e.g. give rewards, incentives.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs: A theory of motivation which states that five categories of
human needs dictate an individual's behavior. Those needs are physiological needs, safety
needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.

Frederick Herzberg’s motivation theory: Humans have two sets of needs: one is for the
basic needs, which he called hygiene factors or needs, and the second is for a human being to
be able to grow psychologically, which he called motivational needs or motivators.

Hygiene factors: The factors that must be present in the workplace to prevent job
dissatisfaction.

LEAD- IN
One of the most important responsibilities of a manager is to motivate the people who
report to him. But how? What kinds of things motivate you?
Which of the following factors would be important for you in your choice of a job?
Classify them in order of importance.
 o good remuneration (salary, commission, bonuses, perks) good working
relations with your line
o manager and colleagues
o good working conditions (a large, light, quiet office; efficient
secretaries)
o job security
o the possibility of promotion
o a challenging job
o responsibility
o contact with people
o a belief in what the organization does a job in which you can make a
difference
o opportunities to travel (business class!)
o long holidays/vacations

Discussion: Attitudes to work

Which of the following statements do you agree with?

1. People dislike work and avoid it if they can.

2. Work is necessary to people's psychological well-being.
3. People avoid responsibility and would rather be told what to do.
4. People are motivated mainly by money.
5. Most people are far more creative than their employers realize.
6. People are motivated by fear of losing their job.
7. People want to be interested in their work and, given the right
conditions, they will enjoy it.
8. Under the right conditions, most people will accept responsibility and
will want to realize their own potential.

READING 1
Theory X and Theory Y
The statements on the previous page can be separated into two groups reflecting two very
different ways in which employers can treat their employees. Douglas McGregor, an American
expert on the psychology of work, summarized these two approaches and named them Theory X
and Theory Y. Read the text below and classify the statements according to which theory they
support.
Statement 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Theory

In The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor outlined two opposing theories of work
and motivation. What he calls Theory X is the rather pessimistic approach to workers and
working which assumes that people are lazy and will avoid work and responsibility if they can.
Consequently, workers have to be closely supervised and controlled, and told what to do. They
have to be both threatened, for example with losing their job, and rewarded with incentives,
probably monetary ones such as a pay rise or bonuses. Theory X assumes that most people are
incapable of taking responsibility for themselves and have to be looked after. It has traditionally
been applied, for example, by managers of factory workers in large-scale manufacturing.
Theory Y, on the contrary, assumes that most people have a psychological need to work, and
given the right conditions - job security, financial rewards - they will be creative, ambitious and
self-motivated by the satisfaction of doing a good job. Theory Y is probably more applicable to
skilled professionals and what Peter Drucker called “knowledge workers” - managers,
specialists, programmers, scientists, engineers - than people in unskilled jobs.
McGregor's two theories are based on Abraham Maslow's famous “hierarchy of needs”. Theory
X relates to the basic, lower order' needs at the bottom of the hierarchy, such as financial
security, while Theory Y relates to “higher order” needs such as esteem (achievement, status and
responsibility) and self-actualization (personal growth and fulfilment) that can be pursued if
basic needs are satisfied.
McGregor is widely considered to have laid the foundations for the modern people-centred view
of management. However, Maslow spent a year studying a Californian company that used
Theory Y, and concluded that there are many people who are not looking for responsibility and
achievement at work. There will always be people with little self-discipline, who need security
and certainty and protection against the burden of responsibility, so it is impossible to simply
replace the “authoritarian” Theory X with the “progressive” Theory Y.
Comprehension
Read the text again and answer these questions.
1. According to Theory X, why do employees have to be closely controlled?
2. According to Theory Y, why should employers give their workers responsibilities?
3. Why did Maslow criticize Theory Y?
READING 2
'Satisfiers' and 'motivators'
Another well-known theorist of the psychology of work, Frederick Herzberg, has argued that
good working conditions are not sufficient to motivate people. Read the text and find out why.
It is logical to suppose that things like good labour relations, good working conditions, job
security, good wages, and benefits such as sick pay, paid holidays and a pension are incentives
that motivate workers. But in The Motivation to Work, Frederick Herzberg argued that such
conditions - or 'hygiene factors' - do not in fact motivate workers. They are merely 'satisfiers' -
or, more importantly, 'dissatisfiers' where they do not exist. Workers who have them take them
for granted. As Herzberg put it, 'A reward once given becomes a right.' 'Motivators', on the
contrary, include things such as having a challenging and
interesting job, recognition and responsibility, promotion,
and so on. Unless people are motivated, and want to do a
good job, they will not perform well. However, there are
and always will be plenty of boring, repetitive and
mechanical jobs, and lots of unskilled workers who have to
do them. How can managers motivate people in such jobs?
One solution is to give them some responsibilities, not as
individuals but as part of a team. For example, some
supermarkets combine office staff, the people who fill the
shelves, and the people who work on the checkout tills into
a team and let them decide what product lines to stock, how
to display them, and so on. Other employers encourage job
rotation, as doing four different repetitive jobs a day is better than doing only one. Many people
now talk about the importance of a company's shared values or corporate culture, with which all
the staff can identify: for example being the best hotel chain, or hamburger restaurant chain, or
airline, or making the best, safest, most user-friendly, most ecological or most reliable products
in a particular field. Unfortunately, not all the competing companies in an industry can seriously
claim to be the best.
Comprehension
1. Are these sentences TRUE or FALSE?
a. Herzberg argued that ‘hygiene factors’ motivate workers.
b. Challenging jobs and responsibility are hygiene factors.
c. Some unskilled jobs will always be boring and repetitive.
d. Workers might be motivated by having responsibilities as part of a team.
e. Job rotation can make a day’s work more interesting.
f. You can always motivate workers by telling them that they work for the best company in the
field.
2. Find the words in the text that mean the following.

a. interactions between employers and employees, or managers and workers

b. knowing that there is little risk of losing one's employment
c. money paid (per hour or day or week) to manual workers
d. advantages that come with a job, apart from pay
e. things that encourage people to do something
f. to be raised to a higher rank or better job
g. without any particular abilities acquired by training
h. regularly switching between different tasks
i. a company’s shared attitudes, beliefs, practices and work relationships

CASE STUDY 1
Patel Fashions is a retail business which sells women's clothes. It employs 15
sales staff who work in the shop and five more who work in the offices.
There is one shop manager who is in charge of the business. Each of the
sales staff has a specific job and they only do this one task. For example,
some just serve customers at the pay desk, some look after the fitting room,
and others look after the clothes on display. Employees keep leaving and the
shop manager regularly has to advertise for new employees. 'I do not like
having to spend so much time interviewing applicants for sales assistant
jobs. I wish the employees would not keep leaving,' said Marie, the shop
manager.
a. Discuss the different financial and non-financial benefits the store manager could use to
improve motivation at the shop, in order to prevent workers from leaving so regularly. Which
would be the best method for her to employ and why?
b. Would job rotation be the best method for Marie to use in order to increase job satisfaction?
Explain your answer.
c. State which management style you would suggest for Theory X managers and Theory Y
managers. Explain your choice.

CASE STUDY 2
The senior managers of Farook Fashions (FF) are concerned about the fall in
productivity at one of its factories - Factory A. The company’s Fluman
Resources Director has produced the following data for last year.
Factory A Average for
FF’s other
factories
Average weekly productivity per 220 350
worker
Average number of days’ absence per 19 8
worker
The number of workers left 40 18
Average weekly wage $126 $125

Factory A employs 500 workers and is the oldest of FF’s factories. Workers in
Factory A have often complained to the factory manager about their poor
working conditions compared to workers in FF’s other factories.
In a recent meeting when this issue was raised again, the factory manager
said: ‘I do not understand why you keep complaining about working
conditions. You all have well-paid jobs. All factories are noisy and dirty
places, this one is no different.’ This was a typical comment from a manager
who was not very well liked by the workers. Fie never showed any interest in
them. The only time he spoke to them was to give orders or to tell them off
for breaking one of the many rules he had introduced when he became
manager 20 years ago.
1. Identify two factors that suggest workers in Factory A are less well motivated than in
FF’s other factories.
2. Calculate the percentage of workers who left Factory A in the last year.
3. Do you think that money is the cause of poor motivation at Factory A? Justify your
answer.
 4. How might the senior managers at FF use Herzberg’s two-factor theory to improve
productivity at Factory A?

VOCABULARY

EXERCISE 1. Complete the text using the verbs in the box:

achieve actualize avoid earn
exist expect maximize perform
pursue require reward set
One of the most important elements of any manager’s job is to motivate his or her subordinates
to do their jobs well and to be productive. Two very well-known theories of motivation among
managers are those of Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg.
In Motivation and Personality (1954), Maslow identified what he considered to be a hierarchy of
basic human needs and classified them under five headings. First come physiological needs such
as food, water, air and sleep. If these needs are not satisfied, people will not (1) ……………….
other needs. The second category is security needs: clothing, shelter, the necessity to be free
from danger and physical pain, and - most relevant to management - to be free from the threat of
losing one’s job.
Where these first two categories of needs are satisfied, people feel social needs: to belong to a
group, to be liked and loved and accepted by others. Next come esteem needs: people do not
only want to be accepted, they want to have self-respect and to be esteemed by others. Maslow
believes that people all (2) ………………. power and status, respect and self-confidence.
The fifth and highest category concerns self-actualization needs: the desire to develop as a
person, to (3) ………………. one’s potential, and to (4) ………………. the goals one has (5)
………………. for oneself. According to Maslow, employees will only be motivated if they are
able to realize their goals (concerning creativity, responsibility or whatever) through their work.
As a need is satisfied, it becomes less important. For example, the more money one has, the less
motivating it is to (6) ………………. more - although of course this doesn’t stop people
wanting it! In fact, pay becomes a social or psychological matter rather than an economic one.
When needs are satisfied, their capacity to (7) ………………. and to act as an incentive
diminishes. In Work and the Nature of Man (1966), Frederick Herzberg argued that things like
good salaries and fringe benefits, job security, status, good company administration and labor
relations, cannot motivate workers. They are merely “satisfiers” or, more importantly,
“dissatisfiers” where they do not (8) ………………. “Motivators”, on the contrary, include
things such as having a challenging or interesting job, recognition, responsibility, promotion, and
so on.

Clearly, not everybody in manufacturing industry or routine service industry jobs can (9)
………………. challenging and interesting work or promotion to the highest positions of
responsibility. For this reason, many people have disputed Maslow’s theory. For example, self-
realization and self-actualizing needs are probably far more prominent among university
graduates and at higher levels of a company than at lower levels, where social and security
needs, and even a desire to (10) ………………. responsibility, might be dominant. Not
everybody can (11) ………………. himself or herself at work. Yet even workers who cannot be,
or do not want to be, involved in planning, decision-making, controlling and organizing, can be
given a variety of tasks, rather than be expected to (12) ………………. the same boring,
repetitive, mechanical task eight hours a day or more.
According to the text, are the following statements TRUE or FALSE?
1. The possibility of losing their job generally motivates people to work harder.
2. Workers need to be accepted and respected by their colleagues and superiors.
3. After a certain point, people are no longer motivated by money.
4. According to Maslow, a good working environment will motivate and fulfil employees.
5. According to Herzberg, providing good working • conditions is unnecessary.
6. Educated people are more likely to want to achieve things in their jobs.
7. Managers have to ensure that everybody has an interesting job.
8. Switching among several boring, repetitive tasks is better than doing only one.
EXERCISE 2. Read the text then answer the questions below.

The work of Maslow and Herzberg has been developed info the theory of 'job enrichment'.
This theory states that there are five characteristics affecting an individual's motivation and
performance:
1. Skill variety. The extent to which a job demands different skills.
2. Task identity. The degree to which a job has a visible outcome.
3. Task significance. The degree to which a job has an impact on the work of others.
4. Autonomy. The degree of freedom and choice that people have in scheduling work and
determining procedures.
5. Feedback. The amount of direct and dear information that is received about
performance.
The first three factors above contribute to the meaningfulness of the job. The fourth gives a
feeling of responsibility. The fifth contributes to a feeling of achievement and recognition. Job
enrichment tries to maximize the above five factors Within the constraints of the organization.
It also includes two specific strategies:
 job enlargement -- combining a series of tasks into one challenging and interesting
assignment
 job rotation - moving employees from one job to another.

Find a word in the text which means:

1. making something better and more enjoyable ____________
2. result ____________
3. power to make independent decisions ____________
4. quality of being serious, useful and important ____________
5. making something bigger ____________
6. piece of work that you must do as part of your job or course of study ____________

EXERCISE 3. Study the collocations related to decision making. Check any

unknown words in a dictionary.
achieve, define, establish, fail in, fall short of, fulfil, an objective
identify, meet, reach, set
address, cause, clear up, create, deal with, a problem
give rise to, handle, overcome, resolve, solve, tackle
accept, agree to / with, come up with, make, offer, put a suggestion
forward, reject, rule out, take up, turn down
arrive at, come to, defer, make, overrule, overturn, a decision
postpone, put off, reach, reverse, take
collective, critical, crucial, difficult, hard, important, decision
joint, key, major, tough, unanimous
 anticipated, desirable, eventual, expected, favorable, outcome

final, likely, satisfactory, successful

Now divide the words in each box into three groups, based on their meaning.

achieve, meet, define, identify, fail in, fall short an objective

reach, fulfill establish, set of

a problem

a suggestion

a decision

decision

outcome

UNIT REVIEW
1. What is a motivation?
2. What are the most common ways to increase a worker’s motivation? Give examples of
monetary and nonmonetary rewards.
3. What is job satisfaction?
4. How can companies raise job satisfaction of their workers?
5. Distinguish Theory X and Theory Y
6. What are hygiene factors?
7. Describe briefly Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

REFERENCES

1. Mackenzie, I, 2010, English for Business Studies, Cambridge University Press.

2. Borrington, K, Stimpson, P, 2018, Business Studies, Cambridge University Press.
3. Nickles, W.G, McHugh, J.M, McHugh, S.M, 2019, Understanding Business, Mc
Graw Hill Education.
4. Emmerson, P, 2007, Business English Handbook Advanced, Macmillan
Education.

5. Mackenzie, I, 1997, Management and Marketing, Thomson.