CyberSummary

NATURE OF HUMAN RELATIONS

What motivates employees to perform on the job is the focus of human relations, the study of the behavior of individuals and groups in organizational settings. The field of human relations has become increasingly important as businesses strive to understand how to motivate their increasingly diverse employees to be more effective, boost workplace morale, and maximize employees' productivity and creativity. Motivation is an inner drive that directs behavior toward goals. A goal is the satisfaction of some need, and a need is the difference between a desired state and an actual state. Motivation explains why people behave as they do. One important aspect of human relations is morale--an employee's attitude toward his or her job, employer, and colleagues. High morale contributes to high levels of productivity and employee loyalty; low morale may cause high rates of absenteeism and turnover (when employees quit or are fired and must be replaced by new employees).

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION

Throughout the twentieth century, researchers have conducted numerous studies to try to identify ways to motivate workers and increase productivity.

Time and motion studies conducted by Frederick W. Taylor and by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth at the turn of the century analyzed how workers perform specific work tasks in an effort to improve the employees' productivity. These efforts led to the application of scientific management, which focused on improving work methods, tools, and performance standards. According to the Classical theory of motivation, money is the sole motivator for workers. To improve productivity, Taylor thought that managers should break each job down into its component tasks (specialization), determine the best way to perform each task, and specify the output to be achieved by a worker performing the task. Taylor also believed that incentives motivate employees to be more productive. We can still see Taylor's ideas in practice today in the use of mathematical models, statistics, and incentives. Taylor and most early twentieth-century managers generally believed that money and job security were the primary motivators of employees.

In the Hawthorne studies, Elton Mayo and a team of researchers tried to determine what physical conditions in the workplace, such as light and noise levels stimulate employees to be most productive. Their studies revealed that social and psychological factors significantly affect productivity and morale and that managers who understand employees' needs, beliefs, and expectations are most successful in motivating them. The Hawthorne studies marked the beginning of a concern for human relations in the workplace.

THEORIES OF EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION

The research of Taylor, Mayo, and others led to the development of a number of theories that attempt to describe what motivates employees to perform. Among these are Maslow's hierarchy; Herzberg's two-factor theory; and the X, Y, Z, equity, and expectancy theories.

Abraham Maslow theorized that humans have five basic needs: physiological, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow's hierarchy shows the order in which people strive to satisfy these needs. Physiological needs, the most basic and first needs to be satisfied, are the essentials for living--water, food, shelter, and clothing. Once physiological needs have been met, people concentrate on security needs, the need to protect oneself from physical and economic harm. Next, people attempt to satisfy their social needs, the need for love, companionship, and friendship--the desire for acceptance by others. When social needs have been fulfilled, people try to satisfy esteem needs, which relate to self-respect and respect from others. Only after all the other needs have been satisfied do people strive for self-actualization needs, that is, being the best that one can be. Maslow's theory maintains that the more basic needs at the bottom of the hierarchy must be satisfied before higher-level goals are pursued. It also suggests that employees will be motivated to contribute to organizational goals only if they are able first to satisfy their physiological, security, and social needs through their work.

Psychologist Frederick Herzberg proposed a theory of motivation that focuses on the job and on the environment where work is done. Hygiene factors, which relate to the work setting, not to the content of the work, include adequate wages, comfortable and safe working conditions, fair company policies, and job security. These factors do not necessarily motivate employees to excel, but their absence may be a source of dissatisfaction for employees. They are similar to Maslow's physiological and security needs. Motivational factors; which relate to the content of the work itself, include achievement, recognition, involvement, responsibility, and advancement. Herzberg's motivational factors and Maslow's esteem and self-actualization needs are similar. Herzberg's theory implies that to improve productivity, management should try to satisfy workers' higher-level needs (motivational factors) by providing opportunities for achievement, involvement, and advancement and by recognizing good performance.

Douglas McGregor related Maslow's ideas about personal needs to management when he developed two contrasting views of management. Managers adopting Theory X assume that workers generally dislike work and must be forced to do their jobs. Theory X managers maintain tight control over workers, provide almost constant supervision, try to motivate through fear, make decisions in an autocratic fashion, and do not take into account employees' needs for companionship, esteem, and personal growth. Managers subscribing to the Theory Y view assume that workers like to work and that under proper conditions employees will seek out responsibility in an attempt to satisfy their social, esteem, and self-actualization needs. Theory Y managers maintain less control and supervision than do Theory X managers, do not use fear as a motivator, and are more democratic in decision making.

Theory Z, developed by William Ouchi, is a management philosophy that stresses employee participation in all aspects of company decision making. This theory incorporates many elements associated with the Japanese approach to management, such as trust and intimacy, but Japanese ideas have been adapted for use in the United States. In a Theory Z organization, managers and workers share responsibilities; the management style is participative; and employment is long-term and often lifelong.

Theory Z has been adapted and modified for use in a number of organizations. One adaptation involves workers in decisions through quality circles, which are small groups, usually having five to eight members who discuss ways to reduce waste, eliminate problems, and improve quality, communication, and work satisfaction. Even more involved are programs known by such terms as participative management, employee involvement, or self-directed work teams, which strive to give employees more control over their jobs while making them more responsible for the outcome of their efforts.

According to equity theory, how much people are willing to contribute to an organization depends on their assessment of the fairness, or equity, of the rewards they will receive in exchange. Each worker regularly develops a personal input-output ratio by taking stock of his or her contribution (inputs) to the organization in time, effort, shills, and experience and assessing the rewards (outputs) offered by the organization in pay, benefits, recognition, and promotions. The worker compares his or her ratio to the input-output ratio of some other person--a coworker, a friend working in another organization, or an "average" of several people working in the organization. If the two ratios are close, the individual will feel that he or she is being treated equitably. This theory implies that managers should try to avoid equity problems by ensuring that rewards are distributed on the basis of performance and that all employees clearly understand the basis for their pay and benefits.

Victor Vroom described expectancy theory, which states that motivation depends not only on how much a person wants something, but on the person's perception of how likely he or she is to get it.

STRATEGIES FOR MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES

Behavior modification, developed by B. F. Skinner, involves changing behavior and encouraging appropriate actions by relating the consequences of behavior to the behavior itself. Behavior that is rewarded will tend to be repeated; behavior that is punished will tend to be eliminated. Punishing behavior may provide quick results, but may lead to undesirable long-term side effects. Rewarding appropriate behavior is generally more effective in modifying behavior in the long run.

There are several strategies that managers may use to design jobs to promote employee motivation. Job rotation allows employees to move from one job to another to relieve boredom associated with specialization. Eventually, however, employees will become bored with all the tasks in the cycle. Job enlargement adds more tasks to a job instead of treating each task as a separate job. Its rationale is that jobs become more satisfying as the number of tasks performed increases. Job enrichment incorporates motivational factors, such as opportunity for achievement, recognition, responsibility, and advancement into a job. This strategy not only gives a worker more tasks but also more control and authority over the job.

Flexible scheduling strategies help managers deal with the problems of poor motivation and high absenteeism, as well as address the needs of a diverse work force. Flextime allows employees to choose their starting and ending work times as long as they are at work during a specified core time and work the specified number of hours. The compressed work week is a four-day (or shorter) period in which employees work 40 hours. Job sharing occurs when two people do one job. Other flexible scheduling strategies gaining in popularity are allowing full-time workers to work part time and allowing workers to work at home part time. Such flexible work schedules give more options to employees who are trying to juggle work and family responsibilities.

Motivation is not only a tool that managers can use to foster employee loyalty and boost productivity, but also a process that affects all the relationships within an organization and influences many areas such as pay, promotion, job design, training opportunities, and reporting relationships.