BE951
Research Methods and Methodologies in Accounting and Management
COURSEWORK ONE
Using a topic from the attached list, develop a fully justified research question and objectives.
Your answer should review the relevant literature in the field, explain how your research
question fits into that literature, and explain the need for, and importance of, your proposed
research.
Topic:
Motivation In The 21st Century—–Are People really Motivated?
Introduction
People get stimulated into achieving certain objectives and goals for self satisfaction, recognition, pleasure, wealth and so on. This is known as motivation. Motivation could be done through giving of incentives, increase in employees pay, commission, work recognition and so on. In corporate environment, it is a major role of managers to ensure that they create a desire within their employees to bring out the best of their efforts in the workplace for the accomplishment of the company’s goals. Since the late 60’s till date, various researchers have given different motivational theories on how individual in a workplace can be motivated. Scholars like McGregor and Maslow are of the opinion that what can motivate a man is self actualization while Taylor.F.suggested that work remuneration is the main motivator to make people work faster and better. However, in the 21st century, it is believed that motivation lost its relevance in organization and researchers such as Seivers (1986), Linstead.et.al (2009) andSchermerhorn.et.al (2004) criticized the works of the older scholars. The objectives of this research work are to:
The Research paper on Individual Work Motivation
Be it a multi-national company or a small superstore right down the corner of your house, motivated and energetic employees are a pre-requisite everywhere in order to reach the zenith of excellence, success and prosperity. In accordance with a research paper rooting out from The Ohio State University’s Piketon Research and Extension Center and Enterprise Center, enthusiastic employees are ...
1. To differentiate motivation as an encouragement or manipulation.
2. Understand if people are motivated in the same way.
3. How relevant job design is to motivation.
4. Ascertain if people really motivated at work.
Literature Review
In the1960’s, Employers were faced with the major role of ensuring that their employees were happy and all stimulated to work at all times. The traditional definition of motivation was aimed to create satisfaction for their employees at their respective place of work. F.Taylor, a researcher in the 1960’s suggested that worker’s pay was the ultimate motivator for any individual. Some researchers were of the opinion that if the needs of employees are identified, Mangers can influence this needs to bring out the best performance from the employee. In the 1970’s, workers became more involved in the organization thereby paving way for democracy in organizations. The reinvention of the early theories took place between the 1980’s and 1990’s bringing in the use of teamwork, employee empowerment, culture promotion and enhancement of the quality of the management.
At the dawn of the millennium (Year 2000), the rise of a new economy came into reality accompanied with the development of intellectual capital and knowledge management (Howe 1997).
Management started viewing motivation as a strategy to challenge the worker to work more and increase the performance of the organization there by manipulating the workers under the influence of motivating them.
Motivation As Encouragement or Manipulation
One of the concepts of motivation was primarily to meet the needs of workers so that they may in turn work efficiently and improve the overall performance of the organization whilst gaining satisfaction. According to Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs, this says that individual motivating factor is self-actualization, responsibility and achievement.However, Seivers (1986:357) argued that it appears to him that Maslow’s notion of self actualization was never used in management and organization theory. This can be seen in various workplaces today, employees cannot act on their own and gain self achievement. Rather, the management use motivation as a means to exert power and force in a subtle manner (Linstead et.al 2009: 411-12).In this context, motivation as a weapon of manipulation is very apparent
The Essay on The Central Principles of Scientific Management, Human Relations and the Socio-Technical Perspective on Work-Organization
1. Introduction Management on work-organization embraces various processes, procedures and practice, including theories, tasks and roles of management, together with rational analysis and other decision-making and etc., aiming to gain the more effectiveness and efficiency of organization as a final goal. The theories of management is the basic knowledge that we should well master first in order to ...
Motivation In The Present Day Organization.
Motivation in the contemporary workplace seeks to use the cotent theories which assumes that everyone has similar need that can be met with one motivating factor. Though we have some similarities between this the various motivational theories, what may motivate employee “A” may not motivate employee “B”. Factors such as life experience, culture, gender, age differ between individuals (Linstead et.al.2009:465).
This poses a problem for the organization because people are not motivated in the same way and for those
who are motivated, are they really motivated?
Influence Of Job Design In Motivation
Linstead.et.al (2009; 411) suggested that, “Motivation theories have been dominated by two approaches: Developing individual performance-based schemes to reward organizational members and designing work to increase performance outcomes for the organization and hopefully for the individual”. This led to another question—is job design relevant for motivation? Researches made on job design show us that motivation can be influenced by a good job design. However, for job design to motivate workers, it must put certain factor into consideration such as politics at work, emotional labour, and trust to get work done easily.
The Review on Does Intrinsic Or Extrinsic Motivation Work?
Introduction There are various types of rewards to motivate employees in today’s workforce. Organizations are interested in understanding the ways to recognize and reward employees so as to sustain and improve employee’s performance in the long run. Hence, the research question that our group came up with would be: “Does extrinsic rewards motivate people?” The objective of the report aims to ...
Relevance Of Motivation In The 21st Century
As suggested by Culbert and McDonough 1985:126,”managers often use motivation in talking about tactics, strategies, inducement they can use in motivating a subordinate in directions they see important to their organization’s program”. In this context, managers do not regard man as a human being but rather a machine that can be manipulated to achieve their own goals. However, the reason why some individuals still go to work is because they want to get a survival and not that they are actually committed to the work or care about what factor motivates them or not. This arouses the following research questions:
1. Do people really get motivated at work?
2. Do people get motivated in similar ways?
3. What is the influence of job design on motivation?
Conclusion
Motivation can be seen in the above discussion as a mean to an end for the managers. The first paragraph focused on motivation as a means to manipulating their employee. Workers are not given the opportunity to work independently and assume some certain responsibility in an organization. Secondly, Due to the perception of the different individuals in an organization, the way people get motivated differs and this is going to make it difficult for the organization to motivate employees at the same time. Thirdly, Job design without some basic social factors such as organizational politics, interaction with employees might not successfully motivate employees. Finally, Man works just to earn a living- survival and does not care if he is motivated at work or not.
This research work will be of great importance because it will help to build a good level of confidence that the employees will have in their employers. Also, this research work will help management improve in the various ways in responsibilities are delegated and will help to increase the level of employee participation in organizations which can be done by introducing a good and credible job designs in the organization.
Biblograghy
Culbert, S. and Mcdonough, J. J., 1985. Power, Politics and the Pursuit of Trust. The Free Press, New York
Herzberg, F., 2008. One More Time, How You Motivate Employees, Harvard Business Review. 4 (6) 1986, Pg 496.
The Essay on Motivational Plan Employees Organization Operational
... motivations of today's diverse work force. No single factor or incentive is sufficient in satisfying all employees. A manager's role in the organization ... lucrative way for managers to motivate their employees is through an operational motivation plan. The An Operational ... An Operational Motivational Plan 4 SS Design employee development activities Analyze employee development needs (e. g. ; training, ...
Howe,S. and Strauss,W.,1997.The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. Broadway Books, New York.
Linstead, S.,L.Fulop and S.Lilley,2009.Management and Organization: A Critical Text, 2nd Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Seivers, B., 1986.Beyond the Surrogate of Motivation: Organizational Studies. Pg 335-351
