Motivation and engagement in theory

FW Taylor (1856-1917) - American.

Taylor believed that people work for only one reason: money. He saw it as the task of the manager to devise a system that would maximise efficiency. This would generate the profit to enable the worker to be paid a higher wage. 

Taylor's influence stemmed less from his theories than his activities, his methods were:

• Observe workers at work, recording & timing what they do, and how long they take to do it. 
• Identify the most efficient workers and see how they achieve greater efficiecy. 
• Break the task down into small components parts that can be done quickly & repeatedly (high division of labour).
• Devise equipment specifically to speed up tasks. 
• Set out exactly how the work should be done in the future. 
• Devise a pay scheme to reward those who complete or break output targets, but that penalises those who cannot or will not achieve the productivity Taylor believed was possible - piece rate. 

Abraham Maslow (1908-70) - American psychologist. 

Implications for business. 

• Physical needs - pay levels and working conditions
• Safety neds - job security, job role/description, clear lines of accountability 
• Social needs -Team working, communication, social facilities
• Esteem needs - Status, recognition for achivement, power, trust
• Self actualisation - Scope to develop new skills & meet new challenges, develop potential. 

He argued that there were certain factors that a business could introduce that would directly motivate employees to work harder (motivators). However there were also factors that would de-motivate an employee if not present but would not in themselves actually motivate employees to work harder (hygiene factors).

Motivators are concerned with the actual job itself. For instance how interesting the work is and how much opportunity it gives for extra responsibility, recognition and promotion. Hygiene factors are factors which 'surround the job' rather than the job itself. For example a worker will only turn up to work if a business has provided a reasonable level of pay and safe working conditions but these factors will not make him work harder at his job.

Some of the methods managers could use to achieve this are:

• Job enlargement - workers being given a greater variety of tasks to perform whoch should make the work more interesting. 
• Job enrichment - invloves workers being given a wider range of more complex and challenging tasks surrounding a complete unit of work - sense of acheivement. 
• Empowerment - Delegating more power to employees to make thier own decisions over areas of their working life. 

Most people believe that motivation is as much about psychology as money. One of the reasons why Herzberg's work had such an impact on business is because he not only analysed motivation, he also had a method of improving it. This method is job enrichment, which he defined as 'giving people the opportunity to use their ability'. He suggested that, for a job to be enriched it would contain the following.

A complete unit of work. People need to work not on just a small repetitive fragmet of a job, but on a full challenging job. 

Direct feedback. A job should enable the worker to judge immediately the wuality of what she or he has done; direct feedback gives the worker the satisfaction of knowing exactly how well they have performed. Annual appraisal is too delayed. 

Direct communication. For people to feel committed, in control and to gain direct feedback, they should communicate directly - avoiding the delays of communicating via a supervisor or a 'contact person'. This leads to an important conclusion: that communications and motivation are interrelated. 

Herzberg's original research has been followed up in many different countries, including Japan, Africa and Russia. This led companies such as Volvo in Sweden and Toyota in Japan to rethink their factory layouts. Instead of workers doing simple, repetitive tasks, the drive was to provide more complete units of work. 

As with all theories, both Maslow and Herxberg have their critics. With Maslow, the questions concern the existance of any heirarchy. Yet the 5 sets of needs are well chosen, but people have different needs. In Herzberg's case the most common critisism is that his original research was conducted on a small sample size. 

The ultimate test is how well a theory performs in the real world. Herzberg's remains a marvellous way to predict disasters and a successful way to run a business.