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Motivating Employees

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Motivating Employees
While working as a manager in an organization, his job is to make sure that the employees are doing their jobs and they are doing it in the most productive way. But employees are not machines that we could just program their task in their brain and they will do it automatically, they require motivation to actually do their job properly. This is easier said then done, to understand the ways of motivating people we first need to understand human nature, which is the fundamental nature and substance of humans (wikipedia, human nature). Various philosophers have come out with different theories trying to explain the human nature and how to motivate them. These philosophers include Douglas Mcgregor with his "Theory X, Theory Y", and then there is Frederick Herzberg with the "two factor motivation hygiene theory". Next would be Abraham Maslow with the "hierarchy of needs", then there is David McClelland and the "achievement motivation". Lastly there is "Equity Theory" by John Stacy Adams. In the seminar we looked at a situation that the manager Mike Stanhope, the manufacturing director of a medium sized pharmaceutical firm is having problems motivating his employees to contribute their greatest output to their job. And I believe that if we look at all of these four philosophers' ideas, he should be able to decide which idea would be the best on motivating his employees.

Firstly we would examine the "Theory X, Theory Y" by Douglas Mcgregor, his theory on human motivation which gave two sides on how to interpret human nature. It is divided into X and Y. Firstly "Theory X" assumes that humans are born lazy and would avoid work as much as possible (Accel-team, Mcgregor). And the manager of this company with runs this theory would have to supervise the employees on doing everything. And Douglas also believes that employees that fall into the theory X category would dislike work, so they have to be threatened to contribute fully into their job, and also management should



References: Accel-Team, 2005. David C. McClelland [Online]. Cambria, (no publisher), Available From http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_06_mcclelland.html [accessed 23rd November 2005] Accel-Team, 2005 Accel-Team, 2005. Abraham Maslow [Online]. Cambria, (no publisher), Available From http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_02_maslow.html [accessed 23rd November 2005] Accel-Team, 2005 Chapman, A., 2005. Adams ' equity theory [Online]. Leicester, Alan Chapman Review. Available From http://www.businessballs.com/adamsequitytheory.htm [Accessed 23rd November 2005] Chapman, A., 2005. Frederick Herzberg motivational theory [Online]. Leicester, Alan Chapman Review. Available From http://www.businessballs.com/herzberg.htm [accessed 23rd November 2005] Chapman, A., 2005 Freytag, W., 2000. McClelland 's Achievement Motivation Theory [Online]. Washington, University of Washington. Available From http://faculty.uwb.edu/wfreytag/MGI09/ [accessed 25th November, 2005] Gurun, E Buchanan, D., and Huczynski, A., 2004. Organizational Behavior An introduction Text fifth edition, [Text], England, Prentice Hall Cooper L

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