How Can Managers Use Their Understanding of Motivation and Communication Theories to Improve Performance of Staff?

An employee's motivation to work consists of all the drives, forces and

influences – conscious or unconscious – that cause the employee to want to

achieve certain aims. Managers need to know about the factors that create

motivation in order to be able to induce employees to work harder, faster,

more efficiently and with greater enthusiasm. Employees are motivated in

part by the need to earn a living and partly by human needs for job

satisfaction, security of tenure, the respect of colleagues and so on.

The organisation's rewards systems may applied to the first motive and job

design to the latter. Much research has sought to discover the sources of

motivation is tentative and no definite conclusions can be advanced.

For instance, "Social philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart

Mill asserted that humans are driven by the desire to obtain pleasure and

avoid pain. And B.F.Skinner's theory of operant conditioning implied that 1 motivation emerges from the interplay of stimulus and response."

(H.T Graham & Roger Bennett, 1998)

With references to " The hierarchy of needs" theory by the American

psychologist, A.H. Maslow, he has divided human needs into the following

classes :

a) Physiological or basic needs

b) Security or safety needs

c) Belonging of affection needs

d) Esteem or ego needs

e) Self actualisation needs

In general, when physiological and security needs have been satisfied,

the higher needs ( belonging, esteem and self actualisation) become

important, usually, according to Maslow, in the order of the hierarchy. 2
(Stephen P. Robbins, Bruce Millett, Ron Cacioppe, Terry Waters-Mash,

1998)

For example, a manager who receives a substantial salary, and thus

adequately