Motivation
Do All Carrots Look The Same?
Examining the Impact of Culture on
Employee Motivation by Justine Di Cesare and Golnaz Sadri
Introduction
Motivation is fundamental to human behaviour. Bartol and Martin (1998) define motivation as the force that energises behaviour, gives direction to behaviour, and underlies the tendency to persist. Similarly, Greenberg and
Baron (1997) define motivation as “the set of processes that arouse, direct, and maintain human behaviour toward attaining some goal”. There are three key parts to this definition: arousal, drive, and mobilisation of effort.
Arousal is the initial feeling of interest that a person has toward attaining a particular goal. The second aspect of the definition, direction, is what people will do and actions they will take to get closer to attaining the end result. For instance, in the American culture, if an individual is trying to get the next promotion, he will probably stay at work late to do additional work and develop excellent relationships with the key decision-makers. The third element of this definition of motivation, mobilisation of effort, refers to the persistence or maintenance of the behaviour until the goal is attained. This means that the candidate desiring a promotion will continue the aforementioned behaviour until promotion is reached.
There are a number of popular motivational theories that are commonly studied and often used by companies in the United States. Among these are
Abraham Maslow’s Need Hierarchy (Maslow, 1954), Herzberg’s Two Factor
Theory and Vroom’s Expectancy Theory. The purpose of the present article is to examine the relevance of each of these theories to two important yet different global business cultures: the United States and Japan. Abraham
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory and Vroom’s
Expectancy Theory represent three different approaches to the topic of motivation.
Maslow’s theory focuses on individual needs. Herzberg examined
Examining the Impact of Culture on
Employee Motivation by Justine Di Cesare and Golnaz Sadri
Introduction
Motivation is fundamental to human behaviour. Bartol and Martin (1998) define motivation as the force that energises behaviour, gives direction to behaviour, and underlies the tendency to persist. Similarly, Greenberg and
Baron (1997) define motivation as “the set of processes that arouse, direct, and maintain human behaviour toward attaining some goal”. There are three key parts to this definition: arousal, drive, and mobilisation of effort.
Arousal is the initial feeling of interest that a person has toward attaining a particular goal. The second aspect of the definition, direction, is what people will do and actions they will take to get closer to attaining the end result. For instance, in the American culture, if an individual is trying to get the next promotion, he will probably stay at work late to do additional work and develop excellent relationships with the key decision-makers. The third element of this definition of motivation, mobilisation of effort, refers to the persistence or maintenance of the behaviour until the goal is attained. This means that the candidate desiring a promotion will continue the aforementioned behaviour until promotion is reached.
There are a number of popular motivational theories that are commonly studied and often used by companies in the United States. Among these are
Abraham Maslow’s Need Hierarchy (Maslow, 1954), Herzberg’s Two Factor
Theory and Vroom’s Expectancy Theory. The purpose of the present article is to examine the relevance of each of these theories to two important yet different global business cultures: the United States and Japan. Abraham
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory and Vroom’s
Expectancy Theory represent three different approaches to the topic of motivation.
Maslow’s theory focuses on individual needs. Herzberg examined
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