Motivation and Concepts Table and Analysis
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Motivation and Concepts Table and Analysis
Motivation and Concepts Table and Analysis
John H. Rehmert
University of Phoenix
Motivation and Concepts Table and Analysis
Motivation Concepts Table
Theory Name
Major Theorist(s)
Time Period Created
Key Theory Concepts
(Grand Theory)
RenД© Descartes
Post-Renaissance era
If one could understand the will, then he could understand motivation.
Instinct
(Grand Theory)
William James
William McDougall
Inherited physical and mental instincts produce predictable behavior given the appropriate stimulus.
Drive
(Grand Theory)
Robert Woodworth
Sigmund Freud
Clark Hull
Motivation comes directly from bodily deficits causing behaviors with the aim of reversing the deficit.
Achievement
John Atkinson
Motivation toward a particular behavior is influenced by one’s urge to achieve and the probability of success.
Attributional
Bernard Weiner
Motivation via the attribution of causes to events — whether regarding the behavior of others or themselves.
Cognitive dissonance
Leon Festinger
Contradicting cognitions drive the creation of new or modification of existing thoughts/beliefs, which drive motivation.
Effectance
Robert White
Susan Harter
Motivation is driven by the inherent pleasures derived from the exploration, curiosity, mastery, and attempts to deal competently with ones environment.
Expectancy x value
Victor Vroom
Motivation by the expected results of a behavior, such as an increase in salary or benefits for better job performance
Intrinsic
Edward Deci
Human motivation and the behaviors produced are to satisfy needs toward self-determined outcomes.
Goal-setting
Edwin Locke
Motivation and subsequent actions are influenced by conscious performance goals in an organizational or work-related environment.
Learned Helplessness
Martin Seligman
Motivation is influenced by a perceived or imposed level of futility in their efforts.
Reactance
Jack Brehm
Actions motivated by rules and/or regulations that threaten or eliminate behavioral freedoms.
Self-efficacy
Albert Bandura
People’s beliefs determine their level of motivation
Self-schemas
H. R. Markus
People’s past experiences influence their motivation and subsequent behavior.
Analysis
The achievement motivation theory can be applied to many situations in the workplace. One situation, to which the theory can be applied, comes to mind from a prior organizational environment. The situation involved an information technology employee who was promoted from the help desk to a departmental task force. He was promoted because he exhibited outstanding performance in his time with the help desk and tested well on the internal promotional scale (a test given to assess the disposition and level of self-motivation). He seemed to thrive on challenges — technically and professionally — and had a commendable career history. The task force, to which he was promoted, was assigned to study, improve, and increase the automation of the classified spill clean-up process. The main charge of the task force was to remediate security breaches caused by the distribution of classified materials using unclassified communication mechanisms. His assignment was to learn the general-use scripting languages for operating system (OS) independent automation — Microsoft Visual Basic Script (VBScript) and Perl — to act as an apprentice to the lead systems engineer with the goal that he would assume some of the remedial operations to patch/update the scripts that drive the process. Initially, he appeared eager to take on the new challenge. Even though his experience with programming was minimal, he had a very logical/procedural thought process, which lends itself to scripting. After several weeks of apprenticeship and expected self-study, he requested to be returned to the help desk team. When prompted for the reason(s) behind his request, he stated a few nonsensical reasons. Several weeks later, he was counseled by the lead systems engineer and revealed that he was apprehensive about his programming abilities because he did not feel he was progressing as quickly as expected. The lead engineer asked how he was measuring his progress and he replied “by my own expectations.”