La gestion de la motivation en entreprise (en anglais)

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Because motivation is strongly linked with organizations’ productivity, its management must be carefully taken into account to face rapidly changing environments and workplaces. Indeed, motivated employees are needed for an organization to survive.
There are several ways to define motivation in a business context. In 1994, Higginsdefined the concept of motivation as “an internal drive to satisfy an unsatisfied need”. Motivation was also defined in 1995 as “a predisposition to behave in a purposive manner to achieve specific, unmet needs” by Buford, Bedeian and Lindner. In most of the companies, the human resource management department mainly focuses on functional and operational aspects of the organization. Indeed, the HRMdepartment often deals with evaluation of performance, incentive and training plans in priority. However, studies have shown that extrinsic factors such as wages, incentives, security and working environment are not enough to fully enhance employees’ motivation, involvement, initiatives and creativity. That is why human resource management must take intrinsic factors (“motivation factors”, HERZBERG)such as achievement, advancement to higher level tasks and responsibility for task into account and make the most of them. In realty, job enlargement and enrichment is the key process to enhance motivation in a company. But a question remains. On which of the theories based on motivation managers have to rely and how to adapt it to practical management?
In a first part, I will present the maincontent theories and their implications for management. Secondly, I will analyze process theories and their implications for management. The last part will be dedicated to the presentation of the five characteristics of a motivational work.
In the wide range of motivational theories, we can distinguish content theories from process theories. It is important to keep in mind that none of thesetwo categories has been universally approved and adopted.
Content theories of motivation are the extent to which factors drive human behavior and define it in terms of satisfaction of needs. Among content theories, we can analyze:
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory
McClelland’s Acquired Needs TheoryAccording to Maslow, there are five levels of human needs that employees need to fulfill. Once a lower level of need has been fulfilled, the employee is motivated by the opportunity to satisfy the next level of need. Employees’ needs have to be fulfilled in turn from the bottom to the top of the pyramid-shaped hierarchy. Below is the illustration of Maslow’s pyramid.
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Physiological needs are essential to the maintenance of the body (Health, food, sleep). The safety needs are the need of protection and the need of security. Belonging needs are about being a part of groups, playing a role in a social association of people, and affection. Esteem needs involve esteem from others and our need to be respected by others.Self-actualization needs are about achieving our individual potential.
This model has some implications for managers. First, they have to admit that people are not motivated in the same way and by the same things. Secondly, they have to understand that employees do not reach the higher levels of hierarchy at the same pace and they should offer different incentives from employee to employee.
Inhis book “The Human Side of Enterprise” (1960), Douglas McGregor proposed two opposing motivational theories by which managers perceive employee motivation. The Theory X assumes that work is distasteful to most of people. Consequently, employees have no desire for responsibility, they prefer to be directed and they are self-centered. Motivation only occurs at the physiological and security…