The paper 'Motivation and Its Concepts and Application is a great example of a Management Case Study. Motivation, according to Kreitner (1995), is a psychological process that leads to behavior in a certain direction and with a specific purpose. Higgins (1994) argues that motivation and unsatisfied need is satisfied by an internal drive. This need, remarks Bedeian (1993), is possessed with a will to achieve something. Motivation, even though being a term from psychology, finds tremendous use in business and management and is characteristic of behavioral features like persistence, intensity, direction, and initiation.
Such terminology arises mainly from motivation's behavioral school of thought; another one being the scientific school. The latter came to limelight when Frederic Taylor analyzed human behavior from a scientific standpoint. Taylor's work gave precedence to the scientific component involved in work over the behavioral component and over the years he came to be recognized as the one who invented more productive and efficient ways to work. Changes, as felt in the industry today, are attributed to Taylor's work to some extent. This, however, is in contrast to the behavioral side of motivation which emphasizes people's motivation and attempts to identify specific areas of influence that lead to people's motivation.
The most notable theory pertaining to this concept is the one propounded by Maslow in 1943, which is after Taylor's period i. e., 1856-1915. He argued that human needs can be divided in a hierarchical manner, where the hierarchy goes up from the lowest need to the highest one. The needs could be physiological, security or safety-related, social, esteem-related, and self-actualization-based. To draw more information on motivation concepts and application and contrasts and comparisons between them, this paper uses peer-reviewed information primarily from three articles as mentioned below, along with another source of repute: Article I: Kim, D.
(2006). Employee Motivation: “ Just Ask Your Employees” . Seoul Journal of Business Volume 12, Number 1 (June 2006) Article II: Graham, S & Weiner, B. (n. d.). Theories and Principles of Motivation. Available at http: //www. unco. edu/cebs/psychology/kevinpugh/motivation_project/resources/graham_weiner96.pdf. Article III: Lai, E.R. (2011). Motivation: A Literature Review. Pearson. Available at http: //www. pearsonassessments. com/hai/images/tmrs/Motivation_Review_final. pdf. Comparing and contrasting motivational concepts and their application Some of the motivational concepts still find application, while some have previously been popular but lost applicability over the years.
For example, drive theory of motivation as propounded by Clark Hull exerted tremendous influence for two decades starting 1940. It said when the drive is multiplied by motivation; behavior takes the form of a set of functions. Hull said this theory was dependent on two constructs, one of which is drive and another habit. The amalgamation of scientific aspects with motivation has had varying degrees of impact during different periods of history. The impact was largely comparable with respect to the theorists who existed at a specific period of time.
P. T. Young' influence was between 1941 to 1950 and he stressed relevance of certain attributes to motivation. These included appetite and aversion, need and activity level, equilibrium and homeostasis, degree of motivation, incentives, praise and reproof, success and failure, cooperation and competence, knowledge of results, and neural structures.
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Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, July 1943. 370-396.
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