The following material on being a manager primarily takes the perspective of the manager in a large bureaucracy. In these the manager has a number of direct “reports”, people who report to the manager and usually for whom performance evaluations are done. The concepts apply also to the manager of an organization in its early life cycle stages where the manager acts as more of an entrepreneur.
Understanding Others
People, in the course of living, confront five basic questions about their lives. These questions are:
1. How do I see the world?
2. How do I use time and space?
3. Who am I?
4. What do I do?
5. How do I relate to other people?
Answers to these questions vary among societies, and in a broad sense determine how people in a given society experience life.
How Do I See the World? This question deals with the person’s relationship to the environment. Reflecting even more basic assumptions about the relationship of humanity to nature, this question addresses whether people view the relationship as one of dominance, submission, harmony, or finding an appropriate niche. For example, in Canada and the United States the dominant culture has seen the natural environment as something to conquer and exploit. This outlook is beginning to change, however, as exemplified by the Green movement.
How Do I Use Time and Space? The focus here is on the nature of reality, time, and space. Questions are what is real and what is not, what is a fact, how truth is ultimately to be determined, and whether truth is revealed or discovered. Basic concepts are those of time as linear or cyclical, space as limited or infinite, and property as communal or individual.
Time is typically experienced in Western societies as linear. The past, present, and future are assumed to be all on one time line. Time is often measured with great precision. At the Boulder Colorado Labs the atomic clock measures time to billions of a second.
Other societies and cultures experience time differently. The present may be thought of as just the current one of many cycles or loops of time. Time repeats in a series of endless cycles. Therefore, what one does this minute, today, or tomorrow is not seen as having great urgency.
Concepts of space also differ by culture. What a house looks like and how people live in it is important because house design and living space affect how people see themselves and think about themselves.
Who Am I? This fundamental question deals with the nature of human nature. What does it mean to be human, and what attributes are considered intrinsic or ultimate? Is human nature good, evil, or neutral? Are human beings perfectible or not? In some cultures life and death are seen as determined and preordained people are not in control of their own destiny. For example, the caste system in India, although outlawed, can rank members of society, fix one’s destiny, and define what occupation one must enter.
What Do I Do? What is the right thing for human beings to do, on the basis of the above assumptions about reality, the environment, and human nature? Should one be active, passive, self-developmental or fatalistic? What is work and what is play? Western culture makes the general assumptions that people should be active, responsible for their own actions, that it is right to work, and that work and play are different.
How Do I Relate to Other People? The key here is the nature of human relationships. What is considered to be the right way for people to relate to each other, to distribute power and love? Is life cooperative or competitive; individualistic, collaborative, or communal? Is it based on traditional lineal authority, law, or charisma? Cultures can give status for age (respect your elders), skills (a surgeon), actions (scoring goals in the NHL), or possessions (the car a person drives).
Cultural Dimensions
There are five cultural dimensions that help us understand how societal cultures differ from one another.
1. Power Distance
2. Individualism/Collectivism
3. Masculinity/Femininity
4. Uncertainty Avoidance
5. Long-term Versus Short-term Orientation
Power Distance. Power distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of society accept that power is distributed unequally and accept the orders of those in power. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) would be high in power distance, Canada and the United States, low.
Individualism/Collectivism. In individualistic cultures people tend to look out for themselves and their family, they prefer to act as individuals. In collectivistic cultures people look out for each other; they prefer to act as members of groups. Canada is more individualistic; the PRC and Japan are more collectivistic. However, Canada may be seen as more collectivistic than the United States, as evidenced by Canada’s relatively greater emphasis on commonly available medical care and the predominance of public institutions of higher learning (rather than a mix of public and private).
Masculinity/Femininity. Masculine cultures value success, money and material possessions, assertiveness, and competition. Feminine cultures value caring for others, warm personal relationships, solidarity with others and quality of life. The United States and Canada are high on masculinity, whereas Iceland is more feminine.
Uncertainty Avoidance. This is the extent to which people in the society want to avoid situations where they are not certain what action is required. People in high uncertainty avoidance cultures prefer structured over unstructured situations. Cultures high in uncertainty avoidance tend to have strict laws and punishments and a feeling of “What is different is dangerous.” Saudi Arabia and Singapore have high uncertainty avoidance, Canada and the U.S. are moderate, and Denmark is low on this variable.
Long-term Versus Short-term Orientation. Cultures with a long-term orientation value future-oriented behaviours such as persistence and saving money. Short-term orientation cultures have values oriented more towards the past and the present such as respect for tradition and the fulfilling of social obligations.
Organizations that have members from cultures that are very high or low on these dimensions have specific advantages.
1. Those from small power-distance cultures are likely to accept responsibility, while those from large power-distance cultures are likely to be more disciplined.
2. Those from high collectivism cultures tend to show employee commitment, while members of high individualism cultures can be mobile, allowing the hiring of experts away from other organizations.
3. Those from cultures high in femininity are able to provide personal services and custom-made products, while those in masculine cultures may excel in mass production and heavy industry.
4. Those in weak uncertainty-avoidance cultures are good at innovating, while those in strong uncertainty-avoidance cultures are better at precision manufacturing.
5. Those from long-term orientation cultures tend to excel at planning and activities where returns are high but delayed, while those from short-term oriented cultures can succeed in quickly changing environments.
One theory of intelligence states that each person has a unique combination of amounts of eight different types of intelligence. The eight types are linguistic (ability with words), logical-mathematical (reasoning and pattern-recognition), musical (including pitch, tone, melody, and rhythm), bodily kinesthetic (ability to use one’s body in skilful ways), spatial (perception of a three-dimensional world), interpersonal (understanding others), intrapersonal (understanding oneself), and naturalist (understanding the natural world).
The implication of this theory is that these intelligences should be developed and that people with different profiles should work in areas suitable to their strengths.
Analyses of the answers to intelligence tests have found the factor of general intelligence, g, and a specific factor s that measures intelligence for a particular test. While general intelligence cannot be improved in the short term, specific test intelligence can. There is clear evidence that IQ is determined genetically, at least in part. A good estimate for the genetic contribution to intelligence is 50% to 70%. The other influences on intelligence are the environment and organic factors. The environment might include such factors as the amount of stimulation received by a child, the toys available for play, and culture exposed to as a child. An example of an organic factor is any drugs taken by the mother while the child is developing in the uterus.
Personality is a stable set of tendencies and characteristics that determine those commonalities and differences in people’s psychological behaviour (thoughts, feelings, and actions) that have continuity in time and that may not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment.
Gender
A foundation of an individual’s personality is gender. Gender is more than a person’s biological sex. It is the sex role taught in a particular culture. One study found that 27 of 33 world cultures sampled attempted to get more nurturance out of girls than boys and none attempted the reverse. Another finding was that 70 of 82 cultures gave boys more training in self-reliance than girls and none attempted the reverse. A study of children in six cultures (U.S.A., Mexico, Kenya, India, Japan, Philippines) found that boys were more aggressive than girls within each culture. This is the genetic influence. However, they also found that the girls of some cultures were more aggressive than the boys other cultures. This is the cultural/environment influence. Gender differences in aggression have been found to be stable over time and that men are more aggressive than women.
Parents treat boys and girls differently. In North America it has been found that both parents encouraged sex-typed activities, though these differences decreased as the child grows up. Boys in Western countries received more physical punishment than did girls. Significantly, fathers treated boys and girls more differently than did mothers. Fathers were more involved with sons and provided support with activities, whereas mothers supported both sons and daughters emotionally.
Theory X/Theory Y
The Theory X/Theory Y approach of Douglas McGregor can serve to categorize how people think about the basic motivations of others. Some managers take the point of view that others value work for its own sake and do not have to be monitored closely. This is the humanistic Theory Y view. Other managers might take the Theory X perspective that people basically don’t want to work, and that employees have to be watched continually to make sure they keep to their jobs.
Theory X/Y has been used as a tool to understand the attitudes and actions of managers. It can also be used in organizational training to sensitize managers to their basic theory of personality in the hopes of moving all managers to the more humanistic Theory Y outlook. This approach, however, may be culturally constrained. Theory X/Y relies on the cultural value of individualism, which may hold in North America but is less true for the peoples of East Asia.
Trait Theory
This approach to understanding personality focuses on observable personality characteristics or traits. After years of research, a model of personality as composed of five main factors has emerged. The five broad personality traits are as follows.
1. Extroversion/Introversion. Extroverts are oriented toward the outer world of other people and activities. Introverts are oriented toward the inner world of their own thoughts and feelings.
2. Friendliness/Hostility. Friendly people are open to interaction with others and expect positive results. Hostile people look for and expect confrontation.
3. Conscientiousness. A conscientious person is responsible, performing actions that were agreed to.
4. Neuroticism/Emotional Stability. An emotionally stable person has a firm grasp on the reality of situations. Such an individual reacts in a steady way, not riding a roller coaster of emotions.
5. Intellect. This factor is composed of inquiring intellect, openness to new feelings and thoughts, cultural and creative interests. It has also been thought of as creativity.
Influences on Personality
Four main influences on an individual’s personality are genetic/biological, social, cultural, and situational factors.
The study of genetic effects on personality is accomplished by assessing identical twins that are brought up by different families. One such study found that identical twins reared apart are about as similar as identical twins reared together on multiple measures of personality and temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests, and social attitudes. Heredity therefore has an effect on an individual’s personality.
Culture and social class affects personality via group membership and socialization experiences. The family has an effect on a person’s personality, but members of one family will often be dissimilar. Siblings will be unalike because of differences in genetic makeup and birth order, the age of the child when an event occurs (for example, a death in the family or divorce), the child’s gender, the child’s physical appearance (attractive children are often favoured), and experiences that are unique to the individual.
Situational influences on personality include temporary body conditions such as fatigue and ingested chemicals. Examples of chemicals consumed are the caffeine in coffee, nicotine in cigarettes, mood altering drugs such as stimulants and depressants, and performance-altering drugs such as steroids.
Personality Traits and Behaviour
Both personality traits and the situation interact to affect behaviour.
1. In relevant situations traits can influence behaviour. In a threatening situation a person who is anxious is liable to fidget, break into a cold sweat, or run from the scene.
2. A person’s traits can change the situation. An individual who is aggressive can act in a way that causes conflict with others. The aggressive employee in a performance review may make statements to the manager that inflame the situation and cause the manager to react with defensiveness or aggression.
3. People with different traits will choose different situations. Those who are introverted, for example, will often choose to be in a quiet place like a library instead of a noisy place like a party.
4. Traits can change with persistent exposure to a situation. Going to college and living in the student environment has been found to change a person to be less conservative.
5. Personality traits are more easily expressed in some situations than others. It is easier to be yourself at a picnic than at a funeral. The picnic has fewer rules about how to behave than does the funeral. Extroverts and introverts would act similarly at a funeral but would be expected to act quite differently at a picnic.
Beliefs are what an individual accepts to be true without questioning. Beliefs that endure over time are called values. Feelings are sentiments or the emotional component of beliefs. Beliefs plus feelings make up an individual’s attitudes. For example, a belief accepted without questioning can be that managers should make the decisions. This becomes over time a value, that a good manager is one who makes the decisions that are required. A related feeling could be that “this manager makes me uneasy because he keeps asking me what I would do”. The resulting attitude might then be “I don’t like working for my manager”.
The primary purpose of attitudes is knowledge of how to act with respect to another person or object. Attitudes are important in organizations because they affect behaviour. Three parts of work attitudes are the affective – what the person feels about work; the cognitive – what the person thinks about work; and the intentional – what actions the person is planning to do at work.
Job satisfaction is affected by both the work environment and by the worker’s individual characteristics. It has been estimated that the individual’s personality accounts for between 10% and 30% of his/her job satisfaction, that 40% to 60% of the variance in job satisfaction is caused by situational factors, and that the interaction between personality and the situation accounts for between 10% and 20%.
One situational factor that affects job satisfaction has been found to be wage inequality and dispersion. The greater the dispersion of wages, in general, the lower is satisfaction with those wages.
When an individual is faced with an inconsistency between two thoughts or between a thought and an action, such dissonance would have to be resolved. A person might take any of the following actions.
1. Forget about the inconsistency or ignore it as unimportant. Dissonant acts are likely to induce cognitive change only when they relate to the person’s self-concept.
2. Seek information that makes actions and attitudes seem more consistent. This information is useful to rationalize away the dissonance. A consumer who purchases a new and expensive CD player might have conflicting thoughts about enjoying the player but missing the money. Information about the quality and features of the CD player might then be scrutinized to reduce the dissonance about the purchase.
3. Distort or change the perception of the situation and actions taken. Memory will be adjusted to reduce the inconsistency between thought and action.
4. Separate actions and attitudes in the mind. By compartmentalizing them, inconsistencies can be avoided.
5. Change the attitude about the event. The worker might come to believe that the job is more interesting than previously thought. In this case performing the behaviour has caused a change in attitude.
6. Leave the situation. This method of reducing cognitive dissonance is likely when dissonance has built up over time and leaving is relatively easy. It may also be used when an attitude-behaviour inconsistency is too large to reduce by the other methods.
Cognitive dissonance is useful in understanding what a person thinks about work and the courses of action that a particular person might follow.
Because job dissatisfaction often leads to thoughts of quitting and the intention to quit, these feelings about work have important organizational consequences.
Managerial Roles
The competing values model of organizational effectiveness has two underlying dimensions. They are the degree of emphasis the organization places on flexibility or control and the organization’s internal or external orientation. Managers in organizations using these four different models of what it is to be effective will be asked to take on different roles.
Internal Process. There are two managerial roles within the internal process model. The coordinator role is most like that of the classical manager. Competencies are planning, organizing, and controlling. The manager is dependable, reliable, and maintains structure. In the monitor role the manager is a technical expert and receives, evaluates, and reacts to information about internal organizational processes.
Rational Goal Model. The director and producer roles of the rational goal model focus on the manager’s attempts to maximize organizational output. These roles are especially important when the manager is dealing with subordinates and is attempting to motivate their behaviour toward the accomplishment of organizational goals. The director sets goals and delegates tasks in the attempt to best organize and guide the work. The producer manager is more likely to be actively involved in the organization’s work while attempting to motivate employees to produce more output in less time.
Open Systems Model. Managers operating in organizations with an open systems model of effectiveness are more used to change and are more oriented to external relations with the people and organizations that accept the organization’s product. The broker builds a base of power inside and outside the organization and engages in a great deal of discussion and negotiation with others. The innovator is more oriented to being flexible, thinking creatively, and managing the constant change that is required in this type of organization.
Human Relations Model. Managers in organizations subscribing to the human relations model are oriented towards the development of their people, as individuals and in teams. In the mentor role the manager attempts to help subordinates develop as individuals, to understand themselves and others, and to learn to communicate well with others. More highly developed employees will be capable of greater flexibility as the organization and its environment change. The facilitator role is more group oriented, with the manager acting as a team builder, helping to manage conflict within and between groups, and helping the group to make decisions.
These eight managerial roles are a useful starting point for understanding what managers do. A particular manager may concentrate activities in only one of the eight roles. But the other roles will also compete for attention because effectiveness cannot be fully described by only one orientation. Therefore, someone who expects to be a manager will need to be competent in all these roles, but to different degrees and at different times in different organizations.
What is it like to be a manager? There are six defining characteristics of managerial work.
1. The manager performs a great quantity of work at an unrelenting pace. Work hours are long and constant. After office hours, managers read material related to work.
2. Managerial activity is characterized by variety, fragmentation, and brevity. Many unscheduled meetings, telephone calls, and reactions to the day’s crises produced a day broken into a large number of activities of short duration.
3. Managers prefer issues that are current and. They prefer to deal with issues in real time and on the spot. They like to take action at the time they are confronted with the problem.
4. The manager sits between the organization and a network of contacts. An important activity of managers is to communicate with a wide variety of people outside the organization. Clients, suppliers, peers, outside experts and officials of other organizations have to be communicated with because they supply information relevant to the operation of the organization.
5. The manager has a strong preference for the verbal media of using the telephone and having meetings over using the mail. Building and maintaining a personal relationship with others both inside and outside the organization is crucial, and requires personal contact.
6. Despite the preponderance of obligations, managers are able to control their own affairs. The manager has to react to requests and communications and must attend meetings, but can choose over the longer term how to spend his or her time.
The nature of the managerial job differs by culture and country. In Canada and the United States, the manager is considered more of an equal by those lower in the organizational hierarchy. The manager is therefore not expected to have all the knowledge required to make all decisions, or indeed even to make all work decisions. In Japan the manager is more of a parental figure to the group, is seen as more knowledgeable and in control, and takes a personal interest in both the work and personal lives of employees. In Italy the manager is expected to have the answers to the questions subordinates have about their work.
Motivation
The motivation of individuals at work is one of the most important jobs of a manager. What makes someone come to work and apply effort towards getting the task accomplished? What makes someone decide not to come to work? People work to better the world, be part of a team, and achieve technical excellence.
Managers need to understand the different forces that act on an individual. Then the question of how to exert influence on those forces may be addressed. At that point the manager can attempt to influence the behaviour of organizational members so that it is directed towards accomplishing the organization’s tasks.
Motivation can be defined as the attention paid, effort exerted, and persistence of behaviour.
A number of theories of human motivation have been proposed over the years. Motivation is a useful device to think about why people do what they do.
Maslow’s Hierarchy
In what is probably the most widely described theory of human motivation, Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have a built-in set of five basic needs, and that these needs form a hierarchy. He described the five needs (from lowest to highest) as physiological – the most basic human need for air, food, and water; safety – the need to be safe from physical and psychological harm; social – the need to be accepted, loved, and to belong to a social system; esteem – the need for recognition and prestige given by others; and self-actualization – the need to become the best that one is capable of becoming and to be self-fulfilled.
In this theory each lower need in the hierarchy must be satisfied before the next higher level need takes effect. To use this model of human needs, a manager attempting to build a group at work would want the esteem needs of group members to be dominant. The manager would therefore have to make sure that physiological and safety needs were met. This would be done by paying a living wage and providing a safe and secure work environment.
Maslow also proposed that when a lower-level need was not fulfilled, it would again be activated. An individual at work who is concerned with the recognition of others has his or her esteem needs activated. If this job were lost the person would be expected to revert back to the physiological need to obtain food and would then be unconcerned with esteem.
This hierarchy is a useful though very broad way of understanding the behaviour of people. There are certainly exceptions to the fixed movement up and down the hierarchy of needs. An example is the starving artist who fulfills the self-actualization need but not physiological needs. Also, more than one category of need could affect an individual’s behaviour at a given time. People at work could, for instance, be concerned with social and esteem needs at the same time.
In addition, it is clear that Maslow’s hierarchy relies on the Anglo-American cultural emphasis on the individual. Other cultures may have different hierarchies of needs. For example, in the People’s Republic of China the group is of great importance to the individual. Belonging is therefore the primary need. It cannot, therefore, be assumed that people from all the cultures of the world share the same basic built-in needs. Need hierarchies can be expected to vary by culture depending on each culture’s values. The manager of organizational members from different cultural backgrounds has to remember that everyone does not share the same way of looking at and understanding a situation. Their needs may be different even in the exact same work conditions.
McClelland’s Theory of Needs
A second theory of needs is by David McClelland. In this theory, individuals are thought to vary in their drive to gratify six basic human needs. These are the needs for achievement, power, affiliation, independence, esteem, and security. The need for achievement has been extensively studied. The theory is that people will accomplish the most when they have a high need for achievement. They will select goals that are medium in difficulty – goals that are challenging but not impossible. Those low in need for achievement will select goals that are either low in difficulty and therefore easy to accomplish or very high in difficulty. Failure to achieve such extremely high goals would therefore be expected.
An interesting finding of McClelland’s work is that need for achievement varies among nations. On a practical level, McClelland has proposed that the populace of entire nations could be trained to be higher on need for achievement. Then, over time, these needs would manifest themselves as people chose more difficult goals and worked to achieve them. The economy of a whole region could be positively influenced in this way.
Equity Theory
One way that people at work examine their situation is by comparing what they put into and get out of the job to the inputs and outcomes of another. Inputs could be hours worked, education, experience, etc. Outcomes could be money, status, job level, etc. This comparison is shown in the form of a ratio.
Note that outcomes to inputs for the self is NOT set as equal to outcomes to inputs of the other. Equity theory is activated when there is a difference in the two ratios.
Outcomesself/Inputsself :Outcomesother/Inputsother
If the ratio of self-inputs to outcomes is similar to the ratio of the comparison other’s inputs to outcomes, equity (or harmony) is not disturbed. However, when inequity is perceived to exist the individual perceiving the inequity is motivated to restore balance. Note that this is an individual’s perception of inequality. Others could well see the same situation as being equitable.
People can restore equity in many ways. If the self outcomes-to-inputs ratio is less than that of the comparison other, the person could seek more outcomes (typically more pay); reduce inputs into the job (work less hard, take longer breaks); attempt to reduce the other’s outcomes (“If you can’t pay us the same, then pay my co-worker less”); decide that the other really has more inputs that balance the equation (“She really works harder than I do”); decide that the comparison is being made with the wrong person (change the comparison other in the equity equation); or quit the job.
Employees often feel a strong need for equity. Managers seek to create a social situation where inequity is not felt, at least by those employees the manager wishes to keep on the job. What is important is the feeling of equity and not the absolute value of inputs or outcomes. Even professional baseball players earning millions of dollars a year can genuinely feel mistreated when comparisons with their peers show their situation to be inequitable.
Salaries and benefits in North America are often kept secret in order that the information necessary to determine equity is not available to the individual. This pay secrecy is often not possible, however, for government or union jobs where pay rates are known. In Japan and Korea pay increases are not usually widely different for different members of a work group. Keeping everyone at the same level earning about the same pay means that equity and harmony are maintained. Slow promotion in these Far East cultures allows the truly superior performers to be recognized over the long term. By then all members of the group have come to the same conclusion that the inputs of these superior performers are indeed greater than the inputs of others.
If the ratio of outcomes to inputs for the self turns out to be greater than that for the other, working harder or changing the perceived level of self-inputs can resolve this overpayment inequity. In an individualistic work culture, it does not usually take long for someone in overpayment inequity to decide that the level of self-inputs is actually higher than previously thought and for internal balance to be restored
Expectancy Theory
This motivation theory is one of cognitive choice. It proposes that each individual at work examines his or her own personal work situation and makes a decision about how much effort to exert in the pursuit of work success. The formula for this calculation is
Effort = E å I * V
In this formula, effort is the motivation of the worker to exert effort on the job. E is the worker’s expectancy that effort will result in job performance. Expectancies are probabilities, ranging from 0 to 1, that effort will result in performance.
The å (capital sigma: the summation sign) indicates that effort is affected by a range of possible work and non-work outcomes that might result from job performance. The decision of how much effort to exert on a task depends on the consideration of several outcomes. It is very important to recognize that it is the individual who decides what outcomes are related to job performance and what valences and instrumentalities to assign to each of the outcomes. Finally, examining the expectancy theory equation, it is clear that if expectancy is low, then no matter what outcomes are considered and how high their valences, effort is predicted to be low.
The instrumentality of job performance to a work or non-work outcome is I. Instrumentalities can range from -1 to +1. They indicate the perceived connection in the mind of the individual worker that performance will lead to a given outcome. An instrumentality of +1 would mean that performance is certain to lead to the outcome. For example, a real estate agent selling a house is certain to receive a commission. The instrumentality between these two events is therefore +1. An instrumentality of -1 means that performance ensures another outcome is certain not to occur. For example, when a contractor completes a building on time, a late penalty will not be invoked. The instrumentality between on-time building completion and late penalty is -1. Instrumentalities equal to or near zero mean that no connection is perceived between job performance and outcomes. They in effect become zero in the expectancy equation and do not affect the decision about work effort.
V is the valence or anticipated satisfaction of an outcome. Valences can be positive or negative, small or large, and are attached to each outcome considered by the individual. When expectancy theory is represented in equation form, valences are often defined to vary between -10 and +10. This choice of units is arbitrary. Large anticipated satisfactions (high positive valences) and large anticipated dissatisfactions (high negative valences) when multiplied by associated instrumentalities and performance expectancy will have a large effect on the motivation to exert effort on the job.
To use expectancy theory in an attempt to increase each individual worker’s motivation to exert effort, a manager can focus on each of the theory’s components.
1. The manager can aim to increase the worker’s expectancy that effort will result in performance. Success on the job will increase E as will job-related training and the provision of the tools needed to do the job. The individual at work needs to see that performance is possible. Also, performance must be accurately perceived and measured for the individual worker to maintain a high Effort àPerformance expectancy.
2. The manager can find out what outcomes people consider important, whether they are positively or negatively valued, and how they are affected by work performance. Perhaps these outcomes and values can be re-evaluated based on the manager’s knowledge of the experiences of other employees. For example, the chances of a promotion may be higher than an employee thinks and the benefits of the promotion may be higher than anticipated by the employee. Also, the manager may know of other outcomes resulting from work performance that would be valued by the employee. Managers usually have at their disposal a variety of rewards that go beyond those anticipated by the employee. These can be made available as outcomes that will follow work performance.
3. Finally, the manager can attempt to increase the valence of outcomes that are closely tied to job performance and to increase the instrumentality of outcomes that have high valence for the individual. Perhaps an employee can be convinced that the rewards available from work have more value than previously thought.
Goal Setting
The theory of goal setting is fairly simple, although based on thousands of studies. The following four “rules” of goal setting can be used to self-set goals or to help others with their goals. As a manager of others it is important to make sure the person’s work goals follow these rules and that feedback is given to the worker.
1. Difficult goals will produce higher performance than easy goals.
2. Specific difficult goals will produce higher performance than will no goals or “I’ll do my best” kinds of goals.
3. Goal setting with feedback on goal attainment will produce higher performance than goal setting alone.
4. Employee participation in goal setting will help to produce higher performance than no participation when goals that are set participatively are higher than assigned goals.
Some organizations have instituted formal goal-setting procedures for use organization-wide. These plans, called Management By Objectives (MBO), can be effective if the goals set are specific and difficult, are accepted by organizational members, and feedback is provided about goal accomplishment.
Individuals can use goal-setting principles to manage themselves. The interested reader might like to try setting a specific and difficult goal and then charting progress toward it. The key is to select a goal that is not too far in the future and to be very specific about exactly what the goal is.
Classical Conditioning
The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov demonstrated that the sound of a bell could make a dog salivate. First, Pavlov rang the bell while food powder was placed in the mouth of the dog. Then, after a series of these pairings of food and the bell, the dog learned to salivate (which, of course, is the dog’s natural response to food) at the sound of the bell whether or not food was actually present.
There are also occasions when classical conditioning is found in the workplace. The lunch bell or factory whistle at quitting time can produce the conditioned responses of salivating/eating or leaving the factory. The sound of a warning horn on a forklift truck, if paired with the adrenaline released into the body to help avoid danger, can later produce the adrenaline push even when danger is not present. If the air quality in an office building is poor and gives people headaches, the act of going to the office can trigger the headache even before the poor air quality has had an actual physical effect.
Operant Conditioning
The shaping of behaviour requires that target end behaviour is known and that the person being shaped can exhibit successive approximations to that end behaviour. For example, a salesperson may be taught how to deal with customers by working with a trainer. This instructor has a predetermined image of the desired sales behaviour in mind. The trainer rewards the trainee when a customer is served in a way that is closer to the ideal than was the service to the previous customer. For shaping to be successful, the person being shaped must be able to generate the target behaviour and must value the reward being offered to learn the new behaviour.
In reinforcement theory, behaviour (the operant) by the subject is followed by a reward or a punishment in order to make the behaviour more likely or less likely. The general and most important principle of reinforcement theory is that people will do what they are rewarded for doing and will avoid doing what they are punished for doing. Rewarded behaviour is more likely to occur in the future.
A simple example is why a person goes to work. What is the reward for attendance? One answer is usually the money paid for attendance. But some jobs are not paid positions. These include volunteer work in a hospital or serving on the board of directors of a charity. Whether a position is paid or unpaid, it may provide rewards such as membership in a work group, doing interesting work, or providing learning and experience that will be valuable in a future job. Without a reward for being a member of an organization or group, people simply stop attending.
Each individual person decides on what is rewarding or punishing.
A great deal of research has been done by psychologists on how best to reinforce behaviour, in terms of the amount and timing of rewards. A strong finding is that rewards and punishments have their greatest effect when they closely follow behaviour. When the separation between behaviour and outcomes is too long, the connection between behaviour and stimulus can be lost.
Other work has shown that different schedules of reinforcement affect how quickly a behaviour is learned and how long it takes before it disappears when it is no longer rewarded (called extinction). Four reinforcement schedules are fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable interval, and variable ratio.
An example of fixed interval is being paid once a month on the last day of the month. A fixed interval schedule of reinforcement will reward a person for being present on the day the reward is due.
An example of a fixed ratio reinforcement plan is being paid 50 cents for every unit produced. The ratio in this case is fixed at 1:1. If a $10 bonus were paid to an employee for every tenth customer who applies for a company credit card, the ratio would be fixed at 1:10. It would be paid immediately after the tenth order. A fixed ratio schedule will motivate a person to work hard when the reward is near (“Only three more orders to go!”) but not when the reward has just been obtained.
A variable ratio schedule would allocate a reward on an average of once for every x times that the behaviour being rewarded were to occur. For example, a salesperson could be paid a $10 bonus for every 25 customers contacted, but the bonus could be paid at any time, not just after the 25th customer. It might be paid after the 10th and 40th customers. The average, however, would be that for every 25 customers the bonus would be paid once. A good example of the variable ratio reward schedule is that of a slot machine, which is programmed to pay jackpots on a determined frequency but could pay a jackpot twice in succession. Think how effective slot machines would be if they operated on a fixed ratio schedule!
A company could be concerned about employees being at work by 8 a.m. It could pay a $20 bonus to every employee at work by 8 a.m. on a given day. If this bonus were awarded on average once in every five days it would be a variable interval reinforcement schedule. The employees would, on average, receive the $20 bonus once for every five days they are at work on time. But the $20 is paid on a variable schedule so that any employee might receive the bonus the 7th and 10th time.
Variable interval and variable ratio reinforcement schedules make the behaviour more constant because the person does not know which behaviour will be the one to be rewarded.
Organizations often provide reinforcements using what is called a token reinforcement plan. In this plan a token (it could be a poker chip, a point, or any other symbolic item) is given after the desired behaviour. Tokens are accumulated and then turned in for a product or service that has value to the person being rewarded. For example, mental health organizations often put patients on a token plan to control their behaviour. Patients then buy food, magazines, etc. with the tokens. Airlines use these principles with their frequent flier plans. Here the tokens are points, which may be turned in later for air travel. However, like all token reinforcement plans, when stopped the behaviour being rewarded will likely stop as well. This is one dilemma faced by airlines over their frequent flier plans – once started they are hard to stop.
When behaviour causes a negative stimulus to be removed, that stimulus is a negative reinforcer. People at work can be motivated to act in a way that gets rid of an already existing unpleasant condition.
Sometimes behaviour by an organizational member is not desired, but not rewarding it will not lead to its extinction. In this case there is some other reward that is reinforcing the undesired behaviour. Therefore, to stop the behaviour a punishment is applied. A punishment is an outcome that is negatively valued by the person. For example, factory time clocks are often programmed to print the time of worker arrival on the time card. When the employee is late, the time is printed in red ink and the employee is docked 1/4 hour of pay (for example) as a punishment. The red ink is the signal of the punishment. Punishment can be a good way to stop the occurrence of an unwanted behaviour, but has some undesirable side effects. For this reason punishment should only be used when the behaviour is one that must be immediately stopped.
One side effect of punishment is that the person being punished can associate the negative consequence with the punisher and may later react against the punisher, someone else, or the company. This side effect is not to be taken lightly. Persons at work who learn to dislike someone who punishes them may take their anger out on the supervisor, co-workers, themselves, or even innocent bystanders.
Another punishment side effect is that the undesirable behaviour will tend to re-occur when the punisher is absent or the person punished feels there is little chance of being caught. To punish effectively, the manager must punish immediately after the undesired behaviour. The desired behaviour must be made clear so that the employee knows what to do, not just what not to do. Finally, it is the action that should be punished and not the person.
Modelling
People learn what to do, what works and what doesn’t work by watching others. This is called modelling. It is a very important form of learning because mistakes do not have to be made before they are corrected and effective behaviours do not have to be learned bit by bit over time. People can learn effective behaviours all at once in great leaps by watching what others do. They can see the whole behaviour all at once. When they learn vicariously by watching others they do not receive the rewards or the punishments that the other may obtain.
The most crucial element in social learning is the role model. Managers can model effective behaviour themselves. For instance, the manager of a life insurance agency could take a new recruit on a series of sales calls to show how the selling is done. A police force could create two-person teams of a junior and a senior officer so that the junior can learn by watching the other. The rookie officer learns by doing and by watching. However, if the role model is showing what the manager would consider to be the wrong way to act, social learning will not be effective.
Managers must understand the importance of rewards in the workplace, the many different types of rewards, and how rewards are made.
There is a wide variety of possible work rewards. These include pay, promotion, the chance to do interesting work, time off, learning opportunities, travel to conferences, etc.
Managers need to:
1. Determine what is currently being rewarded
2. Decide what work performance should be rewarded
3. Develop a wide variety of rewards that can be awarded at the manager’s discretion – the manager controls the reward
4. Reward desired behaviour within the context of the social situation at work.
Managers in organizations will often create a reward system, especially for the allocation of pay and benefits. These systems are a set of rules regarding how rewards are earned and paid. An important point to remember when considering any system is that if one person can create it, another can figure out how to beat it. Managers have to avoid being caught up in a cycle of adding more rules to the system only to have someone else find the loophole to beat the system, which necessitates the addition of still more rules and so on.
Some newer approaches to reward systems are cafeteria-style fringe benefits, all-salaried teams, skill-based pay, and profit sharing.
The cafeteria-style fringe benefits approach gives employees a budget and allows them to select the benefits they most want from a menu of possibilities. A young single person might select extra vacation days, a parent of young children a dental plan, and an older worker higher contributions to the company pension plan. While such choice of benefits might not motivate job effort or performance, it could make the individual worker more satisfied, less stressed, and therefore be more likely to attend work and stay in the job.
On all-salaried teams everyone is paid a salary instead of some members being on salary and some paid on an hourly basis. The advantage here is that a greater sense of cohesion is created along with the willingness to share tasks.
Employees on a skill-based pay plan are paid a base hourly rate and an additional amount per hour for each job skill they have mastered, whether the skill is currently used or not. This plan promotes flexibility, job rotation, and the constant upgrading of skills.
Finally, there are many different types of profit sharing plans that exist for allocating a portion of company profits to its members. The purpose of these plans is to enhance the employee’s identification with the company’s overall objective by providing the employee a stake in the profits.
Organizations divide their work to be done into tasks, and then combine tasks together into jobs that can each be held by an individual. The way jobs are designed affects the individual jobholder’s internal state and external behaviours of how he or she feels and acts. Managers in organizations are therefore interested in job design as a means of increasing worker satisfaction, motivation, and performance.
There are four main approaches to the design of jobs. The engineering approach is based on work in industrial engineering and scientific management. Its aim is to simplify jobs so that it becomes easy to find and train workers that can do those jobs. The efficiency of the work is the goal of the engineering approach to job design. The person-machine fit approach is based on how people process information and how their basic biology and physiology affect perception and physical movement. Its aim is to improve the fit between person and task so that the reliability of performance is enhanced and the person doing the job experiences less fatigue and stress. The biological approach to job design deals with how people react to the physical conditions experienced in the workplace. Its aim is to reduce the physical stress and strain on the worker so that employee comfort is increased. The psychological approach to job design examines how people think about their jobs, the meaning of the job, and why the job is important. Its aims are to improve the worker’s job satisfaction, motivation to do the job, involvement in the job, and job performance.
Each of these four approaches to job design focuses on a different outcome of work. Each has its own costs and benefits. The manager in an organization could not attempt to use all four approaches at the same time because their recommendations can conflict. For example, jobs can be simplified and made easy for a worker to accomplish adequate and reliable performance, but then these jobs are not likely to offer the depth and challenge that some workers require.
Engineering
Scientific management, work simplification, and time and motion study are the sources of this approach. The engineering method concentrates on the job itself, and not on the person doing the job. It attempts to make the job easier to perform in order to obtain greater efficiency and reliability, make it easier to find and train people to perform the job. Job content is reduced. Any physical and psychological effects on the people doing the job are of secondary importance. Workers are seen mechanistically, as interchangeable parts needed to do the work.
Person-Machine Fit
This is the study of persons in their working environment and is concerned with the fit between the person and the machine. Here the person is considered in the performance of the work, but mostly in the sense of reducing errors that humans are likely to make. The attention and concentration requirements of jobs are designed so that the job does not demand too much of the worker’s physical and mental capabilities.
Common approaches are the design of parts that can be inserted only one way, machines that can be operated only in the most efficient manner, and dials that can be easily read. When a job is designed well in this way, the reliability of job performance should be enhanced. The worker should make fewer mistakes and have fewer job-related accidents. Also, the individual worker should experience less fatigue, stress, mental overload, and boredom on the job.
One important new area of equipment design is that of computer monitors and keyboards. With many employees now sitting in front of video display terminals (VDTs) for long periods of time, any radiation they emit is a health concern. Typing faster and faster on computer keyboards while having few rest breaks is causing repetitive stress disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome and arm and wrist tendonitis. Several low-stress, flexible keyboards have been designed that require far less finger muscle energy than conventional keyboards and can be split and rotated so that the user’s hands are not in stressful positions.
Biological
This approach focuses on the physical comfort and well being of the person doing the job and on the physical characteristics of the workplace. Job conditions concern where and how the work is done and in what physical environment. Biological job design is concerned with privacy, lighting, air quality, noise, and space.
Privacy. This characteristic concerns visual and speech privacy as well as the physical accessibility of the office. Open-plan or landscaped offices are less private than traditional enclosed offices. Their walls are usually room dividers that can be moved as necessary. Offices are areas of the floor enclosed by dividers and usually do not have a door. The person working in an open office can typically be easily seen and heard, and is readily accessible. Open-plan workspaces may also be made up of workstations or carrels.
Lighting. Most people prefer natural light to artificial light. Natural light contains the full spectrum of colours, and is perceived as warmer and brighter than artificial lighting. Fluorescent lighting can flicker, hum, and cause headaches. Incandescent lights produce a more yellow light than most fluorescents. They are useful for desks because the individual can flexibly direct the light. This is an advantage because people at work like to be able to control the amount of light in their workspace.
Artificial lights can also be concentrated in an array to make a bright panel that mimics the intensity of natural outdoor light. Such a panel can be useful in controlling a form of depression, called seasonal affective disorder, caused in some individuals by a lack of light. Artificial light can also be used to help people working at night in offices or factories to control their body clocks. The body can be fooled into switching night for day, which helps the person to work more effectively at night.
Air Quality. Because many office towers are sealed, fresh air is supplied only through the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Air temperatures are often not controllable in individual offices, so that some employees feel too hot and others too cool to work effectively.
The increasing numbers of computers, laser printers, photocopiers, and fax machines in an office release more chemicals into the air and therefore a greater supply of fresh air is required. When airflow is restricted, contaminants can build up in the air causing allergic reactions among employees.
The sick building syndrome is when more than 20 percent of the people working in the building complain of headaches, dizzy spells, sore throats, itchy eyes, nausea, skin irritations or coughs, and when workers get better 12 to 24 hours after leaving the building.
To reduce the effects of poor office air quality the following prescriptions apply.
1. The heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system needs to be examined and cleaned, especially to eliminate molds growing in the ventilation system. Molds and mildews on walls and other surfaces must be cleaned.
2. More fresh air needs to be drawn into the building. Fresh air intakes must be located away from exhausted air and outdoor pollutants. Tobacco smoke needs to be reduced or eliminated inside the building.
3. Since paint, glue, and new cloth used in office screens and carpets all give off noxious gases, these need to be cooked off when installed by heating the building to high levels and venting the gases to the outside.
4. The use of insecticides and volatile cleaners inside the building must be reduced.
Noise. Noise is increasing in offices along with higher numbers of office machines and densities of people working in the office. Installing ceiling, wall, and floor coverings can reduce noise. Another solution is to build walls and partitions that will shield workers from ambient noise. An example of a white noise generator is a machine that projects sounds of waves or rain. With such a generator operating in the office the conversations of others will be heard but the words spoken will be harder to make out. Such conversations will therefore be less distracting.
A more active and high-tech approach is active noise control. Here a microphone is placed near the source of a repetitive noise, the sounds picked up are digitally analyzed and a speaker generates an anti-noise. This anti-noise is made to be out of phase with the original noise so that the two cancel each other out. Noise here is not masked or baffled, but eliminated. For high-noise workplaces where hearing damage is a possibility, special anti-noise headphones can be worn.
Space. The comfort, efficiency, and health of employees are key factors that are influenced by the design of the worker’s physical space and equipment used. Uncomfortable furniture, inappropriately sized work surfaces, sharp-cornered desks, and bookcases with the top shelves out of reach are all symptoms of a poor physical support system. People differ widely in their physical characteristics and equipment designed for the average person suits very few. The trend towards a more diverse work force also increases the need for the careful design of office furnishings and work equipment.
Psychological
In this approach to job design, the mental state of the worker is considered of primary importance in the performance of the task.
Job Enlargement. This refers to the addition of tasks to a job. When tasks are given that add variety to the work and help to break up the day, enlargement is a useful approach. However, if the tasks added are seen by jobholders as more of the same, the enlarged job will not likely increase the worker’s motivation to perform the work. An important aspect of job refers to the number of people with whom the jobholder interacts, who these people are (clients, suppliers, customers, etc.) and how long these interactions typically last. A worker who is in constant contact with the general public and has a job high in number of relationships that last a short time has an enlarged job that is likely to cause stress.
Job Enrichment. This approach builds motivational factors into a job, making the job more complex and challenging. Enriched jobs are expected to increase the jobholder’s motivation to perform, especially if the worker is seeking more of a challenge. Enriched jobs may have increased authority, supervision, management, and decision-making responsibilities. The more these elements exist in a job the higher is its vertical loading.
When a job is enriched to make it complex and enlarged, the job scope is high.
Job Rotation. Job rotation allows the movement of people between jobs. This can help to reduce the boredom associated with performing any one job for a long period of time. In a factory with a number of assembly jobs, personnel can be moved between the jobs on a fixed rotation or on an as-requested basis. Rotation could occur at the end of a relatively long period of time performing one job, a month for example, or could occur on a daily basis. Job rotation is not limited to factory or service jobs. Professionals can be seconded from their home organization to help another organization for a fixed amount of time. An executive might, for instance, be given four months away from the home organization to work with the United Way on its yearly campaign.
One benefit of job rotation is that it has a group cooperative emphasis. Personnel rotated through jobs build personal relationships with others while learning what the others do in their work. A bank management trainee could expect to rotate through a number of different functional areas in bank branches and through branches of different sizes and serving different clienteles before being assigned to head office.
The Job Characteristics Model. This model shows how the characteristics of a job are likely to affect the performance of the jobholder. Jobs can be analyzed for motivating potential and redesigned to be more motivating for jobholders.
Five core job dimensions are:
1. Skill Variety – the number of skills necessary to do the job
2. Task Identity – the degree to which the job is done start to finish by one worker
3. Task Significance – the importance of the job to other people’s lives
4. Autonomy – the freedom to do the job in the way the job holder wants
5. Feedback – information about job performance comes from the job itself or from co-workers.
The Job Characteristics Model argues that these five core dimensions of a job affect the psychological state of the individual worker. Psychological state in turn affects personal and work outcomes. The outcomes considered in the model are internal work motivation, quality of work performance, satisfaction with the work, and absenteeism and turnover. The basic prediction of the model is that jobs that are higher on the five core job dimensions will create positive psychological states that will then result in beneficial personal and work outcomes.
Specifically, the more skills that are required to do the job, the more the whole job is performed by the same worker, and the more the performance of the job makes a difference to other people’s lives, the more it is likely to be experienced as meaningful.
Autonomy is expected in the job characteristics model to lead to the psychological state of experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work. The person at work who is free to make choices regarding what to do and how to do it is also likely to feel responsible for the decisions made. The emergency room physician decides how to treat patients and bears the responsibility for what happens to them.
Feedback on the job performed will lead to knowledge of the actual results of the work activities. Sometimes doctors prescribe medication to a patient and never find out what difference the medicine made or even if the patient actually took it. In the emergency room, medication is likely to be prescribed and administered; then the patient’s status is monitored. Feedback from blood samples, blood pressure readings, etc., as well as the patient’s own reports all provide knowledge of the results of actions taken by the emergency room physician.
The Job Characteristics Model proposes that an aspect of the employee’s personality called growth need strength affects the relationship between core job dimensions and work outcomes. GNS is a person’s basic desire to better him or herself. An employee might have a low growth need strength and not desire a motivating job. That employee would be quite content to work in a job low on the five core job dimensions and to experience low meaningfulness, low responsibility, and low knowledge of work results. A worker with high GNS would find such a job non-motivating. Work outcomes are therefore not likely to be high.
There are two other variables thought to affect the relationship between job characteristics and performance. First, if an individual does not have the knowledge and skills required to do a job then even a job high on the core dimensions is not likely to result in better work outcomes. The job can be challenging, but a person who feels unable to effectively perform the job will not feel challenged. The second factor is context satisfactions. If the context of work is disagreeable then the individual worker will probably not be motivated by the job’s characteristics. Motivating potential score (MPS) is defined as:
(Skill Variety + Task Identity + Task Significance)/3 * Autonomy * Feedback
Using seven-point scales where 1 is low and 7 is high; the maximum MPS is 73 or 343. The average MPS for a variety of jobs has been determined to be 128.
If a job is determined to be low on MPS, an examination of the levels of the five factors may identify one that is relatively low and therefore a candidate for change. It is important to remember that MPS is a measure of the characteristics of the job itself, not of how any particular person might perceive the dimensions of his or her job. Job redesign, then, is a general concept. A more specific concept of motivation would be altering a job to better fit a particular person, or modifying a person’s perceptions of a job so that it is seen as more motivating.
Combining tasks to be performed is a way to increase both skill variety and task identity. Building a bigger job out of smaller ones will require more skills and that the worker performs a larger piece of the total work. Work units can be formed that follow natural work clusters, thereby increasing task identity and task significance. This is because the formation of natural work units allows the individual to see the whole job being done and the difference it makes. Building up relationships with clients helps to increase skill variety, autonomy, and feedback.
Vertical loading can also enrich a job so that the jobholder has more autonomy and responsibility for work outcomes. A sales clerk at Mark’s Work Wearhouse, for instance, could be given responsibility for ordering clothing for several product categories and tracking sales and customer response to the product.
Opening feedback channels can increase the amount of feedback generated by a job. Clients can be asked to report on their experiences. Comment cards are often used for this purpose. Feedback can come from supervisors or from devices used to perform the work. For instance, supermarket checkout scanners can be programmed to report on the number of items scanned in a given period.
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