Changing Perspectives in Motivational Theories

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Patrick Doyle        12/01/2010                

Changing Perspectives in Motivational Theories

The idea of motivational theory has been contemplated over the past hundred years or so. Taylor, Mayo, Maslow and Herzberg are the four main thinkers in the field. The theories that they proposed have similarities and differences. Taylor and Mayo have conflicting views and Maslow has similar theories and views to Herzberg, however Herzberg expanded on the work of Maslow

F.W. Taylor was the first to look at the factors that motivate workers, working at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a manager that was mainly interested in productivity. Taylor came up with a set of views that became the theory of Scientific Management (Slattery 2003).Taylor believed that workers do not naturally enjoy the work that they do. This led to his belief that workers needed to be closely supervised and controlled. He stated that the tasks of workers should be broken down into small, simple tasks and that training and the tools to complete the tasks should be given. Taylor believed that the main motivator for workers was money. To this end Taylor propose a piece-rate pay system. This is where workers were paid according to the amount that they produced. Taylor thought that this would mean that workers would be encouraged to work hard and increase productivity.

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Taylor’s methods became the adopted norm for businesses. These businesses saw the benefits in the form of higher productivity and lower unit costs and wastage. One of the main proponents of this theory was Henry Ford (Slattery 2003) who used the theory to develop the first production line to make his Ford cars. This was the beginning of the mass production era.

One of the flaws of this theory is that workers became bored with doing the same mundane tasks day in and day out. Workers also ended up feeling that they were being treated as nothing more than ...

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