Compare and contrast one process theory of motivation with one content theory

Motivation

Compare and contrast one process theory of motivation with one content theory. Include in your answer a brief explanation why one is a process and the other a content theory.

There are a lot of definitions of motivation. For example, motivation can be defined as “the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal” (), or “the cognitive decision-making process through which goal-directed behaviour is initiated, energized and maintained”. Many other writers and business people define motivation as something that causes people to achieve or do something, they usually wouldn’t. Consequences of low motivation could be acts of sabotage, counter-productive behaviours, poor organizational citizenship, an unwillingness to engage in discretionary behaviours, costly levels of staff turnover, absenteeism, poor industrial relations, lowered productivity and many more. Motivational theories are “the writing of industrial psychologists and sociologists which shed light on the factors determining the satisfaction and motivation of employees”. There are two types of motivational theories: process theories and content theories. Content theories suggest that everyone has the same set of needs and examines an employee’s requirements from a job looking at physical, social and psychological factors. Process theories, on the other hand, examine an individual’s cognitive processes. Basically, content theories suggest that we are all the same and therefore are motivated in the same way, whereas process theories look at us as individuals, understanding that we are all different and that what motivates one person does not necessarily motivate another.

A good example of a content theory is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1954). Maslow’s theory is definitely a content theory as it focuses on the goals which, according to him, every individual aspires and therefore assumes that we are the same. “Maslow’s model is a general model of human motivation”. The best way to describe his motivation theory is by showing an illustration. There are a lot of illustrations of the hierarchy but the most common would look similar to this:

As you can see from this illustration there are five stages of motivation.

Maslow said that “it is quite true that humans live by bread alone – when there is no bread. But what happens to their desires when there is bread?” There are needs that every individual has - needs like food (physical), safety (security) and love (social), but, there are also needs that are particularly important in a working environment - needs like recognition and promotions (self-esteem needs). At the top of the hierarchy is self-actualization, however only a small proportion of individuals ever manage to achieve this level and it is also very difficult to achieve for younger individuals. Maslow argues that once we have satisfied a need at one level in the hierarchy, its impact on us diminishes and what then exerts a more powerful influence is the need at the next level up the hierarchy. Therefore, a satisfied need is not a motivator anymore and a need in an upper level is not an effective motivator unless a lower motivator has been satisfied. Nevertheless, Maslow does not suggest that having satisfied one need we move on to the next. Needs differ in their prepotency – typically people might satisfy 85% of their physiological and safety needs, 70% of their social needs, 40% of their self-esteem needs but only 10% of their self-actualisation needs.

There are two main criticisms to Maslow’s theory. First of all, it is vague and cannot predict behaviour and secondly, the theory is said to be culture-bound. For example: Scandinavian cultures place a higher value on quality of life and social needs and European and Anglo-American cultures place a higher value on productivity, efficiency and individual self-actualization. Therefore, the needs levels can have a different order in different cultures. William E. Gallagher, Jr. and Hillel J. Einhorn write in their article Motivation Theory and Job Design:

Maslow’s postulation of a hierarchial need structure is appealing

in its simplicity and apparent completeness. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Maslow’s postulation of a hierarchial need structure is appealing

in its simplicity and apparent completeness. But his theory has

been subject to criticism due to unclear conceptual issues and lack

of empirical evidence. Questions concerning the rigidity of his

hierarchy and the prepotence of lower-level needs are raised when

instances are cited of persons displaying the ability to attend to

higher-level needs when lower deficits are clearly not being met.

Equity theory would be an example of a process theory. “It argues that the perception of unfairness in a social or organizational setting leads to tension, which in turn motivates the individual to act to resolve that unfairness”. The highest impact on this theory comes from J. Stacy Adams (1965). As the name might suggest, it “explores the impact of feeling poorly rewarded or indeed the opposite feeling, too well rewarded, on our behaviour at work”. According to this theory, there is an effort-reward ratio, which people use to compare with themselves at another point of time or with their social referents. The effort-reward ratio is calculated by comparing our rewards (such as pay, recognition and many more) and contributions (such as time, effort, ideas and many more) to the rewards and contributions of others. This social comparison process is driven by our fundamental concern with fairness. When we see that we put in the same effort as our colleagues or individuals in the same workfield but receive a lower (or higher) level of reward, we might experience inequity (internal inequity when within the same company and external inequity when outside of company) and therefore demotivation.

Equity is an important part of process theories as it illustrates very clearly that we are individuals and have different perceptions not only of motivation but also of equity. For example, when calculating the effort-reward ratio, some individuals might include experience and seniority into the contribution part and their status in the company into the rewards part. Other people might consider their intelligence and training and desire to receive a higher level of recognition proportional to this. As you can see, because every person is unique in his perceptions, two individuals in the same company, doing the same job and maybe even receiving the same salary might feel inequity compared to each other, because they have a different perception of what is fair. Huseman et al. suggest that there are three types of people. There are the benevolents, people wo prefer to give rather than take and therefore prefer their effort-reward ratios to be lower or at least have a greater tolerance of under-reward than their social referents. A benevolent is distressed by equity or over-reward. Another type of people are equity sensitives, who behave exactly in accordance with equity theory, strive to ensure that their effort-reward ratios are the same as their referents’ and feel distressed under the conditions of inequity or under/over-reward. The third type of individuals are the entitleds, who believe that their effort-reward ratio should exceed those of their referents and are distressed under conditions of equity or under-reward.

As you can see, if you look at the theories just by themselves, they have nothing in common. However, they are linked to each other, when looking at them from a manager’s prospective and trying to apply them into working life. To successfully motivate employees, the employer should not look at just one theory but trying to look at all content and process theories. By looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to motivate his employers, the manager should provide good working conditions, job security, a clear job description, communicational and social facilities and recognition for achievement. However, when taking into consideration equity theory, some problems might occur, when for example employees working under good working conditions (physical need satisfied) start to compare their effort-reward ratios and discover that for example someone who is less experienced has received a pay rise (internal inequality). This leads us to a major difference between these two theories. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs doesn’t put a big emphasis on money (compared to other theories, like Taylor’s), whereas the major point where individuals might experience equity or inequity is when comparing salaries. Equity theory is particularly well supported for conditions of underpayment, so managers involved in wage-setting therefore have to be careful to avoid setting wage rates which cause people to feel underpaid relative to others within the same plant or to comparison groups outside the organisation. Underpayment is a common cause of perceived inequity which can lead to conflicts (effort bargains), whereas the threshold for experiencing over-payment is high and feelings of overpayment do not appear to last very long.

Another difference is, that Maslow recons that motivation is an unconscious process and that we could not describe what motivates us by completing a questionnaire, therefore when thinking about the hierarchy of needs, we move through the levels unconsciously and cannot do anything about. With equity theory, on the other hand, (as mentioned previously in the definition) individuals can actually do something about it. If you take payment as an example, when an individual realizes that s/he is a) paid more or b) paid less putting in the same effort, he experiences tension and is either a) feeling guilty or b) annoyed, therefore the individual is motivated to restore equity and decides to do something about it, s/he then either a) puts more effort in to compensate or b) asks the manager for a raise or leaves hard work to others. Through that process we feel that equity is restored again and that our efforts and rewards are comparable with those of our social referents.

I have chosen Maslow’s theory and equity theory as examples for a comparison and contrast between content and process theory to show the fundamental differences of the two different approaches to motivation. Process theories focus on how we make choices with respect to desired goals and give the individual a cognitive decision making roe in selecting goals and the means by which to pursue them, whereas content theories are based on the assumption that every individual has got the same set of needs (some of them we are born with and lie in our nature) and that these needs are and should be used to motivate. However, it is said that individual behaviour is the heart of human motivation and that because we are all different, we actually have different sets of needs and different goals and therefore we behave differently. As I tried to point out before, it is the managers’ job to recognize our needs and provide us with an equal and just offer (bearing in mind equity theory) of what we need for satisfaction i.e. relationships, sense of belonging, intellectual stimulation, mental and physical challenges and self-development. However, I do realize that applying theories into practice is not as easy as it is on paper since you can’t satisfy everyone at once and in addition to that be fair. It might happen that once you have satisfied someone’s needs you might have caused someone else to experience inequity.

To sum up and to come back to the actual topic, the main difference between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and equity theory is that Maslow’s theory (being a content theory) suggests that everyone has got the same needs which s/he is motivated by and that there is nothing really s/he can do about it, whereas equity theory (being a process theory) suggests that individuals have got different perceptions (i.e. of what is fair) and attitudes to work (i.e. the effort they put in) and therefore different cognitive ways to motivation.

Bibliography

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