Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Motivation’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Motivation’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Motivation
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Meaning and Definition of Motivation
- Essay on the Characteristics of Motivation
- Essay on the Theories of Motivation
- Essay on Difference between Motive and Needs
- Essay on the Importance of Motivation
Essay # 1. Meaning and Definition of Motivation:
It is essential to increase overall efficiency of human beings to improve performance of an organization. While machines, processes, technology of high order can be made available to the individuals, but high productivity can only be achieved if workers are highly skilled and adequately motivated.
Motivation perhaps is a single most important factor of the study of organizational behaviour that concerns each and every executive today.
Motivation is defined as “inner burning passion caused by need, wants and desire which propels an individual to exert his physical and mental energy to achieve desired objectives”.
Efficiency of a person depends upon performance.
Performance can be expressed as under:
Performance = Ability x Motivation
Terms liked motive, motivation and motivating are commonly used in Organizational Behaviour. It is important to fully understand the meanings of these terms so that they can be appropriately used to derive maximum benefits.
The willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need. Where ‘need’ is some internal state that makes certain outcomes appear attractive.
Motive:
As per Burleson and Steiner, (1964) ‘motive’ is defined as “an inner state that energises, activates (or moves) and directs (or chanalises) the behaviour towards certain goals”.
Motivation:
Scot defined motivation as “a process of stimulating people to action to accomplish desired goals”. Mc Farland has defined “motivation as the way in which urges, drives, desires, aspirations, strivings needs direct, control or explain the behaviour of human beings”.
The Encyclopedia of Management:
Motivation refers to degree of readiness or an organism to pursue some designated goals and implies the determination of the nature and locus of the forces, including the degree of readiness.
Memoria:
“A willingness to expand energy to achieve a goal or reward. It is a force that activates dormant energies and sets in motion the action of the people. It is the function that kindles a burning passion for action among the human beings of an organization”.
The author defines “motivation as inner burning passion caused by needs, wants and desires that propels an individual to exert physical and mental energy to achieve desired objective”.
Essay # 2. Characteristics of Motivation:
(a) Motivation is a Psychological Phenomenon:
It is the inner desire of an individual to accomplish something more. The very deficiency forces him to undertake certain amount of work. More is the individual motivated better the performance and organization relations.
(b) Motivation is a Continuous Process:
Since need is a continuous phenomenon if one need is satisfied the other need emerges and so does individual propels to work and thus the continuous chain is created.
(c) Motivation is caused due to anticipated perceived value from an action. Perceived value is the probability or the expectancy.
Therefore, Motivation = valance (value) x expectancy.
(d) There are Unsatisfied Needs:
A person remains disturbed till they are satisfied. This disturbance or tension causes disequilibria in human behaviour. More the motivation level, the higher will be efforts to get over the tension and in the process job accomplishment would take place.
(e) Individual is Motivated by Positive Motivation:
It refers to incentives offered by the organization to achieve efficiency. Incentive can be monetary like increase in pay, allowances, and payment of bonus. Payment for additional or overtime work. It can be non-monetary like issuing of certificates for excellence, awards, recognition, status, job enrichment, competitions, and the like.
Monetary rewards prevent individuals from getting demotivated or they do not motivate so to say. However non-monetary awards motivates individual as it is related to the inner/psychological aspects.
Essay # 3. Theories of Motivation:
The theories of motivation can be divided into 3 broad categories:
1. Reinforcement Theories:
Emphasize the means through which the process of controlling an individual’s behavior by manipulating its consequences takes place. Predicts factors like quality and quantity of work, persistence of effort, absenteeism, tardiness, and accident rates.
2. Content Theories:
Focus primarily on individual needs – the physiological or psychological deficiencies that we feel a compulsion to reduce or eliminate.
a. Need Theories:
These were Maslow s hierarchy, motivation-hygiene, ERG, and McClelland s need theories. Employees will be motivated to satisfy their needs. Therefore ……….If needs are assumed to differ: Match employees to situations (e.g., select leaders with high n Power). If needs are assumed to be common: Design jobs to satisfy basic needs (e.g., job enrichment)
b. Task Characteristics Theories:
Address all four dependent variables: skill variety, task identity and significance, autonomy, and feedback.
3. Process Theories:
Focus on the thought or cognitive processes that take place within the minds of people and that influence their behavior.
a. Goal-Setting Theory:
Clear and difficult goals lead to higher levels of employee productivity.
b. Equity Theory:
Deals with all 4 dependent variables. But it is strongest when predicting absence and turnover behaviors and weak when predicting differences in employee productivity.
c. Expectancy Theory:
Proves to offer a relatively powerful explanation of employee productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. But expectancy theory assumes that employees have few constraints on their decision discretion.
These theories can be categories as below:
a. Maslow’s Theory of Need Hierarchy
b. Motivation and Hygiene Two Factor Theory
c. Theory X and Theory Y
d. ERG Theory
e. Vroom’s Theory of Motivation. (Performance Satisfaction).
f. Porter—Lawler Theory.
Essay # 4. Difference between Motive and Needs:
Motive is a strong need which has a certain degree of strength that propels a person to act for its fulfillment. If the need or motive is not fulfilled a person remains restless and when fulfilled a person enjoys a certain degree of satisfaction. Certain amount of tension is harbored by a person when need exists. If incentives for accomplishing are given, the person is more enthusiastic for its implementation.
Greater the motive, greater is the tension and higher the desire to fulfill. A high degree of satisfaction is experienced by an individual once the desire is fulfilled. For example a clerk who knows manual typing on typewriting machine. He is aware that if he learns computers he would be more skilled and he would be able to achieve higher performance in his job and would probably get higher rewards for the work.
Therefore, there exists a motive to learn computer, due to its higher benefits, the need gets transformed into motive because of its greater strength. Till the time individual does not learn computer the tension won’t be released. Once this is done (due to higher motivation) the individual and organizational objective (growth) is achieved.
This is explained in figure below:
Essay # 5. Importance of Motivation:
i. High Level of Performance:
It is the duty of every manager to ensure that the employees have a high degree of motivation. He should offer monetary and non-monetary incentives. Highly motivated workers would be regular for work, and have a sense of belonging for the organization. Quality of product will be improved, wastage will be minimum and there will be increase in productivity, and performance level will be high.
ii. Low Employee Turn-Over and Absenteeism:
Employee turnover and absenteeism is caused due to low level of motivation on the part of managers. When dissatisfaction is increased employees do not enjoy the work assigned to them. Therefore there is a tendency of absenteeism. The workers hunt for an alternative job and leave the organization whenever they get an opportunity.
High level of absenteeism causes low level of production, wastages, poor quality and disruption in production schedules. Increased turnover is disastrous for any organization as it puts strain on financial position of the organization due to additional recruitment, selection, training and development. Motivation is therefore a very important management tool to achieve organizational excellence.
iii. Acceptance of Organization Change:
Management must continuously scan the external and the internal environment. There has been a great impact of. Social change and technology evolution on the motivation level of employees. Social change increases aspirations of workers and put an additional demand on the organization, which must be considered positively so that conducing working environment is created.
Technical innovation, better working conditions, better R&D facilities, encouragement to employees and existence of better personal policies should be part of any organization. This will facilitate retention of employees. Management must ensure that the changes are introduced in the organization and its benefits explained to the employees so that there is no resistance to change and organizational growth is achieved.
Re-engineering, empowerment, job enrichment, job rotation, introduction of new technology and processes will go a long way to boost employee morale and achieve high degree of motivation.
iv. Organizational Image:
Employees are the mirrors of any organization. Managers must lay down high performance standards coupled with high monetary and nonmonetary rewards. Training & development programmes should be regularly organized and employee skill improved.
It will have a positive impact on the employees and the image of the organization will be improved. It will also reduce employee turnover and better employee will look forward to join the organization. High organizational image will contribute towards brand image of the product and services the organization is marketing.