Organizational behavior & leadership

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR ……………………… College………………………………. …………………. Introduction Human skills, abilities, experiences and expertise in performing a task are organizational resources from the view point of business and hence utilizing these resources effectively is critically important to business success. Motivation is one of such managerial tools for improving human skills. This piece of paper addresses expectancy theory of Motivation and explains its components. This paper attempts to apply expectancy theory to a scenario in which employees under two different supervisors are not equally competent in achieving the desired goals. Expectancy Theory of Motivation and its three components Expectancy theory, first established by Victor Vroom in his book ‘ Work and Motivation’ in 1964, stated that the strength and abilities of the tendency to work in a specific way depends on the strengths of expectancy that the work is likely to be followed by a given consequence (Buelens, Kreitner and Kinicki, 2002, p. 211). The theory holds that people will be motivated to behave in a specific way that produce combinations of desired outcomes. In more simpler and practical terms, employees within the workplace will be motivated to put in a high level of efforts when they believe that their efforts will lead to a good performance appraisal. Good appraisals are likely to lead to organizational rewards, salary increase, extra bonuses etc. The major three components included in the theory of expectancy are 1) valence of an outcome, 2) expectancy and 3) instrumentality. Valence refers to the value or importance that an individual or employee places on a particular reward. Expectancy is one’s belief and perception that effort leads to performance. Instrumentality is one’s belief that performance is related to rewards. More specifically, according to the expectancy theory of motivation, an individual who is motivated is likely to think that if he works harder he can do better and he does better he will be rewarded for that (Nelson and Quick, 2010, p. 170). These three components are very important to a person’s motivation. Robbins and Judge (2011, p. 225) emphasized that the expectancy theory of motivation comprised of three relationships, they are effort-performance relationship, performance-reward relationship and rewards-personal relationship. The effort performance relationship is the probability perceived by an individual that his effort will lead to a specific level or performance. The second relationship is performance- reward relationship that shows the degree to which the individual believes that performing a task in a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome, possibly bonus, increase in pay or salary increment etc. The third relationship is Rewards-personal relationship that is the degree to which the rewards that an organisation offers to its people can help them satisfy their personal goals, their needs and the attractiveness of the potential rewards for the individual. When it comes to various cases of motivated or less-motivated employees within an organizational setting, it can be understood that many workers aren’t motivated on their jobs and they do minimum. In effectively managing the human capital through fostering their abilities, it is critically important to motivate employees by making them aware of specific rewards that they can attain by performing a specific level of tasks. Expectancy theory in the case of two types of Supervisors When the company introduced a new production process to help its employees meet the higher standards, it has been found that no employees working under Supervisor-A was doing well. They not only put efforts in performing their tasks, but also less bothered about achieving the goals. When other employees spoke with employees working under Supervisor- A, it was found that they are not interested in working hard, even though they can, since there are no difference in salary or payments between those who meet organizational goals and other who don’t. Supervisor- A in the company must adapt his strategic motivation based on expectancy theory and for that he must primarily offer an extra reward in order to motivate his subordinates. By adopting expectancy theory, employees will certainly perceive and expect a particular reward leading to performance and their performance will certainly be improved. Valence and expectancy are the perceptions and expectations in the minds of employees regarding additional rewards and how it leads to performance. Employees in the company, especially those who work under Supervisor-A will be more likely to compare and evaluate their efforts, hard-works, risks or difficulties associated with their task etc with overtime pay, bonus payment, increase in the salary etc with a comparison to that of those who work under Supervisor-B. If they expect that their extra efforts will be rewarded by any extra payment, they will be motivated to work harder. In this motivation process, there are three relationships, they are 1) effort-performance relationship, which occurs when employees under supervisor-A perceives a better performance caused by reward, 2) performance- reward relationship which occurs when they expect rewards caused by their improved performance and 3) Rewards-personal relationship that represents the expectancy of employees for an extra reward based on their performance. Conclusion This piece of paper explained the conceptual framework of Expectancy theory of Motivation and detailed the three components and three relationships that this expectancy theory is related to. This paper has attempted to apply the theory of expectancy motivation theory to the case of a company in which some employees working under Supervisor-A were less motivated. References Buelens, R, Kreitner, A and Kinicki, M, 2002, Organizational Behaviour, Second European Edition, McGraw Hill Education Nelson, D. L and Quick, J. C, 2010, Organizational Behavior: Science, the Real World, and You, Seventh Edition, Cengage Learning Robbins, S. P and Judge, T. A, 2011, Organizational Behavior, Fourteenth Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education, Inc.