Chapter 8 Motivation: From Concepts to 2.

Make customers or clients more accessible in memory and

more emotionally vivid which leads to employees to consider
Applications the effects of their actions more
Motivating by Job Design: The Job Characteristics 3. Easily take the perspective of beneficiaries while fosters high
levels of commitment
Model
Job design-the way the elements in a job are organized
Relational Job Design
The Job Characteristics Model (JCM) (J. Richard Hackman, Greg
Alternative Work Arrangements
Oldham)
1. Flextime-flexible work hours
5 core job dimensions:
Benefits (may increase employee job satisfaction):
(important, valuable, and worthwhile)
1. Reduced absenteeism
1. Skill Variety-the degree to which a job requires a variety of
2. Increased productivity
different activities
3. Reduced overtime expenses
2. Task identity-the degree to which a job requires completion
4. Reduced hostility toward management
of a whole and identifiable piece of work
5. Reduced traffic congestion around work sites
3. Task Significance-the degree to which a job has a
6. Elimination of tardiness
substantial impact on the lives or work of other people
7. Increased autonomy and responsibility for
(feeling of personal responsibility for the results)
employees
4. Autonomy-the degree to which a job provides substantial
2. Job Sharing-an arrangement that allows 2 or more
freedom and discretion to the individual in scheduling the
individuals to split a traditional 40 hour a week job
work and in determining the procedures to be used in
*an employer’s decision to use job sharing is often based on
carrying it out
economics and national policy
5. Feedback-the degree to which carrying out the work
3. Telecommuting-working from home at least 2 days a week
activities require by a job results in the individual obtaining
on a computer that is linked to the employer’s office
direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or
3 categories of kinds of jobs that telecommute:
her performance
1.routine informational-handling tasks
*From a motivational standpoint, the JCM proposes that individuals
2. Mobile activities
obtain internal rewards when they learn (knowledge of results) that
3. Professional and other knowledge-related tasks
they personally have performed well (experienced responsibility) on a
Downside: less direct supervision of employees, more difficult to
task they care about (experienced meaningfulness)
coordinate teamwork, reduce knowledge transfer in organizations
Virtual office-describes working from home on a relatively permanent
Motivating Potential Score (MPS)-a predictive index that suggests
basis
the motivating potential in a job
The Social and Physical Context of Work
MPS=Skill variety + Task identity +Task Significance X Autonomy X
*some social characteristics that improve job performance:
Feedback
interdependence, social support, interactions with other people
3
* When employees were “other-oriented” (concerned with the welfare Employee Involvement
of others at work), the relationship between intrinsic job characteristics Employee Involvement-a participative process that uses the input of
and job satisfaction was weaker employees and is intended to increase employee commitment to an
organization’s success
How Can Jobs Be Redesigned? Examples of Employee Involvement Programs
1. Job Rotation/cross-training-the periodic shifting of an 1. Participative Management-a process in which subordinates
employee for one task to another share a significant degree of decision-making power with
-many manufacturing firms have adopted job rotation as a their immediate superiors
means of increasing flexibility and avoiding layoffs -higher stock returns, lower turnover rates higher estimated
-training costs increase, reduces productivity labor productivity
2. Job Enrichment-the vertical expansion of jobs, which 2. Representative Participation-a system in which workers
increases the degree to which the worker controls the participate in organizational decision making through a small
planning, execution, and evaluation of the work group of representative employees
-to do a complete activity, increases the employee’s freedom -councils and board representatives
and independence, increases responsibility and provides feedback
Combining tasks-puts fractionalized tasks back together to Linking Employee Involvement Programs and Motivation Theories
form a new and larger module of work *Theory Y is consistent with participative management
Forming natural work units-makes an employee’s tasks *Theory X with the more traditional autocratic style of managing people
create an identifiable meaningful whole *Extensive employee involvement programs clearly have the potential
Establishing client relationship-increases the direct to increase employee intrinsic motivation in work tasks
relationships between workers and their clients (clients can be internal
as well as outside the organization)
Expanding jobs vertically-gives employees responsibilities
Using Rewards to Motivate Employees
What to Pay: Establishing a Pay Structure
and control formerly reserved for management
Opening feedback channels-lets employees know how Internal equity-the worth of the job to the organization
(usually established through job evaluation)
well they are doing and whether their performance is improving,
deteriorating, or remaining constant External equity-the external competitiveness of an
organization’s pay relative to pay elsewhere in its industry (usually
*mutual assistance programs can increase employee affective
commitment established through pay surveys)
*connect employees directly with beneficiaries
1. Allows employees to see that their actions affect a real, live
person and that their jobs have tangible consequences
How to Pay: Rewarding Individual Employees hthrough Variable-Pay
Programs
Variable-pay program-a pay plan that bases a portion of an
employee’s pay on some individual and/or organizational measure of
performance
1. Piece-Rate Pay-a pay plan in which workers are paid a fixed
sum for each unit of production completed
2. Merit--Based Pay-a pay plan based on performance
appraisal ratings
-hold in the public sector
-managers may unknowingly be basing merit pay decisions
on how they think employees will perform, which may result in overly
optimistic (or pessimistic) pay decisions
-Limitations: based on an annual performance appraisal,
thus are only as valid as the performance ratings
:the pay-raise pool fluctuates on economic or
other conditions that have little to do individual performance
3. Bonuses-a pay plan that rewards employees for recent
performance rather than historical performance
-dividing rewards and bonuses into multiple categories--even
if those categories are meaningless--makes people work harder
4. Skill-Based Pay/Competency-based/Knowledge-based
pay-a pay plan that sets pay levels on the basis of how
many skills employees have or how many jobs they can do
5. Profit-sharing plans-an organization-wide program that
distributes compensation based on some established
formula designed around a company’s profitability
6. Gainsharing-a formula-based group incentive plan that uses
improvements in group productivity from one period to
another to determine the total amount of money allocated
-large manufacturing companies, healthcare organizations
7. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP)-a company-
established benefits plan in which employees acquire stock,
often at below-market prices, as part of their benefits
8. Evaluation of Variable Pay

Flexible Benefits: Developing a Benefits Package

Flexible benefits-a benefits plan that allows each employee to put
together a benefits package individually tailored to his or her own
needs and situation

*consistent with expectancy theory’s thesis that organizational rewards

should be linked to each individual employee’s goals, flexible benefits
individualize rewards by allowing each employee to choose the
compensation package that best satisfies his or her current needs and
situation

*replace the “one-benefit-plan-fits-all” programs

3 most popular types of benefits plans:
1. Modular plans-predesigned packages or modules of
benefits, each of which meets the needs of a specific group
of employees
2. Core-plus options-core of essential benefits and a
menulike selection of others from which employees can
select
-”benefit credits”
3. Flexible spending accounts-allow employees to set aside
pretax dollars up to the dollar amount offered in the plan to
pay for particular benefits, such as health care and dental
premiums
Intrinsic Rewards: Employee Recognition Programs
*Rewards are intrinsic in the form of employee recognition programs
and extrinsic in the form of compensation systems