10 Terms to Remember
Achievement motivation: A desire for significant accomplishment, mastery of skills or ideas, and attainment of high standards.
Altering perceptions: A strategy to reduce perceived inequity by convincing yourself that the ratios are actually equitable.
Antecedents: Environmental factors that precede behavior in the ABC model, such as instructions, goals, or environmental cues.
Autonomy: The degree to which jobs provide freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling work and determining procedures.
Behavior: The actual actions that organizations wish to influence in the ABC model.
Cognitive choice theories: Propose that people function as rational decision-makers who weigh alternatives and choose behaviors based on expected outcomes.
Consequences: The outcomes that follow behavior in the ABC model, including both intended and unintended results.
Control theory: Motivational theories that center around negative feedback loops resulting from comparison of performance feedback with goals or standards.
Directs (motivation): Focuses effort toward particular objectives rather than random activity.
Drive-reduction theory: Proposes that physiological needs create aroused tension states (drives) that motivate organisms to satisfy those needs and thereby relieve the arousal.
Energizes (motivation): Creates a force that results in some level of effort expenditure.
Equity theory: Proposes that employees’ perceptions about the fairness of their treatment at work significantly affect motivation, attitudes, and behaviors.
ERG theory: A modification of Maslow’s hierarchy that reduces the five-need hierarchy to three categories: Existence, Relatedness, and Growth needs.
Expectancy (E): The perceived relationship between effort and performance in expectancy theory, ranging from 0 to +1.
Expectancy theory: Proposes that individuals behave in certain ways because they are motivated to select specific behaviors over others based on expected results.
Experienced meaningfulness: A critical psychological state in Job Characteristics Theory resulting from skill variety, task identity, and task significance.
Extrinsic motivation: Involves the desire to perform behaviors due to promised rewards or threats of punishment.
Feedback: The degree to which work activities provide clear information about performance effectiveness.
Goal acceptance: The parts of a goal that are assigned and acknowledged.
Goal commitment: The parts of a goal that are internalized.
Goal-setting theory: Demonstrates that appropriate goals can enhance both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation while improving performance outcomes.
Growth need strength: The extent to which individuals value or desire fulfilling higher-order needs.
Hawthorne studies: Demonstrated that the psychological environment is as important as, or more important than, the physical environment in determining workplace behavior and performance.
Homeostasis: An organism’s ability to adjust its physiological processes to maintain equilibrium.
Hygienes: Factors related to job context that can lead to dissatisfaction when absent or inadequate.
Inputs: Factors individuals bring to situations in equity theory, such as education, effort, and ability.
Instrumentality (I): Reflects beliefs that performance will result in particular consequences in expectancy theory, ranging from 0 to +1.
Intrinsic motivation: Represents the desire to perform behaviors for their own sake and to experience effectiveness and mastery.
Job enrichment: Strengthens the motivating potential of jobs by enhancing the key variables identified in Job Characteristics Theory.
Learned helplessness: A social motive characterized by feelings of powerlessness, beliefs that develop from repeated failure experiences, and convictions that situations cannot be overcome.
Maslow’s hierarchy: Proposes that humans are driven by needs organized into five levels: physiological, safety, love/belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization.
Motivation: The force that drives people to behave in certain ways.
Motivational Force: The product of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence (E × I × V) in expectancy theory.
Motivators: Factors that lead to satisfaction and motivation, such as recognition, interesting work, responsibility, advancement opportunities, and achievement.
Need for achievement (nAch): A social motive representing a general disposition to excel across various situations.
Need-motive-value theories: Propose that human behavior is driven by attempts to satisfy various needs, whether biological, psychological, or social in nature.
Optimum arousal theory: Suggests that organisms are motivated to maintain arousal at optimal rather than minimal levels.
Organizational Behavior Management (OBM): Approach to improving motivation and performance in organizations based on reinforcement theory and applied behavior analysis.
Organizational psychology: The systematic study of dispositional and situational variables that influence behaviors and experiences at work.
Outcomes: What individuals receive from situations in equity theory, such as compensation, benefits, and recognition.
Personal control: A critical factor, as people thrive when given appropriate choices and opportunities to influence their work environments.
Set points: Values that are defended by regulatory mechanisms in homeostatic systems.
Skill variety: The degree to which jobs require various skills and talents.
Sustains (motivation): Maintains effort over extended periods of time.
Task identity: The degree to which jobs require completion of whole, identifiable pieces of work.
Task significance: The degree to which jobs have substantial impacts on others’ lives or work.
Two-factor theory: Proposes that the determinants of job satisfaction are fundamentally different from those that cause job dissatisfaction.
Valence (V): Represents the value individuals personally place on rewards or outcomes in expectancy theory, ranging from -1 to +1.
Willpower: The cognitive resource required for self-regulation; the ability to resist impulses or perform behaviors that don’t come naturally.