Needs, Motives and Behavior

Needs, Motives and Behavior

Needs

“A need may be defined as a condition requiring the supply of relief, the lack of anything requisite, desired or useful.”

 – Norman Marie

“A need is a lack or deficit of something within the system or organism.” – Blair J Kolasa

The actual process of motivation starts with the identification of needs. Sometimes we have a strong need for food whereas at other times we seek to satisfy our security and social needs. The stronger the needs that we have, the more we are motivated to fulfil these needs.

Needs are deficiencies that energise us or trigger our behaviours to satisfy them. We discuss more in Unit 5 (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, McGregor’s Theory X and Y, Herzberg’s Dual factor theory, Reinforcement Theory, ERG Theory, McClelland’s Theory, Expectancy Theory, Equity Theory).

                                    

Types of Needs

1. Primary needs: These are the basic physical needs that include air, water, food, sleep, sex, clothing, shelter, right temperature etc. Categorised mainly into physiological and security needs.
2. Secondary needs: These are social, esteem and self-actualization needs. These needs are more important to study and understand the behaviour. These needs provide challenges and opportunities at work.

Examples of Key Secondary Needs

Source: Adapted from Gary Yukl, Skills for Managers and Leaders, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1990, p 41. The examples of need for status were not covered by Yukl.

Need for Achievement

• Doing better than competitors

• Attaining or surpassing a difficult goal

• Solving a complex problem

• Carrying out a challenging assignment successfully

• Developing a better way to do something

Need for Security

• Having a secure job

• Being protected against loss of income or economic disaster

• Having protection against illness and disability

• Being protected against physical harm or hazardous conditions

• Avoiding tasks or decisions with a risk of failure and blame

Need for Power

• Influencing people to change their attitudes or behavior

• Controlling people and activities

• Being in a position of authority over others

• Gaining control over information and resources

• Defeating an opponent or enemy

Need for Affiliation

• Being liked by many people

• Being accepted as part of a group or team

• Working with people who are friendly and cooperative

• Maintaining harmonious relationships and avoiding conflicts

• Participating in pleasant social activities

Need for Status

• Having the right car and wearing the right clothes

• Working for the right company in the right job

• Having a degree from the right university

• Living in the right neighborhood and belonging to the country club

• Having executive privileges

Motives

A motive is a factor that determines a person’s choice of one course of behavior from among several possibilities.

-  Moorhead & Griffin

THE BASIC MOTIVATIONAL PROCESS (Luthans, 2011)

Today, virtually all people—practitioners and scholars—have their own definitions of motivation. Usually one or more of the following words are included: desires, wants, wishes,aims, goals, needs, drives, motives, and incentives. Technically, the term motivation can be traced to the Latin word movere, which means “to move.” This meaning is evident in the following comprehensive definition: motivation is a process that starts with a physiological or psychological deficiency or need that activates a behavior or a drive that is aimed at a

goal or incentive. Thus, the key to understanding the process of motivation lies in the meaning of, and relationships among, needs, drives, and incentives.

1. Needs. Needs are created whenever there is a physiological or psychological imbalance. For example, a need exists when cells in the body are deprived of food and water or when the personality is deprived of other people who serve as friends or companions. Although psychological needs may be based on a deficiency, sometimes they are not. For example, an individual with a strong need to get ahead may have a history of consistent success.

2. Drives. With a few exceptions, drives, or motives (the two terms are often used interchangeably), are set up to alleviate needs. A physiological drive can be simply defined as a deficiency with direction. Physiological and psychological drives are action oriented and provide an energizing thrust toward reaching an incentive. They are at the very heart of the motivational process. The examples of the needs for food and water are translated into the hunger and thirst drives, and the need for friends becomes a drive for affiliation.

3. Incentives. At the end of the motivation cycle is the incentive, defined as anything that will alleviate a need and reduce a drive. Thus, attaining an incentive will tend to restore physiological or psychological balance and will reduce or cut off the drive. Eating food, drinking water, and obtaining friends will tend to restore the balance and reduce the corresponding drives. Food, water, and friends are the incentives in these examples. These basic dimensions of the motivation process serve as a point of departure for the rest of the chapter

Primary Motives

Psychologists do not totally agree on how to classify the various human motives, but they would acknowledge that some motives are unlearned and physiologically based. Such motives are variously called physiological, biological, unlearned, or primary. The last term is used here because it is more comprehensive than the others. However, the use of the term primary does not imply that these motives always take precedence over the learned secondary motives. Although the precedence of primary motives is implied in some motivation theories, there are many situations in which the secondary motives predominate over primary motives. Common examples are celibacy among priests and fasting for a religious, social, or political cause. In both cases, learned secondary motives are stronger than unlearned primary motives.

Two criteria must be met in order for a motive to be included in the primary classification: It must be unlearned, and it must be physiologically based. Thus defined, the most commonly recognized primary motives include hunger, thirst, sleep, avoidance of pain, sex, and maternal concern.

Secondary Motives

Whereas the primary needs are vital for even survival, the secondary drives are unquestionably the most important to the study of organizational behavior. As a human society develops economically and becomes more complex, the primary drives give way to the learned secondary drives in motivating behavior. With some glaring exceptions that have yet to be eradicated, the motives of hunger and thirst are not dominant among people living in the economically developed world. This situation is obviously subject to change; for example, the “population bomb,” nuclear war, the greenhouse effect and even dire economic times as indicated in the accompanying OB in Action: Managing Amid Economic Uncertainty, may alter certain human needs.

In addition, further breakthroughs in neuropsychology may receive more deserved attention. But for now, the learned secondary motives dominate the study and application of the field of organizational behavior.

Secondary motives are closely tied to the learning concepts. In particular, the learning principle of reinforcement is conceptually and practically related to motivation.

A motive must be learned in order to be included in the secondary classification. Numerous important human motives meet this criterion. Some of the more important ones are power, achievement, and affiliation, or, as they are commonly referred to, n Pow, n Ach, and n Aff. In addition, especially in reference to organizational behavior, security and status are important secondary motives.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motives

Motives can be thought of as being generated not only by the primary and learned secondary needs, but also by two separate but interrelated sets of sources. One method to characterize these two sources is to label them as being either intrinsic or extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are tangible and visible to others. They are distributed by other people (or agents). In the workplace, extrinsic motivators include pay, benefits, and promotions. Extrinsic motives also include the drive to avoid punishment, such as termination or being transferred. In each situation, an external individual distributes these items. Further, extrinsic rewards are usually contingency based. That is, the extrinsic motivator is contingent on improved performance or performance that is superior to others in the same workplace. Extrinsic motivators are necessary to attract people into the organization and to keep them on the job. They are also often used to inspire workers to achieve at higher levels or to reach new goals, as additional payoffs are contingent on improved performance. They do not, however, explain every motivated effort made by an individual employee.

There is growing research evidence on how to enhance intrinsic motivation (e.g., providing the individual with a choice). Another study found that when intrinsic motivation accompanies other types, for example, prosocial motivation, there will be a more positive impact on desired outcomes such as persistence, performance, and productivity. Intrinsic motives are internally generated. In other words, they are motivators that the person associates with the task or job itself.

Intrinsic rewards include feelings of responsibility, achievement, accomplishment, that something was learned from an experience, feelings of being challenged or competitive, or that something was an engaging task or goal. Performing meaningful work has long been associated with intrinsic motivation.

To further complicate any explanation of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, cognitive evaluation theory suggests a more intricate relationship. This theory proposes that a task may be intrinsically motivating, but that when an extrinsic motivator becomes associated with that task, the actual level of motivation may decrease. Consider the world of motion pictures, where an actor often strives for many years to simply be included in a film. The intrinsic motive of acting is enough to inspire the starving artist. Once, however, the same actor becomes a star, the extrinsic motivators of money and perks would, according to cognitive evaluation theory, cause the individual to put less effort into each performance. In other words, according to this theory, extrinsic motivators may actually undermine intrinsic motivation.

Behavior

Behavior at work denotes a pattern of actions by the members of an organization that directly or indirectly determines organizational effectiveness. From the foregoing discussion, we know that attitudes affect behavior through belief, feelings and behavioral intention process. If an individual believes that downsizing increases job cuts and increases unemployment, he will have a negative feeling about the downsizing and he might quit (behavioural outcome) the office before the downsizing process starts.

Types of Behavior at work

1. Performance behavior

2. Dysfunctional behavior

3. Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Needs, Motives and Behavior are interrelated. A need is a lack or deficit of something within the system or organism. Motives are the channels through which the individual thinks the need can best be satisfied, thus affects the person’s behavioral choice.

SENSATION and PERCEPTION

Sensation is the process by which our senses gather information and send it to the brain.  A large amount of information is being sensed at any one time such as room temperature, brightness of the lights, someone talking, a distant train, or the smell of perfume.  With all this information coming into our senses, the majority of our world never gets recognized.  We don't notice radio waves, x-rays, or the microscopic parasites crawling on our skin.  We don't sense all the odors around us or taste every individual spice in our gourmet dinner.  We only sense those things we are able too since we don't have the sense of smell like a bloodhound or the sense of sight like a hawk; our thresholds are different from these animals and often even from each other.  

Perception refers to interpretation of what we take in through our senses.  The way we perceive our environment is what makes us different from other animals and different from each other.  Various theories explain how our sensation are organized and interpreted, and therefore, how we make sense of what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.

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