MOTIVATION

A person is motivated when he or she wants to do something. Covers all the reasons of acting in a certain manner (Adair, 2006).

INTERNATIONAL THEORIES

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (internal): when an inferior need is satisfied the next level becomes dominant. The highest level can never be satisfied, “man is a perpetually wanting animal” and unsatisfied needs are motivations.

Critics: people’s needs don’t advance in a progress towards the top of the pyramid, people’s priorities are different and people constantly come back to previously satisfied needs.

 Source: http://datadesign.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/maslows-pyramid/

Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factors theory (external):

·      Satisfaction: related to professional acknowledgement, promotions; the nature of work.

·      Dissatisfaction: company policy, management, salary; work conditions.

Critics: dichotomization and not individual differences

Theory X and Y (Douglas McGregor):

X: physiological and safety. Avoid work and responsibilities. Must be forced, threatened, controlled and penalized.

Y: social, esteem and self-actualization. Make physical and intellectual efforts at work. Motivated by the content itself.

The Expectancy (Porter and Lawer, 1968): certitude of their expectancies. Results of performance satisfy a need. Effort.

The Goal Setting (Lothan and Locke, 1979): motivation is higher when there are specific objectives established, accepted and offered a performance feedback.

The Equity theory: higher motivation when employees perceive fairness in their treatment in comparison to others.

Stacy Adam’s theory of inequity: people are motivated when they see themselves in risk, or in an “unfair” position.

The 50-50 (Adair, 2006): covers the internal and external perspective.

The European Employee Index: motivation is the result of factors related to the employees’ perception of job and work environment.

·      Reputation: the organization

·      Senior management: people in charge

·      Immediate superior

·      Cooperation: interaction

·      Daily work

·      Total remuneration: compensation

·      Development: acquisition of competences

All theories are not equally good and useful. Managers cannot assume they understand employees’ needs; they should analyze the variety of them.

In multicultural organizational contexts, what could be a good strategy to keep people motivated towards a common task?

Theories of motivation are culturally bound, and differences occur among nations. This is crucial to create a motivation strategy within an organization. As managers, is challenging in two aspects: the recognition of the cultural differences and recognition of individual needs. If a manager understands these circumstances, is going to be easier to maintain people motivated. Culture diversity might be seen from a positive perspective, and identify the opportunities it brings. The most important thing to keep motivation within an organization is to maintain the group needs satisfy. Group needs are:

·      Needs to accomplish

·      Common tasks

·      Need to maintain the cohesive social union

The last one refers to the sum of all the individual needs converging with each other. In this point is important to apply strategies to impulse the cross-cultural learning between the co-workers and at the same time tolerance will be incremented as a value of the organization. If the employees are motivated to learn from each other, there will be a feeling of belonging to the group. One example of motivation, if there are different languages, can be classes so they can learn other languages and the communication is going to improve. Another strategy can be implement a cultural lunch per week and people can show their food preferences. Conferences about the world as home for all can be influential too, employees can understand tasks as goals that improve the quality of life all over the world and not just the place they are located.

Managers need their employees to feel they are important as well as the others. One culture is not better than other, and all of them deserve respect and attention.

REFERENCES:

1. IMAGE: Maslow’s Pyramid. Online, available March 1, 2011. http://datadesign.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/maslows-pyramid/
2. Viorel, Lefter, ManolescuAurel, Marinas CristianVirgil, and PuiaRamona Stefania. 2009. "Employees Motivation Theories Developed at an International Level”. Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Science Series18, no. 4: 324-328
3. Organizational Motivation. Sin Kit I. Class, 2011.
4. Mead, Richard. 2004. International Management: Cross-Cultural Dimensions. London: Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 1.