Motivational theories
...who feel his or her work are not being appreciated may work less or undervalue the work of other employees. Adams equality theory states both labor and management must believe they are receiving a reasonable return on their investment. For management the investment is the employees’ pay, benefits, and intangibles. The return management expects from their investment in labor is the employees best effort. Laborer’s investment is time, effort, and skills applied to the task management sets forth. Labors’ return on their investment of time, skill, and effort is certain intangibles, such as opportunity, pay, and benefits package. If an employee feels his or her investment of time, effort, and skills are not matched with appropriate levels of pay, benefit packages, and intangibles, then performance will falter. Production employees’ performance will decrease if disparity is perceived in rewards, benefits, and treatment between themselves and other portions of the company’s workforce. Frequently, production employees feel left out of managements concerns. Often production employees are looked down on by those is sales and administration. They do not occupy high profile potions similar to sales and administrative staff. The trend is to reward sales staff members with commissions and bonuses and administrative staff with prestige and advancement. All though return and investment applies to management and employees, this segment focuses on investing in production employees. Laborer’s investment is more complex than merely time and effort. Employees invest emotionally in the company; typically in loyalty, trust, and enthusiasm. The return on investment is more monetary and includes recognition, praise, trust, support from superiors, pension plans, job security provided by working with industry leaders, and prestige of working for a successful company. Management teams that want the most out of his or her production workforce will strive to meet such terms. Management teams should invest fully in his or her production staff. This means more than pay, benefits, and respectful treatment. If the opportunity presents itself, production employees should receive training and other job related career development workshops. All too often production employees have limited promotion options. This limits the belief in the chance to succeed and can also limit productivity. Management teams that provide additional training can reinforce an employees’ belief as a valued member of the organization. Production employees will also feel valued if given the chance to take on additional responsibilities. In the end employee pay and interesting work, appear to be important links to higher motivation in the production department. There are other options such as job enrichment, promotions, monetary, and non-monetary compensation that should be considered. Management can use job enlargement to make work more interesting for employees by increasing the number and variety of job activities performed. Overall, the Adams equity theory is a fair and balance plan for the production department. After a brief preview of the various types of motivation theories, several of the five theories could pertain to sales related employees, including Aldefer’s ERG theory, Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory and to some degree, the Acquired Needs theory by David McClelland. All these concepts involve the "Content" strategy of motivating workers; however, "Vroom’s" Expectancy theory fits the overall situations, conditions, functions, and responsibilities. Today’s sales related employees encounter such circumstances because of the level of expectancy involved with creating, maintaining, increasing sales, and anticipating rewards. Salesmanship is more than a job; it is an art. In order to constructively apply that art successfully into the working environment salespeople must have diverse talents, exceptional abilities, and available resources; however, more is needed to ensure one’s best efforts are being put forth. Motivation is an essential element that is a required part of employee actions at any level. The expectancy of rewards based on performance, position, or level of classification based on achievements, and other various positive simulative actions are used. The Expectancy Theory created by Victor Vroom centers on the means by which a person is motivated based on his or her belief of the following three concepts: (1) effort will yield acceptable performance, (2) performance will be rewarded, and (3) the value of the rewards is highly positive (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn, 2005, page 11). Commonly known as the V-I-E theory in which "V"-valence means a certain value system a person connects with certain work related outcomes. "I"-Instrumentality refers to the worker or employee thinking that a certain level of achievement will lead to certain favorable outcomes at work, and finally "E"-expectancy which simply means an individual expects that the amount of work done will be followed by a certain achieved performance task. Because the similarity of concepts in this theory is directly applicable to the highly ...