EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Introduction

In recent times the significant of employee motivation in business organisation have grown to a considerable extent. As more and more companies are wanting to increase their employee retention factor, they are focusing on how to keep an employee satisfied. As a result of which many researchers have been conducted as to how attitude and job satisfaction impacts on an employee. If we look around us, we will also find that companies are finding innovative ways to keep the employee satisfied. However there are many companies around the world, who are still struggling with motivation factor and the management have been ignoring ways to get the proper motivation. This has resulted in the loss of well performing employees. If we go back to history a little, we can remember Napoleon’s quote which said, ‘The effectiveness of the army depends on its size, training, experience and morale, and morale is worth more than all the other factors together.’ So, this is a concept that Napoleon already thought about. As studies progressed researchers have found out that there is a significant relationship between attitude, job satisfaction and the organisational performance. In general, a positive attitude about work is always appreciated, but the fact that it affects performance, makes such a difference. In this report we shall critically analyze each of them and see how they are related and impacted. Various researchers and scholars have different views on them.

Employee Performance and Organisational Behavior

Employee job performance is critical to all organisations. Simple because if the employee does not perform well, the company cannot move ahead. As per Bakotic (2016) employee performance has been the founding blocks of an organization. Latif (2015) defined job performance as the individual employee’s overall performance with respect to quality, achievement it seeks to perform, the tasks roles and responsibilities and the time requirement as set by the organisation. Other scholars like (Kampkotter, 2016)defines job performance as something that is motivated by rewards, promotion, reviews, feedbacks and salary. He states that these can either affect the employee in a good way or in a bad way. This in turn affects their performance in a major way. Unhappy employees are not something that companies would want. Another researcher scholars Mafini (2013) studied the impact of employee performance on South African organisations. They concluded that performance is the financial indicator of the employee regarding a certain outcome. Several factors were identified here like co-worker relationship, the worker environment, compensation program, policies, rules and regulations and even the degree of employee engagement which affected the employee performance. According to Latif(2015) employee performance is the significant factor which brings out employee innovation and the firm’s performance in its entirety. A successful and motivated team of human resource is the key element of any organisation. Not only does it increases employee retention but develops a long term employee loyalty as well. Based on the above definitions by the scholars employee performance can be referred to the extent of which an individual carries out his duties and responsibilities. It has actually to do with the level of efficiency and the effectiveness by which it performs tasks.

Relationship between Job satisfaction and Employee Performance

From the above literature it is clear that happiness and job satisfaction is one of the paramount factors of organisational behavior. According Munoz-Bullon(2010) to job satisfaction represents the most daunting areas of human behavior that is faced by the management of any organisation.  Authors like Dotson et al(2010) also states that job satisfaction should be the primary priority in any organisation. His studies show that job satisfaction has direct impact on the motivation of the employees and motivation in turn has impacts on the productivity, which naturally affects the performance of an organisation. Tam(2014) defines job performance to be a positive feeling which an employee experiences about the outcome of a particular task. Further on this view states that these feelings can be positive and negative. Negative feelings are considered as unfavourable attitudes while positive feelings are favourable attitudes in an individual. These attitudes are related to job performance. This is because anyone with a positive attitude will feel satisfied with the responsibilities and the outcome and one with a negative attitude will directly influence their performance. Researchers like Alagaraja et al(2015) conducted a study in which they studied the relationship between organisational learning, organisational commitment, and the work performance of the employee and also their job satisfaction level. Studies revealed that here is a strong connection between an employees’ performance and how they feel about their job. Thus we can say that job satisfaction can be considered as a major factor in organisational behavior. It is important if any organisation wants to perform with effectiveness. This study also created a new paradigm in the managerial world. It created a scope for the managers to see how an outcome of a particular task could be influenced by methods of motivation and personal desires of the employee. They concluded that a successful employee is a happy employee.

Impact of Job Attitude and Performance on OB

As mentioned earlier, employee attitudes; positive and negative have an impact on the performance. Therefore attitudes are an important part which organisations must explore. Researcher Fadlallh(2015) states that as individuals have various kinds of attitudes, organisations can be categorized into rigid, flexible, innovative, traditional and others. Such traits of organisations also defines the workers and the management attitudes. However, defines job attitudes as set of thoughts that an employee has towards work and these thoughts form the basis of how they perform their work. Based on this definition it can be said that job attitudes are factors that influence the inactions as well as the actions taken towards their work. A study by Chandra (2016) revealed that there are five factors that govern the employee job and the work attitudes. They can be listed as satisfaction, independence, teamwork, freedom of expression and supervision. However a study conducted by Akanbi et al(2013) states that there is a significant connection between work and values. His studies were based on the green industries of Taiwan. He found out that the workers of the green industries of Taiwan have a considerable influence due to the values and beliefs that they hold. He concluded the attitude are based on the values that they pick up through their family and associations. The attitudes therefore depends on where they come from. Dugguh et al(2014) contradicts this theory and mentions that attitudes depends on how happy and unhappy they are in a work environment. They state that employee happiness must be strengthen in an organisation through various methods like promotions, work recognition, feedback on their performance and increase their productivity. Creative working ways and safe and hygienic working atmosphere are also the factors that influence their happiness. Going back to the theory, a happy worker is a productive one.

Impact of Motivation on Organisational Behavior

Work appreciation and work recognition are two of the foremost strategies of motivation that an organisation must take up Ebrary(2015) mentions that motivation is one of the most important theories revolving around organisational behavior. In the above literature we see that attitude and job satisfaction of the employee are quite important. However, motivation is a broad concept and must be discussed from various angles to understand it better. In simple words it can be said that motivation to different people mean different things. A particular employee can be motivated by many things, some can be motivated by promotion, other can be motivated through the working environment, while some can expect a good safe and secure working atmosphere. Hence, attitude and job satisfaction are given significant importance especially to motivate employees. There is number of ways through which attitude and job satisfaction could be enhanced which in return enhances employee motivation. Aziri (2011) in his literature studies mentions that people have some basic needs. The key to keep an employee motivated is to fulfill those basic needs. He states that needs form an hieracrhy. Once the basic needs are fulfill, an employee will have secondary needs and so on. It all depends on how well these needs are met by the management. Some of the most successful organisations in the world look into the needs of the employee. They consider primary needs, secondary needs and more.

According to Herzberg Theory of Motivation, there are two different groups of attributes which either increases job satisfaction and contribute towards employee motivation or affect the job experience. This theory mentions that most of the employees as we in recent times consider motivators like responsibility of the task, advancement of their career and growth opportunities that an organisation provides. This influences the employee engagement factor and their experiences. Apart from that, hygiene factors like work conditions, salary, security directly impact on employee motivation. Especially in areas of industrial manufacturing sectors these are of utmost importance. Workers there depend highly on the security, salary, working conditions and other as stated earlier. This provides a valuable insight as companies could improve the salary structure, introduce effective employment strategies and help in improving the working environment. This can be used as a method of encouragement and motivation.

According to Pandey et al(2014) job satisfaction is important for every employee because it has an intangible impact on the mindset of the employees. Job satisfaction is an important aspect because it is directly related to the attitude of the employees. Improving job satisfaction by taking into account the key needs and wants of the employees would improve the attitude in a positive manner which directly motivates the employees to work in the organisation for a long period of time.  Maslow further modified the theory as put forward by Herzberg to state that hierarchy induces a state of achievement in the employee. The organisation in order to ensure success in a particular field must contribute to the achievement of the basics. It is therefore important that employees have a feeling of self-accomplishment when it comes to working in an organisation. He also states that when employees have achieved this, it becomes easier for them to decide whether a firm is suitable to them or not. If it is suitable, it leads to enhanced job satisfaction and an improvement in overall performance. Again coming back to positive and negative attitudes we can say that a negative shift of work attitudes are not favourable for the firm, while positive attitudes owning to motivation makes the organisation perform better.

Discussion of Theoretical Framework of OB

Going to history, we can aligned these definitions with theories put forward by enlightened researchers. Victor H. Vroom’s published his Expectancy Theory in 1964, which stated employee motivation and their behavior is influenced by what he expects the outcome of a certain task to be. Vroom’s theory focused on the idea that the effort put by the employees will result in the performance and the rewards they get. This is a very straight forward theory which is based on the cognitive process theory of motivation. To further on this Robbins, Judge et al(2013) states that Vroom’s expectancy theory focuses on three relationship with employees have. The first is the relationship between effort and performance of an employee. The second is the performance and reward relationship and the third is the relationship of personal goal. Therefore, it can be said that this theory asserts that employee performs on the basis of expectation of a certain outcome and depending on the level of his efforts, the outcome is predictable. Here the idea is that job satisfaction is determined by the efforts of an employee.

Another theory of motivation called the Equity Theory states that all employee work towards achieving equity among themselves as well as their co-workers. Equity is achieved when the ratio of the output and input put forward by a particular employee equals to the same as put forward by another of his co-worker. The focus of this theory is on inputs and outputs given by the individual. But it does not only revolves around these but co-workers also seem to have a considerable effect. Inputs here comprise of the individual’s education, experience level, efforts given to a particular task and his contributions. The outcomes denote the salary, compensation, leave, benefits, working culture and working conditions, vacation time and more; basically the external factors.

Learning Outcome

Author Cynthia (2016) states that perception here plays an important role. The perception of an individual denotes a negative inequity and a positive inequity. However studies conclude that employees change their attitude and behavior and hence outcome when they experience inequity, as a result of their decreased performance. Many other authors like Pepper et al(2015) states that fairness and just treatment have a major effect on motivation. The employees feel valued if they are treated in a good manner. Things like dishonest behavior, inequality, harrassment etc. are all triggers of unjust behaviors. Ethically they are not what it should be. Therefore we can state that equity is also related to ethics.

Better the commitment of the workforce better is the possibility of organisational growth and development. Organisational behaviour showed by every level of employee is significant in the context of organisational success because different levels of employees are responsible to show different behaviour but there is one common aspect which all levels of employees uphold and that is employee loyalty. Building on what is said by Pepper and others, we can say that fair treatment is an important part in winning employee loyalty. This theory is supported by studies as conducted by Livia L. Barakat et al (2015).

Conclusion

Employees with a higher level of performance tend to carry out their tasks and responsibilities in a very effective way. According to Wilkins and other (2018) attitudes are learned disposition which directly and indirectly links to the job satisfaction in an organization. If we think critically the workplace is the place where they spend their maximum time in a day. It is therefore important that they are motivated and be their best. It is just not about financial productivity and growth but also regarding individual welfare and the contributions the employee is giving to the organisation. In the above literature review we can see that attitudes and job satisfaction depends on a number of factors. It is up to the organisation to choose effectively how well they fulfill and maintain these factors. Different theories are also spoken here which states how each of the attributes are related to motivation and organisational behavior. There is still considerable debate as to which theory is aptly applicable, but on a whole various theories can be applied to an organisation to bring out the best employee performance. No matter what the conclusion is, one thing is certain that employees must be given the top priority in an organisation. Motivation is always something that organisations must consider in order to improve employee performance and profitability of their organisation.

 

 

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