Modified Needs Hierarchy Model
Modified Needs Hierarchy Model
Modified Needs Hierarchy Model
This hierarchy of needs came under some criticisms, mainly due it being too vague in explaining
what people need to be motivated. As well as this many people think that certain aspects of the
hierarchy should be further up, or further down, showing that the diagram made is very
individualistic.
Modified Needs Hierarchy Model
To overcome these problems, Alderfer came up with his own version of the hierarchy. His ‘Modified
Needs Hierarchy Model’ puts Maslow’s 5 levels into just 3, which are;
1. Existence needs – Physiological and safety
2. Relatedness needs – Love and belonging
3. Growth needs – Potential and self esteem
He also made a point that one level didn’t need to be satisfied to reach the other, therefore catering
for more peoples motivation needs.
Key Learning Points?
1. What is the Definition of Motivation?
2. What are the 5 Key Points of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs?
3. Explain Which Factors are in each Section
4. What is the Modified Needs Hierarchy Model?
Definition: The reason or reasons to act in a particular way. It is what makes us do things and carry
out tasks for the organisation. However, motivation is often used as an excuse, a lack of motivation
for not doing anything. This is why in an organisation discipline needs to be used, to inspire the fact
that motivation isn’t always needed, but discipline to get the job done is.
Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory Definition: Frederick Herzberg came up with a theory which would
look into what causedjob satisfaction and what caused job dissatisfaction. Factors which influenced
making a job satisfying were called ‘Motivator Factors’ whilst factors which made a job dissatisfying
were named ‘Hygiene Factors’. Below are what both of these sets include;
Hygiene Factors
If these factors are not present, they will cause people within the organisation to become
dissatisfied. For example;
Salary and Pay
Job Security
Working Conditions
Supervision
Company Policies
Interpersonal Relationships
Motivation Factors
When these factors are present, people within the organisation will become satisfied. For example;
Achievement
Recognition
Responsibility
Job Satisfaction
Personal Development
McClelland – Achievement Motivation Theory (1961)
Herzberg’s theory of motivation relates to McClelland’s in some ways, as McClelland also looked
into different aspects which motivate workers and came up the same results, although he didn’t look
into factors which dissatisfy workers. He came up with three achievement motivators, which were the
following;
Achievement Motivation – Seeking achievement of realistic, yet challenging goals to enable
advancement in the current job role. To reach this feedback and constructive criticism is needed.
Authority/Power Motivation – This person is motivated by power, by an influence on others and the
ability to part their ideas on others they will gain motivation and a personal sense of status.
Affiliation Motivation – This person needs friendships, relationships and interactions with others. A
need to be popular and liked, which leads to team working skills, but can also cause problems when
hard decisions are needed to be made.
Key Learning Points
Define Motivation?
What are the Hygiene Factors?
What are the Motivation Factors?
Explain McClelland’s Achievement Motivation Theory?
© iStockphoto/aaaachoo
What motivates employees to go to work each morning?
Many people get great satisfaction from their work and take great pride in it; Others may view it as a burden, and
simply work to survive.
This question of motivation has been studied by management theorists and social psychologists for decades, in
attempts to identify successful approaches to management.
Social psychologist Douglas McGregor of MIT expounded two contrasting theories on human motivation and
management in the 1960s: The X Theory and the Y Theory. McGregor promoted Theory Y as the basis of good
management practice, pioneering the argument that workers are not merely cogs in the company machinery, as
Theory X-Type organizations seemed to believe.
The theories look at how a manager's perceptions of what motivates his or her team members affects the way he or
she behaves. By understanding how your assumptions about employees’ motivation can influence your management
style, you can adapt your approach appropriately, and so manage people more effectively.
Theory X
This assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working, and this encourages an authoritarian
style of management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things done. This style of
management assumes that workers:
Dislike working.
Avoid responsibility and need to be directed.
Have to be controlled, forced, and threatened to deliver what's needed.
Need to be supervised at every step, with controls put in place.
Need to be enticed to produce results; otherwise they have no ambition or incentive to work.
X-Type organizations tend to be top heavy, with managers and supervisors required at every step to control workers.
There is little delegation of authority and control remains firmly centralized.
McGregor recognized that X-Type workers are in fact usually the minority, and yet in mass organizations, such as
large scale production environment, X Theory management may be required and can be unavoidable.
Theory Y
This expounds a participative style of management that is de-centralized. It assumes that employees are happy to
work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility. It assumes that workers:
Take responsibility and are motivated to fulfill the goals they are given.
Seek and accept responsibility and do not need much direction.
Consider work as a natural part of life and solve work problems imaginatively.
This more participative management style tends to be more widely applicable. In Y-Type organizations, people at
lower levels of the organization are involved indecision making and have more responsibility.
Do you work most effectively when your boss controls every part of everything you do? Or would this drive you mad, so that
you'd just do what he or she wanted (and nothing more), look for another job, and then leave? Or would you prefer a boss who
helps you to do your best, increasingly trusts your judgment, allows you to use your creativity, and step-by-step gives you more
control over your job?
Learn from this! As it is for you, it will be for many of the members of your team!
Tip 2:
That said, different members of your own team may have different attitudes. Many may thrive on Theory Y management, while
others may need Theory X management. Still others may benefit from an altogether different approach.
Mix and match appropriately.
At a simple level, it seems obvious that people do things, such as go to work, in order
to get stuff they want and to avoid stuff they don't want.
Why exactly they want what they do and don't want what they don't is still something
a mystery. It's a black box and it hasn't been fully penetrated.
Classifying Needs
People seem to have different wants. This is fortunate, because in markets this creates
the very desirable situation where, because you value stuff that I have but you don't,
and I value stuff that you have that I don't, we can trade in such a way that we are both
happier as a result.
But it also means we need to try to get a handle on the whole variety of needs and
who has them in order to begin to understand how to design organizations that
maximize productivity.
Part of what a theory of motivation tries to do is explain and predict who has which
wants. This turns out to be exceedingly difficult.
Many theories posit a hierarchy of needs, in which the needs at the bottom are the
most urgent and need to be satisfied before attention can be paid to the others.
Maslow
self-actualization
esteem
belongingness
safety
physiological
Specific examples of these types are given below, in both the work and home context.
(Some of the instances, like "education" are actually satisfiers of the need.)
According to Maslow, lower needs take priority. They must be fulfilled before the
others are activated. There is some basic common sense here -- it's pointless to worry
about whether a given color looks good on you when you are dying of starvation, or
being threatened with your life. There are some basic things that take precedence over
all else.
Or at least logically should, if people were rational. But is that a safe assumption?
According to the theory, if you are hungry and have inadequate shelter, you won't go
to church. Can't do the higher things until you have the lower things. But the poor
tend to be more religious than the rich. Both within a given culture, and across
nations. So the theory makes the wrong prediction here.
Or take education: how often do you hear "I can't go to class today, I haven't had sex
in three days!"? Do all physiological needs including sex have to be satisfied before
"higher" needs? (Besides, wouldn't the authors of the Kama Sutra argue that sex was
a kind of self-expression more like art than a physiological need? that would put it in
the self-actualization box). Again, the theory doesn't seem to predict correctly.
Cultural critique: Does Maslow's classification really reflect the order in which needs
are satisfied, or is it more about classifying needs from a kind of "tastefulness"
perspective, with lofty goals like personal growth and creativity at the top, and "base"
instincts like sex and hunger at the bottom? And is self-actualization actually a
fundamental need? Or just something that can be done if you have the leisure time?
This is very similar to Maslow -- can be seen as just collapsing into three tiers. But
maybe a bit more rational. For example, in Alderfer's model, sex does not need to be
in the bottom category as it is in Maslow's model, since it is not crucial to (the
individual's) existence. (Remember, this about individual motivation, not species'
survival.) So by moving sex, this theory does not predict that people have to have sex
before they can think about going to school, like Maslow's theory does.
Alderfer believed that as you start satisfying higher needs, they become more intense
(e.g., the power you get the more you want power), like an addiction.
Do any of these theories have anything useful to say for managing businesses? Well,
if true, they suggest that
Not everyone is motivated by the same things. It depends where you are in the
hierarchy (think of it as a kind of personal development scale)
The needs hierarchy probably mirrors the organizational hierarchy to a certain
extent: top managers are more likely to motivated by self-actualization/growth
needs than existence needs. (but try telling Bill Clinton that top executives are
not motivated by sex and cheeseburgers...)
These needs can be measured using the TAT (thematic apperception test), which is a
projection-style test based on interpreting stories that people tell about a set of
pictures.
This theory suggests that there are actually two motivation systems: intrinsic and
extrinsic that correspond to two kinds of motivators:
One or the other of these may be a more powerful motivator for a given individual.
The belief is that the presence of powerful extrinsic motivators can actually reduce a
person's intrinsic motivation, particularly if the extrinsic motivators are perceived by
the person to be controlled by people. In other words, a boss who is always dangling
this reward or that stick will turn off the intrinsically motivated people.
Note that the intrinsic motivators tend to be higher on the Maslow hierarchy.
hygiene factors. These are factors whose absence motivates, but whose
presence has no perceived effect. They are things that when you take them
away, people become dissatisfied and act to get them back. A very good
example is heroin to a heroin addict. Long term addicts do not shoot up to get
high; they shoot up to stop being sick -- to get normal. Other examples include
decent working conditions, security, pay, benefits (like health insurance),
company policies, interpersonal relationships. In general, these are extrinsic
items low in the Maslow/Alderfer hierarchy.
motivators. These are factors whose presence motivates. Their absence does
not cause any particular dissatisfaction, it just fails to motivate. Examples are
all the things at the top of the Maslow hierarchy, and the intrinsic motivators.
If you think back to the class discussion on power, we talked about a baseline point on
the well-being scale. Power involved a threat to reduce your well-being, causing
dissatisfaction. Hence, power basically works by threatening to withhold hygiene
factors. Influence was said to fundamentally be about promising improvements in
well-being -- when you are influenced to do something, it is because you want to, not
because you were threatened. Influence basically works by offering to provide
motivators (in Herzberg's terms).
Equity Theory
Suppose employee A gets a 20% raise and employee B gets a 10% raise. Will both be
motivated as a result? Will A be twice as motivated? Will be B be negatively
motivated?
Equity theory says that it is not the actual reward that motivates, but the perception,
and the perception is based not on the reward in isolation, but in comparison with the
efforts that went into getting it, and the rewards and efforts of others. If everyone got a
5% raise, B is likely to feel quite pleased with her raise, even if she worked harder
than everyone else. But if A got an even higher raise, B perceives that she worked just
as hard as A, she will be unhappy.
In other words, people's motivation results from a ratio of ratios: a person compares
the ratio of reward to effort with the comparable ratio of reward to effort that they
think others are getting.
Of course, in terms of actually predicting how a person will react to a given motivator,
this will get pretty complicated:
1. People do not have complete information about how others are rewarded. So
they are going on perceptions, rumors, inferences.
2. Some people are more sensitive to equity issues than others
3. Some people are willing to ignore short-term inequities as long as they expect
things to work out in the long-term.
Reinforcement Theory
Operant Conditioning is the term used by B.F. Skinner to describe the effects of the
consequences of a particular behavior on the future occurrence of that behavior. There
are four types of Operant Conditioning: Positive Reinforcement, Negative
Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction. Both Positive and Negative
Reinforcement strengthen behavior while both Punishment and Extinction weaken
behavior.
Apply Withhold
positive negative
reinforcement reinforcement
Reward
(raise above (raise up to
baseline) baseline)
punishment
extinction (stay
Stressor (bring down
at baseline)
below baseline)
Reinforcement schedules.
Then there is what we call an intermittent reinforcement schedule. There are fixed
and variable categories.
The Fixed Interval Schedule is where reinforcement is only given after a certain
amount of time has elapsed. So, if you decided on a 5 second interval then each
reinforcement would occur at the fixed time of every 5 seconds.
The Fixed Ratio Schedule is where the reinforcement is given only after a
predetermined number of responses. This is often seen in behavior chains where a
number of behaviors have to occur for reinforcement to occur.
The Variable Interval Schedule is where the reinforcement is given after varying
amounts of time between each reinforcement.
The Variable Ratio Schedule is where the reinforcement is given after a varying
number of correct responses.
Fluctuating combinations of primary and secondary reinforcers fall under other terms
in the variable ratio schedule; For example, Reinforcers delivered Intermittently in a
Randomized Order (RIR) or Variable Ratio with Reinforcement Variety (VRRV).
Fixed Variable
give reward after
give reward after
a certain amt of
first proper
time w/ the amt
response
changing before
following a
the next reward
specified time
Interval
period
(unexpected
bonus based on
(yearly raise)
merit)
[short term]
[medium term]
give reward after
punishment a number of
(subtract from responses, w/
baseline) that no. changing
before the next
Ratio
(commissions or reward
piecework pay)
(team-based
[medium term] bonus)
[long term]
This theory is meant to bring together many of the elements of previous theories. It
combines the perceptual aspects of equity theory with the behavioral aspects of the
other theories. Basically, it comes down to this "equation":
M = E*I*V
or
M (motivation) is the amount a person will be motivated by the situation they find
themselves in. It is a function of the following.
V(valence) = The perceived strength of the reward or punishment that will result from
the performance. If the reward is small, the motivation will be small, even if
expectancy and instrumentality are both perfect (high).