Functions of Business, Part 13
Question 1: Explain psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. List the levels of that hierarchy of needs.
Answer 1: Psychologist Abraham Maslow sought to understand what motivates employees at work, and he concluded that they were motivated by a series of needs which could be identified and enumerated. He felt that these needs could be arranged in a hierarchy of increasingly rewarding levels. His idea was that as one need was fulfilled, the worker would move on to the next higher need in the hierarchy. Here is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:Physiological needs: food, shelter, etc.Safety needs: the need to feel free from dangerSocial needs: the need to be considered a valued associateEsteem needs: the need for self-respect and recognition from othersSelf-actualization needs: the need to express one’s potential
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Question 2: Describe the efforts of Frederick Herzberg to understand what motivates employees. Distinguish between his concepts of motivators and hygiene factors.
Answer 2: Psychologist Frederick Herzberg sought to discern what job-related factors were most influential in motivating employees to do their best. He came up with a rather long list of factors which he deemed the most important. He further observed that these factors could be broken up into distinct groups: One group involved considerations that were more or less centered upon job content, such as a sense of achievement and recognition. He termed these group motivators. The other group centered more upon the job environment, such as working conditions, salary, and job security. Perhaps surprisingly, Herzberg concluded that it was the first group which provided the strongest motivation for workers. In other words, he felt that considerations like salary, which most people assume are of prime importance, are superseded by considerations of self-esteem in the workplace.
Question 3: Define job enrichment, and identify the five characteristics of work which advocates of job enrichment deem the most important in motivating employees.
Answer 3: Job enrichment is a theory which postulates that the nature of the actual work is the most important and effective area by which to motivate employees. Give employees an identifiable task which they are to perform through to its completion, the theory asserts, and the employees will naturally want to carry this task out. The five characteristics of work which advocates of job enrichment feel must be addressed are:Skill variety: a measure of the variety of skills a job requiresTask identity: a measure of to what extent a task has a recognizable completion pointTask significance: a measure of how much impact the job has on other employeesAutonomy: a measure of the degree of independence in a particular jobFeedback: a measure of the amount of information that individual workers get regarding their job performancezza4zz
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