Whereas the primary needs are vital for even survival, the secondary drives are unques-tionably the most important to the study of organizational behavior. As a human society develops economically and becomes more complex, the primary drives give way to the learned secondary drives in motivating behavior. With some glaring exceptions that have yet to be eradicated, the motives of hunger and thirst are not dominant among people living in the economically developed world. This situation is obviously subject to change; for example, the “population bomb,” nuclear war, the greenhouse effect and even dire eco-nomic times as indicated in the accompanying OB in Action: Managing Amid Ecoeco-nomic Uncertainty, may alter certain human needs. In addition, further breakthroughs in neu-ropsychology may receive more deserved attention.6But for now, the learned secondary motives dominate the study and application of the field of organizational behavior.
Secondary motives are closely tied to the learning concepts that are discussed in Chapter 12. In particular, the learning principle of reinforcement is conceptually and prac-tically related to motivation. The relationship is obvious when reinforcement is divided into primary and secondary categories and is portrayed as incentives. Some discussions, however, regard reinforcement as simply a consequence serving to increase the motivation to perform the behavior again,7and they are treated separately in this text. Once again, however, it should be emphasized that although the various behavioral concepts can be separated for study and analysis, in reality, concepts like reinforcement and motivation do not operate as separate entities in producing human behavior. The interactive effects are always present.
A motive must be learned in order to be included in the secondary classification.
Numerous important human motives meet this criterion. Some of the more important ones are power, achievement, and affiliation, or, as they are commonly referred to, n Pow, n Ach, and n Aff. In addition, especially in reference to organizational behavior, security and status are important secondary motives. Table 6.1 gives examples of each of these important sec-ondary needs.
OB in Action: Managing Amid Economic Uncertainty
During the Internet bust a few years ago, I had lunch with a corporate HR leader. His company, a telecommu-nications giant, was in trouble. Every week, more layoffs were announced. People who could find better jobs were leaving in droves.
I asked the HR fellow: “How are you dealing with employee morale?” “Oh, we don’t think about morale,”
he chuckled. “We focus on Engagement with the Mission.” I was astounded by his reply, and I could all but hear the capitalized “E” and “M” in the phrase. Lots of HR people talk about engagement, and they also talk about missions. These are good things to talk about when half the workforce isn’t in fear of losing jobs at any moment.
How does one get engaged with the organization’s lofty mission when one is preoccupied with job security, the threat of missing a mortgage payment, or worse?
“Isn’t it tough to rally the troops around the mission when business conditions are so challenging?” I asked. I had just met a marketing director from this man’s com-pany the night before at a networking event. “Yes, I took a job working for XYZ,” she told me, mentioning her employer by name with a shudder. “Don’t judge me for working there. I had to take the job. Any port in a storm.”
Hollow Ring
That’s how my lunchmate’s company brand was being publicly trashed by its own new management hires. Yet he clung to the notion that Engagement with the Mission would prevail. “We just have to keep talking about it, to keep the Mission uppermost in employees’
minds,” he said.
My lunch partner was wrong in thinking that the most important issue then was Mission instead of morale, and the same holds true now. When employees are distracted by zooming foreclosure rates, the cost of fuel, the threat of job loss, and other real life concerns, our corporate mission is the last thing they want to hear about. We’re foolish if we don’t respond to our teams’
fears directly.
Like any issue that can suck time and mental energy away from our work, employees’ economic concerns are an elephant in the room. Job One is to address those concerns forthrightly, and often. We can’t guarantee our employees a job for life, or even for the next 12 months. What we can and must do is level with them, with as much detail as pos-sible, about what’s happening in our firms and what the future appears to hold. We need to talk about orders in the pipeline, the state of our customers’ business, the state of our competitors. We need to address the impact of the financial industry’s woes on our own business. If senior-leadership teams aren’t convening this week to craft an internal communications strategy dealing with these top-of-mind and scary issues, they’re deluding themselves.
When Basic Needs Are Threatened
People won’t stick to their knitting when their own and their families’ stability and future are at risk. They can’t.
They shouldn’t. Maslow’s famous pyramid shows us why.
Next year’s new product launch is fun and exciting to think about when one’s housing, health care, nourishment, and other basic needs are well in hand. When a person is wor-ried about his ability to take care of basic needs, his atten-tion to lesser matters—the new product launch being one example—goes out the window. Who can blame him?
Frequent and relevant employee communication is the name of the game during challenging economic times. And outbound communication is just half the bat-tle. The other half is responding.
For instance, employers who have been slow to accom-modate employees’ telecommuting requests should delay no more. All employers should be stretching their views of what constitutes a day’s work right now, because fuel prices have increased employees’ household expenses dramatically. If people can accomplish their work from home one day a week, this is the time to let them do it. If you’ve looked at the flextime and flexplace concepts all summer without acting, there’s no more time for delay.
Now is the time to listen to employees, and now is the time to act.
The Whole Truth
Nothing that we can invent to stimulate and reward employees—not a trip to Hawaii, not free flu shots, not even the promise of a hefty year-end bonus—can allay the fears of personal disruption or catastrophe that preoccupy our teams. No fun promotion, slogan, or contest that we dream up at a staff meeting will turn our teams’ attention away from their instinctive fears for their own economic stability—nothing except plain, unvarnished truth.
Now’s the time to open the kimono and share the company’s plans for the next 12 or 18 months; now’s the time to talk frankly about hard choices that must be made, about the leadership team’s battle plan and the associated risks and opportunities. “Just keep working, and we’ll let you know if anything changes” will not cut it, not if we want people focused on their work instead of their plummeting home value and mutual funds.
If ever there were a time to lose the corporate happy talk and be honest with employees, it’s now.
Employers who speak to what’s real for their employees—the stock market, the firm’s fortunes, and the cost of getting through the day—will earn the privi-lege of talking about Engagement and Missions months down the road. Those who insist on sticking to the party line may look back and see their efforts to avoid tough conversations as an exercise in rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
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160 Part Two Cognitive Processes of Organizational Behavior
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motives
Motives can be thought of as being generated not only by the primary and learned secondary needs, but also by two separate but interrelated sets of sources. One method to characterize these two sources is to label them as being either intrinsic or extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are tangible and visible to others. They are distributed by other people (or agents). In the workplace, extrinsic motivators include pay, benefits, and promotions. Chapter 4 covered these commonly recognized extrinsic motivators and, especially in tough economic times, low-or no-cost extrinsic alternatives include food (from doughnuts to gourmet meals), games (e.g., one CPA firm holds a “mini-Olympics” with games such as who can pack a suitcase to take to an audit assignment the fastest for a prize), or bring in someone to do manicures or at-desk massages.8Extrinsic motives also include the drive to avoid punishment, such as termi-nation or being transferred. In each situation, an external individual distributes these items.
Further, extrinsic rewards are usually contingency based. That is, the extrinsic motivator is contingent on improved performance or performance that is superior to others in the same workplace. Extrinsic motivators are necessary to attract people into the organization and to keep them on the job. They are also often used to inspire workers to achieve at higher levels or to reach new goals, as additional payoffs are contingent on improved performance.9They do not, however, explain every motivated effort made by an individual employee. There is growing research evidence on how to enhance intrinsic motivation (e.g., providing the indi-vidual with a choice).10Another study found that when intrinsic motivation accompanies other types, for example, prosocial motivation, there will be a more positive impact on desired outcomes such as persistence, performance, and productivity.11
Intrinsic motives are internally generated. In other words, they are motivators that the person associates with the task or job itself. Intrinsic rewards include feelings of TABLE 6.1 Examples of Key Secondary Needs
Source: Adapted from Gary Yukl, Skills for Managers and Leaders, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1990, p 41. The examples of need for status were not covered by Yukl.
Need for Achievement Need for Security
• Doing better than competitors
• Attaining or surpassing a difficult goal
• Solving a complex problem
• Carrying out a challenging assignment successfully
• Developing a better way to do something
• Having a secure job
• Being protected against loss of income or economic disaster
• Having protection against illness and disability
• Being protected against physical harm or hazardous conditions
• Avoiding tasks or decisions with a risk of failure and blame
• Influencing people to change their attitudes or behavior
• Controlling people and activities
• Being in a position of authority over others
• Gaining control over information and resources
• Defeating an opponent or enemy Need for Affiliation
• Being liked by many people
• Being accepted as part of a group or team
• Working with people who are friendly and cooperative
• Maintaining harmonious relationships and avoiding conflicts
• Participating in pleasant social activities
• Having the right car and wearing the right clothes
• Working for the right company in the right job
• Having a degree from the right university
• Living in the right neighborhood and belonging to the country club
• Having executive privileges Need for Power
Need for Status
Chapter 6 Motivational Needs, Processes, and Applications 161
responsibility, achievement, accomplishment, that something was learned from an experi-ence, feelings of being challenged or competitive, or that something was an engaging task or goal. Performing meaningful work has long been associated with intrinsic motivation.12 As Manz and Neck noted, “Even if a task makes us feel more competent and more self-controlling, we still might have a difficult time naturally enjoying and being motivated by it if we do not believe in its worthiness. Most of us yearn for purpose and meaning.”13
It is important to remember that these two types of motivators are not completely dis-tinct from one another. Many motivators have both intrinsic and extrinsic components. For example, a person who wins a sales contest receives the prize, which is the extrinsic moti-vator. At the same time, however, “winning” in a competitive situation may be the more powerful, yet internalized, motive.
To further complicate any explanation of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, cognitive eval-uation theory suggests a more intricate relationship. This theory proposes that a task may be intrinsically motivating, but that when an extrinsic motivator becomes associated with that task, the actual level of motivation may decrease.14Consider the world of motion pictures, where an actor often strives for many years to simply be included in a film. The intrinsic motive of acting is enough to inspire the starving artist. Once, however, the same actor becomes a star, the extrinsic motivators of money and perks would, according to cognitive evaluation theory, cause the individual to put less effort into each performance. In other words, according to this theory, extrinsic motivators may actually undermine intrinsic moti-vation. This may seem like a confusing outcome, but there is some research that supports this theoretical position.15However, as the meta-analytically based principle at the end of the chapter notes, there is considerable research evidence that extrinsic rewards may not detract from intrinsic motivation, and at least for interesting, challenging tasks, extrinsic rewards may even increase the level of intrinsic motivation (see the end of the chapter OB Principle).16
The seemingly contradictory findings make more sense when the concept of negative extrinsic motives is included. That is, threats, deadlines, directives, pressures, and imposed goals are likely to be key factors that diminish intrinsic motivation. For example, consider the difference between writing a book for fun versus writing a book that must be completed by a certain deadline in order to receive payment.17There are also a series of criticisms of the cognitive evaluation theory, including that it was built on studies largely using students as subjects rather than workers in the workplace setting and that actual decrements in intrinsic motivation were relatively small when extrinsic rewards were introduced.18 Chapter 7 will extend this discussion into social cognitive variables such as self-efficacy, and Chapter 12 will use an extended reinforcement theory–based approach to behavioral performance management.