Essay: Analysing how Maslow’s might assist The Shark Company

Introduction.
What is Motivation?
“Motivation can be said to be a conscious decision to perform one or more activities with greater effort than other competing activities”
Motivation can be either extrinsic (driven by external rewards, eg. Salary) or intrinsic (internal motivation, eg. Personal goals).
Why motivation?
Motivation is extremely important in an organization as;
• It improves the level of production in employees
• Helps to achieve objectives that have been set by the organization.
• Helps to build healthy relationships between staff.
The Shark Company
The Shark Company is a company that supplies exotic fish products to supermarkets and high class restaurants in the South East of England. The Shark Company is known for having excellent staff relationships and is said to think beyond rewards such as pay and working conditions.
The company looks to provide staff an opportunity to broaden their knowledge and skills in order to produce a more flexible workforce as well as giving employees a more satisfying and fulfilling job. Ed Baxter, the CEO of the company believes in staff having self worth and a sense of ownership, therefore it is important for staff to be valued and respected for greater goals to be achieved.
Motivational Theories Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Abraham Maslow studied employee motivation and came up with a hierarchy of needs;
• Physiological needs: this includes basic needs like food, shelter, and wages enough to pay bills
• Safety/security needs: job security, protection, fair treatment, etc.
• Social needs: sense of belonging, friendship, and support from colleagues.
• Esteem needs: having status/recognitions, achievement and independence.
• Self actualization; reaching full potential, being promoted and given more tasks.
Self actualization Esteem needs
Social needs Safety/security needs Social needs Physiological needs
Maslow stated that once a lower need has been satisfied , it is no longer seen as a strong motivator. Only needs that have not been satisfied motivates a person. Maslow also makes it clear that most people have these basic needs in the order he put them, however the hierarchy is not necessarily a fixed order as for some people, some needs may be more important than the other.
Evaluation of Maslow’s theory
As summarized by Lauren .J. Mullins (2007):
“In application to the work place, people do not necessarily satisfy their needs, especially higher level needs, just through the work situation, they satisfy them through other areas of their life as well… there is doubt about the time that elapses between the satisfaction of a lower-level need and the emergence of a higher-level need… Some rewards or outcomes at work satisfy more than one need. Higher salary or promotion, for example can be applied to all levels of the hierarchy. Even for people with the same level of hierarchy, the motivating factors will not be the same. There are many different ways in which people may seek satisfaction… Maslow viewed satisfaction as the main motivational outcome of behaviour, but job satisfaction does not necessarily lead to improved work perfomance.” (P.260).
Frederick Herzberg
Frederick Herzberg (1923) came up with a theory quite similar to that of Maslow. He believed in a two-factor theory which includes ‘motivators’ and ‘hygiene factors’. Motivators are factors that can directly motivate employees to be more productive and is concerned with the job itself, for example: how interesting the job is. On the other hand, the hygiene factors do not focus on the job itself but factors that surround the job like good working conditions; these factors do not directly affect the level of productivity of employees. As opposed to Taylor’s view that pay rate can motivate workers, Herzberg classified pay rate as a hygiene factor, meaning it cannot directly affect the productivity of an employee.
Herzberg (1923) suggested that managers could motivate employees by improving the nature of the job itself and using a democratic approach to managing employees using some of the following techniques:
● Job enlargement: employees should be given a wider range of activities within the same level in the organization.
● Job enrichment: this involves redesigning jobs in a way that they are more interesting and challenging for employees
● Empowerment: this is delegating more power to employees in a way that they can decide how they want to effectively carry out their tasks.
Evaluation of Herzberg’s work
According to Lauren .J. Mullins in his book ‘Management and Organizational Behaviour’ :
“It is often claimed that the theory applies least to people with largely unskilled jobs or whose work is uninteresting , repititive, and monotonous, and limited in scope. Yet these are the people who often present management with the biggest form of motivation. Some workers do not seem greatly interested in the job content of their work or with the motivators or growth factors. A second
general criticism concerns methodology… People are more likely to attribute satisfying incidents at work , that is the motivating factors, as a favourable reflection on their own performance. The dissatisfying incidents that is hygiene factors, are more likely to be attributed to external influences and the efforts of other people.” (P. 263).
F.W. Taylor
Frederick Taylor came up with the theory that workers are only motivated by the level of pay. In other words, if they level of pay is high, employees would be motivated to work leading to increased productivity and vice versa. His theory of scientific management argued the following:
● Workers do not enjoy work therefore they need to be closely monitored and supervised and management should divide production into series of small tasks in order to make the work easier.
● Managers should provide appropriate training and tools for workers to perform their duties efficiently
● Managers should also use the time-piece pay rate, this means that workers are paid according to how much they are able to produce. This is supposed to motivate workers to increase productivity in order to earn higher pay.
A lot of businesses adopted this method and saw that their productivity had gone up which also reduced the cost of production due to economies of scale. The most recognized was Henry Ford who used the method to design his first production line, Ford cars.
Evaluation of Taylor’s theory
Taylor’s method of motivating his workers was more autocratic than democratic, therefore workers were just expected to follow instructions given by their managers and had no input in decisions made. Also, workers began to find the work boring as they kept doing the same things over and over again.
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