Definition of Employee Motivation

2.1.1. Definition of Motivation

Studying about motivation in general and employee motivation in particular attracts concern from many researchers in the world. There are many different viewpoints of motivation. Most of them prone to two approaches .The first approach focus on the relationships among need, incentive, and motive. The second approach prefers to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

• The first viewpoint of motivation:

In this first approach of motivation, most researchers pay attention to the role of three components. They are: Need, Incentive and Motive.

Michael Armstrong (1999) suggested that motivation is created by both conscious and unconscious of needs which are unsatisfied and itself creates desire to gain something.

Motivation plays an important role in explain why people are doing what they are doing.

Individuals who have need will try to make a way lead them to achieve goals. Maehr and Meyer (1997) proposed a definition of motivation: “Motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain the initiation, direction, intensity, persistence and quality of behavior, especially goal directed behavior”.

Need: Need is described as disequilibrium. It is considered as necessary and urge.

Taking an example: If an employee lacks of working environment. They will want to be offered incentive to fulfill their need. If an incentive is offered, it will have effect on their behavior.

Incentive: The second component which is mentioned in this approach is incentive.

Incentive is from outside. It can be tangible or intangible. For instance, in a company, tangible incentives are salary, bonus, quality of working environment, safe and health care. Intangible is praise, the good relationship with colleagues, so on.

Motive: Besides need and incentive, the third component is motive. Motive is from inside of a person. Motive can be considered as internal factor which direct behavior of a person. Motive has five characteristics (Barry L.Reece and Rhonda Brandt, 1999):

- Motive has personal characteristic. Each individual has their own motive. There no two people who have the same motive

- Motive always changes in our life. The things which satisfy us nowadays may not satisfy us in the future.

- Motive is unconscious. We can’t aware of all our motives.

- Motive is inferred. It is very difficult for us to understand and guess them

- Motive is hierarchical. It is similar to need. It can be rank based on their importance

• The second viewpoint of motivation

The second approach of motivation prefer to classifying motivation into two groups:

Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. This viewpoint is preferred using in Anglo-American literature.

Intrinsic Motivation: Intrinsic motivation is personal factor which creates a pathway for people’s behavior. This factor has deep and long-term effect because it exists in each individual (Armstrong, A Handbook of Human Resource Management, 1999). Malone and Lepper also suggested motivation as: “What people will do without external inducement.”

Extrinsic Motivation: Extrinsic motivation is considered as factor which is from outside environment and has effect on each individual. According to Brown, in his research: “Psychology of motivation” (2007) gave a definition of extrinsic motivation:

Extrinsic motivation refers to our tendency to perform activities for known external rewards, whether they are tangible (e.g., money) or psychological (e.g., praise) in nature.

2.1.2. Definition of Employee Motivation

In textbook: “Human resources management” which has been written by M.A Nguyen Van Dien, PhD Nguyen Ngoc Quan proposed an employee motivation: “Employee

motivation is employee’s desire and voluntary to strengthen their effort for a specific goal and result”. PhD Bui Anh Tuan also suggested a definition of employee motivation:

“Employee motivation is intrinsic factor which stimulates employees to work effectively for high efficiency. The expression of motivation is willingness, efforts and passion in working in order to achieve the goals of organization as well as employee by themselves”. Another definition of employee motivation which was given by Robbins (1993): “the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need.”

In general, employee motivation can be defined as the efforts from employees.

Employee motivation also has intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. According to Armstrong (1999), intrinsic motivations are affected by the following factors:

• Challenges: Employees feel to be motivated when their job has the different level of challenges and difficulties.

• Curiosity: Working environment can attract employees who want to experience novelty.

• Control: Control work and working environment is very important for employees so that they can feel respect their jobs.

• Fantasy: Employees will use metal image to think of the activities which stimulates their behavior

• Competitive: Employees prone to compare their results with others.

• Cooperation: Most employees feel happy when helping others to complete their common tasks and goals

• Recognition: An employee will be satisfied when others recognize their jobs

In term of extrinsic motivation, according to Barry L.Reece and Rhonda Brandt in the articles: Human Relations in Organizations (1999), praises from outside is good incentive for employee when beginning a new job or company want to stimulate their employees to promote their strength. Extrinsic motivation cannot be maintained for a long time. It has just affect employees for a short term. Extrinsic motivation can be

positive and negative. Regarding to positive aspect, extrinsic motivations include salary, bonuses, promotion or day off. The wrong payment system or criticism can be some examples of negative extrinsic motivation.