Motivation

          Motivation is the process of bringing forth the best efforts of subordinates in accomplishing group assignments. Recent business history has shown that wages alone do not accomplish this goal. In the past, workers valued their jobs more because of their need for income, and wages were more effective as a motivating device. But today's society is relatively well-off, and employees (and their unions) have made other benefits of work an important factor in motivation. Thus, besides wages, employees today are motivated by such fringe benefits as pleasant working conditions, reasonable work assignments, supervisory training programs, health, insurance and retirement policies, vacation arrangements, promotion policies, and participants in decision making.
          Many ideas for motivating employees have been developed by non-business people, particularly psychologists and other social scientist. We shall examine some of their ideas, but it should be noted here that the decreasing productivity of employees in recent business history has been a matter of great concern to business leaders. More and more managers and management theorists are leaning toward task-oriented management, which stresses production results rather than the assurance that every employee will be a well-adjusted human being. According to this view, supervisors should exercise their authority diplomatically rather than only trying to be popular  in all their dealings with subordinates.
          Probably, there can be no final best way to motivate employees because times and people's needs change. Still, at least one motivator seems to apply most of the time: respect for supervisors. Employees prefer a personable, serious, task-oriented supervisor who applies rules uniformly to everyone, rather than a supervisor who is always trying to be popular and who applies rules inconsistently. This brings us to the matter of leadership.