Week 2 - Motivation

Week 2 – Motivation

There are two different types of motivational theories, content theories, and process theories. Content theories assume people have a set of needs which they pursue and process theories which assume individuals select their goals and choose how to get them by a process of calculation. Today I will look at one content theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This theory is made up of a pyramid –

The theory has five stages, starting at the bottom. In order to continue to the next step you must fulfil all the needs within the current step. The first step involves basic human survival needs. Only when the lower stages are fulfilled can you start to worry about the higher order of needs, influence and personal development.  

I feel Maslows theory is particularly relevant to me because of the way it is set out, I’d find it impossible to reach the self-actuastion stage without fulfilling the lower stages. If I had problems at home or with money and couldn’t afford food, drink or shelter then there would be no way I could reach the self-actualisation stage.

My motivation for starting my business management course was that I want to be successful in life. Being surrounded by a business orientated family I have seen what it’s like to be successful in business. And I want to be equally as successful, when I finished my A-Levels it seemed an obvious choice to further my education and love for the subject at university. My family has always wanted me to go university and the majority of my friends also went to university, which was enough motivation for me to do so. I had fulfilled the first three steps and was comfortably sitting at the top of the pyramid, and the attributes in the top two steps are what this course can do for me, for example achievement, status, responsibility, reputation and most importantly personal growth and fulfilment. The university course can help me to grow both as a person and academically, it gives me responsibility, status and I will gain a better reputation when I have completed my degree and will make me feel more fulfilled.

When I was in year 11, the last year of school my dad passed away. This was an extremely important time in my life and I became extremely de-motivated when it came to finishing coursework and revising for my GCSE’s. This took away some crucial factors on Maslows hierarchy of needs including the belongingness and love needs and safety needs feeling less stable and losing an important family relationship. Alderfer’s ERG theory is similar to Maslows in the respect that it’s set out in a similar, hierarchical pyramid.  However you don’t need to completely fulfil the lower stages before you can progress to the higher stages unlike Maslow’s theory. I can also relate to this theory, because although I lost a lot of the lower stage attributes I still progressed to the higher stages of growth and managed to revise and finish of important pieces of coursework. My family and teachers at the school helped me to stay motivated and stay on track, and the fact that I wanted to do well and get into sixth form was also a big motivator. Herzberg’s theory is difficult to relate to this as its factors that affect someone in the work place, however being at school does share some similarities to being in the work place, good supervision working conditions and colleagues (being fellow students or teachers). These are all factors that can lead to dissatisfaction, however in my experience the people involved in these areas helped to motivate me to succeed. If I could do anything differently I would have tried harder to focus on revision to attain better grades.

From looking at a range of different theories and applying them to different periods of my life I have learnt how to use the different theories discussed in the lecture and also gained an insight into how the theories would be put into pratice in real businesses.