Chapter 2 - Motivation and Performance

Motivation for employees is key for organizations that want to maximize productivity and profit.
Luckily, research provides us with a number of insights into how to improve employee motivation.

The manager who has a clear understanding of motivation, including its components and basic theories, can begin to pull the right levers within an organization to create rewards for employees that stimulate engagement.

Can managers influence employees to be more productive by understanding their sources of motivation, or even creating sources of motivation for their employees? Most researchers agree that the answer to that is yes. Motivation isn’t a stable state of mind, and what motivates an employee right now might not be the same a year later. But researchers don’t necessarily agree on the best way to accomplish that—and perhaps there is not one best approach.

Motivation is one of the most researched topics in organizational behavior, because a manager’s ability to influence employee motivation can directly affect an organization’s bottom line.