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Reinforcement theory assumes that the consequences of an individual’s behaviour determine his or her level of motivation. Thus, an individual’s motives are considered to be relatively minor in this approach.

Four types of reinforcement depend on the mix of desired and undesired employee behaviour and consequencies.

•Positive reinforcement – satisfying consequencies follow desired behaviour. From a simple “Well done” to changes in pay and prospects, such actions increase the chance of repetition.

•Negative reinforcement – removal of unpleasant effects after desired behaviour. After some problems, an employee improves the standard of work and the supervisor stops criticising or watching closely.

•Punishment – negative consequences of undesired behaviour. Punishment may range from criticism over poor quality to formal sanctions for indiscipline. A common problem is punishment without guidance on how to achieve acceptable standards, so managers should strive to make it constructive.

•Extinction – withdrawal of rewards in the light of undesired behaviour. Responses such as ostracism by colleagues, or withdrawal of praise or pay increases by managers may counteract the undesired behaviour.

Thus, reinforcers are not necessarily rewards and do not necessarily have to be positive. But the current emphasis in organisations is on positive reinforcement. Reinforcement should contain as much information as feasible; happen as soon as possible; recognise achievability, responding to small gains as well as large; stem from the top; and be unpredictable and irregular, maintaining the element of surprise.

These are six basic rules for using reinforcement.

1) Do not reward everyone in the same way. Give more rewards to the better performers. 2) Recognise that lack of reward can also influence behaviour.

3) Tell people what they must do to be rewarded. Employees should have standards against which to measure the job.

4) Tell people what they are doing wrong. A manager should give them a clear idea of why the rewards are not forthcoming.

5) Do not punish anyone in front of others because it lowers the individual’s self-respect and selfesteem.

6) Be fair. Make the consequences equal to the behaviour.

Concept check

1.In motivating, what role do rewards play?

2.What are the two groups of rewards? What is the difference between them?

3.Which of them is of greater importance for employees? Why?

4.Make a list of all theories of motivation covered in this section. Use these to draw up a classification of theories.

5.What are three major groups of theories? What aspects of motivation do they deal with?

6.What and whose study did all motivation theories stem from?

7.What is the primary motivator according to F. Taylor?

8.Speak on the Taylor’s system of compensation and motivation.

9.Answer the questions about Maslow’s and Herzberg’s theories.

1) What are the five levels in the needs hierarchy? Give examples for each level and fill in the diagramme.

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balance between job demands and the capacity of staff to satisfy them. There are two basic approaches to achieving a balance – matching people to jobs and matching jobs to people.

Matching people to jobs

There are three possibilities to eliminate negative consequences of job dissatisfaction.

• Establish clear expectations

During recruitment, the nature of the job should be made clear to candidates. It is better to announce “the most tedious job in the world” than to lie about enticing possibilities.

• Job rotation

One major attempt to overcome the boredom at work is job rotation. Job rotation is periodically rotating work assignments. For instance, an employee in a retail store might work one month as a salesperson, then one month as a cashier. Job rotation entails moving a worker from job to job, thus, it does not require the worker to perform only one simple and specialised job over the long run. In fact, job rotation programmes have been known to increase organisational profitability in some cases. Over the long run, however, they are typically ineffective because rather than becoming bored with only one job, the individual eventually becomes bored with all the rotating jobs. Clearly, a balance is needed between the advantages of rotation and its costs. Change has to be organised, training provided and disturbance taken into account. Job rotation is more effective for an individual who is being trained for a job that requires an overview of how various units of an organisation function. A trainee in the financial management, for example, will have a better understanding of how the finance division functions after he or she has worked in the various departments, including accounts receivable, accounts payable and payroll.

• Earning relief

Some employers experienced success through offering contingent time off (СТО). In an eight-hour day one group was producing 160 units with a 10 per cent reject rate. Managers and staff agreed to a new daily target of 200 plus 3 for every rejected unit. Within a week, output exceeded 200 and defects fell to 1.5 per cent. Staff could leave after the daily quota. The average work time became 6.5 hours. This example shows that the workers were motivated by earning time off.

Matching jobs to people

The limitations of adapting people to jobs have led many to the reverse view. Jobs must match people’s capabilities and the nature and boundaries of the job must be considered alongside the needs of the people. Productivity and needs satisfaction are dual aims of the two policies – enlargement and enrichment.

• Job enlargement

Job enlargement is a strategy developed to overcome the boredom of more simple and specialised jobs. The theory behind job enlargement is that jobs become more satisfying as the number of operations an individual performs increases. Job enlargement involves adding more tasks of a similar nature to the job. In other words, enlarging a job means increasing the scope. The job of an assembly line worker might be enlarged by assigning the jobholder more assembly operations of a similar nature. Thus, the job is enlarged in the sense that the jobholder performs more different operations.

By combining a dozen or more tasks, feelings of boredom and frustration may recede as a sense of achievement is reintroduced. Yet, as with job rotation, critics point out that combining a few boring tasks does not always make a job interesting.

• Job enrichment

Adding responsibility is one of the most common ways of “enriching” a job. It means redesigning the job with the express intention of increasing its motivational content. Job design is placed at the core of motivation and all key job characteristics can be changed.

•Skill variety: the range of skills in use can be increased. For example, planning, leading, communicating, recording and monitoring can be developed within the context of manual jobs.

•Task identity: enabling a person to complete a whole task with a meaningful outcome. This could range from a complete assembly to looking after all the requirements of a customer instead of referring queries to specialists.

•Task significance: designing the job so that its outputs are important to the work of others. Encouraging staff to see colleagues as customers is an important message in quality management.

•Autonomy: allowing discretion over job pace, sequence, checking, and so on. This is related to the notion of empowerment. There are operational limits to the possibilities for individual discretion. Many

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employers, however, have developed the idea of group autonomy where a few people share control over the work.

• Feedback from job: providing information on how well a person is doing.

Job enlargement and job enrichment involve increasing the amount of job scope and job depth. Job scope and job depth are two important dimensions of job content. Job scope refers to the number and variety of different tasks performed by the jobholder. In performing a job with narrow scope, the jobholder would perform few different tasks and repeat these tasks frequently. The negative effects of jobs poor in scope can result in more errors and lower quality.

Job depth refers to the freedom of jobholders to plan and organise their own work, to work at their own pace and to move around and communicate as desired. A lack of job depth can result in job dissatisfaction which can, in turn, lead to tardiness, absenteeism and even sabotage.

A job can be high in job scope and low in job depth or vice versa. For example, newspaper delivery involves the same few tasks each time, but there is considerable freedom in organising and pacing the work. Therefore, the job is low in scope but high in depth. Of course, many jobs are low (or high) in both job scope and job depth.

• Flextime

Another more recent job-design strategy for motivating organisation members is based upon the concept called flextime (or flexitime). Perhaps the most traditional characteristic of work is the fact that jobs have been performed within a fixed eight-hour workday. More recently, however, this tradition has been challenged. Faced with problems of motivation and worker absenteeism, many managers are turning to time-scheduling innovations as a possible solution.

The main purpose of these scheduling innovations is not to reduce the total number of hours during which organisation members perform jobs, but to provide workers with greater flexibility in the exact hours during which they must perform their jobs. Flextime or flexible working hours programmes allow workers to complete their jobs within a forty-hour workweek, which they arrange themselves. The choices of starting and finishing times can be as flexible as the organisational situation will allow. Workers can choose to come in at six o’clock in the morning and quit early in the afternoon, for example. Or to arrive late and leave late. Most companies that are experimenting with flexible working hours set a core time, maybe from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon, during which employees must be present. Based upon various kinds of organisational studies, flextime programmes seem to have some positive organisational effects. One researcher, for example, has reported that flextime contributes to greater job satisfaction, which typically results in greater production. Other investigations conclude that flextime programmes can better motivate workers.

The Managerial Grid

The final human relations-oriented area involves the concept known as the managerial grid, which is also related to motivating organisation members. The managerial grid is a basic model describing various managerial styles or ways in which managers can treat their subordinates. This grid is based on the idea that managerial styles can be described by means of two primary attitudes of a manager: (1) concern for people; and (2) concern for production. On the grid, each of these attitudes is placed on an axis, scaled 1 through 9, and used to identify five main managerial styles. The grid thus yields five major managerial styles and lists the characteristics of each. The figure below depicts the managerial grid.

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The main point of the managerial grid is that the 9,9 management style is the ideal style. Managers having this style are high in their concern for people, high in their concern for production and are generally seen as contributing to the development of positive human relations. Correspondingly, managers having any other style have lesser degrees of concern for people and/or production, and are generally seen as contributing less to the development of positive human relations within the organisation.

Concept check

1.What is job design?

2.What are the two approaches to searching for a balance between job demands and the capacity of staff to satisfy them?

3.What are strategies of matching people to jobs? Dwell on each of them.

4.What are strategies of matching jobs to people? Dwell on each of them.

5.Speak on the difference between job scope and job depth.

6.Explain various job design strategies for motivating employees and say whether these statements are true or false.

1)Job enlargement is always successful in motivating employees.

2)Job rotation and job enlargement are essentially the same.

3)Job enrichment includes building an opportunity for employee growth in a job.

QUICK CHECK

Can you …

•Define motivation.

•Sketch the need-want-satisfaction chain.

•Explain the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

•Give three classes of motivation theories.

•Name content and process theories.

•Give the gist of the reinforcement theory.

•Define job design.

•Give examples of matching people to jobs.

•Define job rotation.

•Outline the possibilities of matching jobs to people.

•Differentiate between job enlargement and job enrichment.

•Explain the difference between job scope and job depth.

•Sketch the managerial grid.

OVER TO YOU

1. Each person has a management style that he/she feels comfortable with. What we must realise is that there are different styles of management required for different situations. We all like to believe that we are democratic people because this is the style that fits in with dealing with our peer group. What we must understand is that we may have to switch to a different style of management to get the job accomplished. Look through a short summary of the role of managers under different styles of management and analyse the basic characteristics of each style.

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2. You have been appointed the person in charge of the following situations. Identify the type of management style that would work best in each situation and briefly outline what you would do while using that style of management.

1)You find yourself in a group that has to write and put together a dramatic presentation that will be filmed. There are people of all types of abilities in the group and most seem pretty keen on doing the project.

2)You find yourself in a group doing an assignment that nobody wants to do, including yourself. Unfortunately, this assignment will decide whether you and only a few others pass the course.

3)A committee is planning the annual Christmas party for employees and their families. Last year was one of the best parties and all of the people who are working this year had a job on last year’s committee.

ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION

1. Think, find out and share

Work in groups. Read the following questions, statements and tasks, analyse and discuss them. Choose a spokesperson in the group to make a presentation to the whole class, summarising the opinions in the group. Hold a Questions & Answers (Q&A) session.

1)What role does motivation play in performance? What is the manager’s role in employee motivation?

2)To what extent do you support the argument that motivation is a mirror of leadership?

3)Theories of motivation allow us to develop a practical approach to motivation described below. Examine it thoroughly and comment on each point included.

Chances of increasing employee effort and directing it successfully toward activities that help to accomplish organisational goals are greater when managers

a) set clear goals, the accomplishment of which is possible and can be measured in some way: where possible, set goals by means of a joint process involving both the employee and manager; make the behaviours as clear as possible;

b) arrange the proper environment: select, place and promote employees; provide some form of training for every job; give employees the tools and other resources needed to perform the job; remove or reduce as many environmental obstacles (such as noise, confusion, overcrowding) to performance as possible;

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c) reward the desired performance: deliver promised formal rewards when behaviour meets standards; informally, reward, from time to time, those behaviours that are consistent with goals, even if employees are believed to have an obligation to perform them; avoid the punishment if desired behaviour and the rewarding of undesired behaviour.

2. For your career

In small groups read and discuss some guidelines for successful motivation. Which of them do you consider to be the most valuable? Why? Share your findings with others.

•Remember, people will satisfy their needs. Such needs can be satisfied in ways that help the organisation or in ways that hinder or even sabotage it.

•Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that everyone is motivated by the same things as you are. Try to figure out what needs and motives are most important to those people with whom you work – boss, peers and subordinates.

•Remember that when needs are satisfied, others emerge.

•Give different rewards to different workers to influence the behaviour.

•You get what you deserve, not necessarily what you expect. If you see behaviour that you don’t expect, ask yourself what rewards are available to that person and adjust them accordingly to encourage more desirable behaviour.

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•Avoid the error of labelling, as in assuming that someone is of lazy character because he or she is not motivated at work. The person can be highly motivated to leave work early and exert impressive energy in some more rewarding activity.

•If you want to improve employees’ performance, ask yourself whether the job or conditions surrounding it can be redesigned to provide more challenge, recognition and responsibility. You can change the situation more easily than the people – and a changed situation often changes the behaviour of the people.

CASE

Study and discuss this case paying special attention to the questions below it.

Who Will It Be?

Every three months one of the country’s largest drug manufacturers holds a sales contest. The individual who produces the most sales during this time is given a two-week, all-expense-paid vacation for two. If the person is not married, the difference is given in the form of a bonus payment.

The latest contest will end in four weeks. At present it appears that the winner will be one of three people: Helen Radwin, Karl Melcher, or Roger O’Flaherty. The winner will be sent to London. The national marketing manager, Albert Chesser, has had the opportunity to talk to all three of these salespeople. Here is his summary of how each feels about winning the contest.

Helen: I am excited! I have never won the sales contest before. Probably that’s because it has taken me this long to hone my sales skills. Now I really feel as if I know both my product line and how to sell and it’s all beginning to pay off. As far as London is concerned, I’ve never been there. It will be great to go. Every morning when I get up, I think about the trip. This starts me going and I can’t wait to get out on the road and make my first call.

Karl: London must be beautiful this time of year. I am sure I would like to see it. My wife and I have never been to Europe. It would be a chance for both of us to take a vacation and relax. I’m not holding my breath about winning this contest, however, I’ve come close a couple of times before but I always get beaten out by someone. So if it happens this time, it happens. I’m just going to keep plugging along and do my best. I know that sooner or later I’m going to win one of these contests; so if I miss this one, it’s not going to be the end of the world for me.

Roger: I like sales contests, although I don’t know if I particularly want to go to London. I won twice last year and three times the year before. In each case I was sent somewhere – Paris, Tokyo, Rio, Montreal. It’s very nice. However, I didn’t join the company to see the world. If I win this time, I think I’ll ask the company to send me some place locally for a week and then let me come home and put my feet up for the other week. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love to win. However, I don’t necessarily care for the rewards the company gives out. I suppose it’s just getting to be “old hat” for me.

1.Which of the three individuals has the greatest valence for winning the contest? Which one has the strongest belief that he or she will win?

2.Which of the three salespeople is most motivated to win the contest? Defend your answer.

3.In addition to getting a free vacation, what other needs might be satisfied by winning the contest? Explain.

Unit 5

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

READING I

WHAT IS HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?

Think ahead

Why do people change jobs? What is job mobility? Compare it with life-long employment (for example, in Japan).

Key concepts and terms

Match up the words on the left with the definitions on the right.

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Text 5.1. Read the text and explain the following statement: “People are the most valuable asset”.

Approaches to HRM

Job mobility is simply moving from one job to another. People often change jobs. There are different reasons for it. Maybe the training programme a person completes broadens the job goals and interests. Maybe a person wants to change to a new field. In any job a person can gain experience, make professional contacts or network, build a reputation and seek other opportunities. Even people who are well established in their careers continue to look for jobs that provide better pay and more responsibilities.

As is known, management is getting things done through people; therefore none is as important as human resources, the people with whom the manager has to work. If organisations are to be successful, they must have quality people working within them. So managing people is one of the manager’s functions.

There are considerable variations in the way the function of Human Resource Management (HRM) is seen in different parts of the world. Even within nations opinions vary. There are two distinct descriptions of HRM, soft and hard. The difference arises from whether the emphasis in HRM is placed on the human or the resource. Soft HRM is related to the human relations movement, the growth of individual talent and McGregor’s Theory Y. Hard HRM, on the other hand, is based on planning the resource in the same way as any other, fitting it in with the needs of the environment incorporated in the business plan or in the feasibility study and McGregor’s Theory X. A mind map of these points and their consequences appears in the figure on p.162*.

The researchers adhering to the soft approach have found that many managers expressed the dual aims of the soft model, which are business development together with personal growth. The positive outcomes of soft HRM are the following:

•in the short term – commitment, competence, congruence and cost effectiveness; and

•in the long term – individual well-being, organisational effectiveness and social well-being.

In contrast, the hard approach sees HRM as processes that link business strategy to human behaviour at work. The aim is to carry out business policies in an optimal way from the organisation’s point of view. It means managing

•personnel flows – recruitment, development and leaving;

•work systems – job design as part of process design;

•reward systems – formalising notions of fairness and motivation; and

•employee relations – links between the organisation and groups of staff.

As with many management models, the hard and soft approaches can be seen as the ends of a scale. Much practice displays a mix. Human resource (HR) managers have to convert their aims into practice while recognising many constraints. In doing so, they move from the rhetoric of the soft model to the practices presented more clearly in the hard version. Taking this practice-oriented view of HRM, the following definition can be used.

W o r t h y o f N o t e

Human resource management is the creation, development and maintenance of an effective workforce, matching the requirements of the organisation and responding to the environment.

* Naylor J. Management. Pearson Education, 2004, p. 456.

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