Reference no: EM131194020

In his classic article "The Individual and Organization - Some Problems of Mutual Adjustment," Chris Argyris argues that organizations work against the motivations of healthy, fully-functioning adults.  He suggests that healthy adult employees are motivated by action, independence, deep interests, a long-term time perspective, equality with peers, and self awareness and control.  By contrast, he asserts that organizations are often interested in having employees who are passive and follow direction, dependent on superiors for guidance, have shallow interests, have a short-term time perspective, and rely on their organization for personal identity.  As a result, he indicates that often organizations don't just under-support employees' motivation, they actively work against it. Consequently, employees experience conflict in their motivations (do what I need vs do what the organization or my boss wants) and eventually failure.  This lowers their motivation and can lead to leaving the organization or apathy if they can't.

Walter Nord, editor of Organizational Reality, also asserts that organizations under-attend to the motivations of employees.  In contrast to the "higher order" motivations referenced by Argyris, however, Nord indicates that the shortcomings are centered around "lower order" motivators, using Maslow's hierarchy ... physiological needs and safety needs.  As a result, employees need to keep one eye on their jobs, and the other on their personal survival.  As much as they pay attention to their work, they also have to pay attention to their compensation, job security, and working conditions, for example, because their organizations don't.

This week's discussion asks you to side with Argyris or Nord and use your organizational experience to support your case.  It also asks you to identify a systems-level remedy or two, so that organizational leaders don't lose sight of people's motivations at work.

1)  Drawing on your experience at work, identify where you think organizations' neglect of human motivation tends to be greater ... with higher order motivators (Argyris) or lower order motivators (Nord).

2)  Using what you know about motivation, identify one or two systems-level fixes for the neglect that you've identified in #1, indicating how the remedy will help sustain people's motivation at work.

You may find Maslow's Hierarchy or Alderfer's ERG theory to be useful in addressing these issues.  Both are covered in the class session