An Overview of Motivation Theories

Source: [pic] http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/theory_01.html

Motivation theorists and their theories (1 of 2)

Although the process of management is as old as history, scientific management as we know it today is basically a twentieth century phenomenon. Also, as in some other fields, practice has been far ahead of theory.
This is still true in the field of management, contrary to the situation in some of the pure sciences. For instance, Albert Einstein, formulates a theory, which is later proved by decades of intensive research and experimentation. Not so in the field of management.
In fact this field has been so devoid of real fundamental work so far, that Herbert A. Simon is the first management theoretician to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978. His contribution itself gives a clue to the difficulty, bordering on impossibility, of real fundamental work in this field concerned with people. In order to arrive at a correct decision, the manager must have all the information necessary relevant to the various factors and all the time in the world to analyze the same.
This is seldom, if ever, the case. Both the information available and the time at the managers disposal are limited, but he or she must make a decision. And the decision is, therefore, not the optimum one but a 'satisficing' one - in effect, a satisfactory compromise under the real conditions prevailing in the management 'arena'.

Traditional theory 'X'

This can best be ascribed to Sigmund Freud who was no lover of people, and was far from being optimistic. Theory X assumes that people are lazy; they hate work to the extent that they avoid it; they have no ambition, take no initiative and avoid taking any responsibility; all they want is security, and to get them to do any work, they must be rewarded, coerced, intimidated and