Compare and contrast TWO theories of motivation. Suggest how a team leader might use these theories to motivate their team.

Motivation and its connection to job satisfaction is a widely discussed topic in today’s world. According to Fincham and Rhodes (2005) there is a large database of research on those concepts. As motivation can be described as the feeling of fulfilment, satisfaction and desire for self-development of an individual (Rosenfeld & Wilson, 1999), it is undeniably an important issue to any manager or team leader. This essay will try to find the similarities and the differences between two of the main content motivation theories, namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Alderfer’s ERG theory, and the extent to which they can be applied in organizations. It will also suggest ways in which leaders can apply them. One of the most influencing content theories of motivation is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Fincham and Rhodes, 2005). He believed that human needs can be organized in the so called ‘hierarchy of relative prepotency’ (Maslow, 1970, p. 17). He outlined five levels of human satisfaction – physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Each of those needs is consequently arising once the previous is sufficiently gratified. Hence if one is insecure and endangered, their only motivator will be the need of safety and higher-level needs like need for belongingness and love won’t appear. This would mean that until a certain need is satisfied, the individual can be completely identified with that need. On the other hand Maslow argued that if one level of satisfaction is obtained, it no longer represents a motivator to the individual and probably this is the reason why the notion of self-actualization occupied the biggest part of his interest in the motivation theory. According to him this need can never