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Motivation and Organizational Performance

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INTRODUCTION

Over time, organizations have been looking for ways and strategies for improving performance. This includes a thorough study and analysis of both human and material resources in the organization. In looking at the human resources, there is needed to look at the behavioral patterns of employees at work. This will help an organization to be able to manage its human resources effectively. One of the elements to look at in the analysis of employee behaviour is motivation. Motivation is a key element in organizational behavior because employee needs to be motivated in order to exhibit an attitude or behavior that will help achieve the goals and objectives of the organization and thereby improve performance over time. This paper will attempt to examine motivation, its definition, theories and how it improves employee performance as a determinant for achieving organizational performance.

MOTIVATION DEFINED

Motivation is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to act towards a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal-directed behaviors. It can be considered a driving force; a psychological one that compels or reinforces an action toward a desired goal. For example, hunger is a motivation that elicits a desire to eat. Motivation is the purpose or psychological cause of an action (Schater 2011 as cited in Wikipedia).

This is the process by which a person wants and chooses to act in a particular way (Maund, 2001:440) as cited in (Opu, 2008 pp. 32).

According to (Slocum and Hellriegel 2007), motivation represents the forces acting on or within a person that cause the person to behave in a specific, goal-directed manner. From the above definition, we could infer that because motives of employees affect their productivity, one of management’s jobs is to channel employee motivation effectively toward achieving organizational

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