Motivational Theories in Project Management

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The grandfather of all motivational theorists, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) created his now
famous hierarchy of needs over a period from the late 1930's to the early 1950's. He laid out five
broad layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love and
belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the self, in that order. He also said that
humans will try to fulfill their needs in that sequence and when there is a deficit in one stage, will
regress back in order to refill that specific need. The final stage, self-actualization, is the one level
that is not driven by need deficit (called D-needs by Maslow).

1. The physiological needs . These include the needs we have for the basics like food, water and
shelter. Maslow believed, and research supports him, that these are in fact individual needs, and
that a lack of, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific hunger for things which have in the past
provided that vitamin C -- e.g. orange juice.
2. The safety and security needs . When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, this
second layer of needs comes into play. In order to feel better about the environment in which we
live, creating stability and a level of safety within which to operate as a family, a worker and so
on.
3. The love and belonging needs . When physiological needs and safety needs are met, an
individual may advance to a third layer and begin to feel the need for friends, a significant other,
children, a sense of community and a career that connects with other like-minded working people.
4. The esteem needs . Next, we begin to look for a little self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions
of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others,
the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even
dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as
confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom. Note that this is the
“higher” form because, unlike the respect of others, once you have self-respect, it is a more
powerful motivator.

Self-actualization
The last level is a bit different. Maslow has used a variety of terms to refer to this level: growth
motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being needs (or B-needs , in contrast to D-needs),
and self-actualization.
These are needs that do not involve balance or keeping things as they are. Once engaged, they
continue to be felt. They involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials, to “live life like you
mean it”(to use a recent advertising theme). They are a matter of becoming the most complete,
the fullest, “you” -- hence the term, self-actualization. Now, in keeping with his theory up to this
point, if you want to be truly self-actualizing, you need to have moved past your lower needs.
This intuitively makes sense: if you are hungry, you are scrambling to get food; if you are unsafe,
you have to be continuously on guard; if you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that
need; if you have a low sense of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate in some
way. When lower needs are unmet, you can’t fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials. It
isn’t surprising, then, the world being as difficult as it is, that only a small percentage of the
world’s population is truly, predominantly, self-actualizing. Maslow at one point suggested only
about two percent reach the level of self-actualization.

As a counterpoint to Maslow, Victor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist held in concentration camps

in World War II, brought the whole hierarchy of needs theory into question. In his book, Man's
Search for Meaning, he delineated actual events where men did not move back to a lower level of
needs even though they were in extreme need deficit. Instead, they fought hard to find and
maintain a level of "self-actualization" in order to survive, such as having a goal to attain once out
of the camps. Frankl himself was working on a book on psychiatry and kept notes on scraps of
paper. After the war, it was published. This showed, in a counter-intuitive way, that Maslow's
hierarchy of needs actually operated from the top down rather than the bottom up.

McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor, an American social psychologist, proposed his famous "X-Y Theory" in his
1960 book The Human Side Of Enterprise. Theory x and theory y are still a common reference
point in the field of management and motivation, and while more recent studies have questioned
the rigidity of the model, McGregor's X-Y Theory remains a valid basic principle from which to
develop positive management style and techniques. McGregor's XY Theory remains central to
organizational development, and to improving organizational culture.

McGregor's X-Y theory is a salutary and simple reminder of the natural rules for managing
people, which under the pressure of day-to-day business are all too easily forgotten. McGregor
maintained that there are two fundamental approaches to managing people. Many managers tend
towards theory x, and generally get poor results. Enlightened managers use theory y, which
produces better performance and results, and allows people to grow and develop.
Theory X: the Authoritarian Management Style
• The average person dislikes work and will avoid it he/she can.
• Therefore most people must be forced with the threat of punishment to work towards
organizational objectives.
• The average person prefers to be directed; to avoid responsibility; is relatively
unambitious, and wants security above all else.
Theory Y: the Participative Management Style
• Effort in work is as natural as work and play.
• People will apply self-control and self-direction in the pursuit of organizational
objectives, without external control or the threat of punishment.
• Commitment to objectives is a function of rewards associated with their achievement.
• People usually accept and often seek responsibility.
• The capacity to use a high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in solving
organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
• In industry, the intellectual potential of the average person is only partly utilized.
Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory
Fredrick Herzberg (1923-2000) was a contemporary of Abraham Maslow. While Maslow dealt
with the rank and satisfaction of various human needs and how people pursue these needs,
Herzberg, a psychologist, proposed a theory about job factors that motivate employees.

During the 50's and 60's Fredrick Herzberg studied the key factors influencing a worker's
performance. During his research, he found that certain factors tended to cause a worker to feel
unsatisfied with his or her job. He developed a theory based on this observation, naming it the
"Hygiene Theory." According to his theory, for a worker to be happy and therefore productive,
these environmental factors must not cause discomfort. Although the elimination of the
environmental problems may make a worker productive, it will not necessarily motivate him. In
contrast, he determined from the data that the motivators were elements that enriched a person's
job and the relationship with that job. Thus according to Herzberg's theory, people's attitudes
about work is influenced by a two-dimensional paradigm of factors. He thus distinguished
between hygiene factors and motivators. According to the theory, the absence of hygiene factors
can create job dissatisfaction, but their presence does not motivate or create satisfaction. The
presence of motivators can help create job satisfaction. Under hygiene factors he included such
factors as:
• company policy
• supervision
• interpersonal relations
• working conditions
• salary
While hygiene factors were needed to ensure an employee was not dissatisfied, in order to
motivate an employee into higher performance motivation factors were needed.
Under the category Motivation Factors, Herzberg included the following:
• Achievement
• Achievement Recognition
• Responsibility
• Advancement
• Growth
These motivators (satisfiers) were associated with long-term positive effects in job performance
while the hygiene factors (dissatisfiers) consistently produced only short-term changes in job
attitudes and performance, which quickly fell back to its previous level.
"In summary, satisfiers describe a person's relationship with what she or he does, many related to
the tasks being performed. Dissatisfiers, on the other hand, have to do with a person's relationship
to the context or environment in which she or he performs the job. The satisfiers relate to what a
person does while the dissatisfiers relate to the situation in which the person does what he or she
does. The combination of hygiene and motivation factors can result in four conditions for an
employee:
• High Hygiene/High Motivation: The ideal situation where employees are highly
motivated and have few complaints.
• High Hygiene/Low Motivation: Employees have few complaints but are not highly
motivated. "The job is a paycheck" situation.
• Low Hygiene/High Motivation: Employees are motivate but have a lot of complaints. A
situation where the job is exciting and challenging but salaries and work conditions are
not up to par.
• Low Hygiene/Low Motivation: The worst situation. Unmotivated employees with lots of
complaints: "I'm taking what they're giving because I'm working for a living".
Fiedler's Contingency Theory
Fred Fiedler believes that leadership effectiveness depends on both the leader's personality and
the situation. Thus it is a hybrid of Theory Y and Hygiene Theory. Certain leaders are effective in
one situation but not in others. Devices Fiedler uses to determine leader personality and the
situation:

Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) Scale

The LPC is used to measure a leader's motivation: "Task motivation" vs. "relationship
motivation". Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about
equally unpleasant. But people who are relationship-motivated tend to describe their least
preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient. Therefore,
they receive higher LPC scores. People who are task motivated, on the other hand, tend to rate
their least preferred coworkers in a more negative manner. Therefore, they receive lower LPC
scores. So, the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale is actually not about the least preferred
worker. Instead, it is about the person who takes the test; it is about that person's motivation type.

Situational Favorableness
There are three factors that determine the favorableness of a situation:
(1) Leader-Member Relations, referring to the degree of mutual trust, respect and confidence
between the leader and the subordinates.
(2) Task Structure, referring to the degree to which the task at hand is low in multiplicity and high
in verifiability, specificity, and clarity.
(3) Leader Position Power, referring to the power inherent in the leader's position itself.
When there is a good leader-member relation, a highly structured task, and high leader position
power, the situation is considered a "favorable situation".

Leader-Situation Match and Mismatch

A match exists between a task-motivated leader and an either very favorable or very unfavorable
situation. A relationship-motivated leader, on the other hand, matches an intermediate favorable
situation. Leaders can lead most effectively when there is a match between his/her motivation
type and the situation. When the leader and the situation do not match, some things have to be
changed. Since personally traits are relatively permanent, a better solution is for the leader to
move to a better match situation. This is called "job engineering".

Researchers often find that Fiedler's contingency theory falls short on flexibility. They also
noticed that LPC scores can fail to reflect the personality traits it is supposed to reflect.
However, Fiedler's contingency theory is an important theory because it established a brand new
perspective for the study of leadership. Many approaches after Fiedler's theory have adopted the
contingency perspective.

Vroom's Expectancy Theory

Victor Vroom, along with associates Edward Lawler and Lyman Porter, created what is known as
Expectancy Theory. It is based on four related premises: there is a positive correlation between
effort and performance, favorable performance will result in a desirable reward, this reward will
satisfy an important need, and the desire to satisfy this need is strong enough to make the effort
worthwhile. As a result, Vroom created his theory of expectancy based on three core tenets:
1) Valence -- the emotional orientation that people hold toward rewards for effort. The depth of
the want for the extrinsic rewards such as money, promotion, time-off, benefits, etc. as
opposed to intrinsic rewards such as job satisfaction. Management must discover what
employees value in relation to these rewards.
2) Expectancy -- the self-perception of capabilities by employees. Management must discover
what resources, training or supervision is needed to improve employee perception of their
own capabilities.
3) Instrumentality -- the perception by employees that they will actually receive promised
rewards by management. Management must ensure that promises of rewards are fulfilled and
employees are aware of the commitment to deliver on promised rewards/compensation.

From these core tenets, Vroom has a formula for defining motivation.

Motivation = Valence multiplied by Expectancy (Instrumentality).

The higher the motivational product of this equation, the higher the likelihood that an employee
will stay at a job and will experience a high level of job satisfaction.

McClelland's Achievement Theory

David C. McClelland of Harvard University has studied the urge to achieve as a motivation for
some individuals. McClelland contends that achievement is a distinct motivation that can be
isolated and assessed for groups as well as individuals. People with high achievement motivation
set reachable goals: tough enough to push the envelope but not too far away to actually achieve.
He also maintains that people with this motivation will not accept high levels of risk, but will
accept moderate levels because they feel that their efforts and abilities will probably influence the
outcome. This is the fundamental attitude of the entrepreneur. Rewards are not as essential as the
actual achievement itself: reaching the objective or goal is reward in itself. Money of itself is not
a big motivator. Achievers want relevant feedback; they want to know the score of how well they
are doing trying to reach the objective.

McClelland believes that achievement motivation in not exclusively innate but can be taught.
However, high producers with this motivation do not always make the best managers, similar to a
top-rated player who wants to become a team coach or manager. People who become great
coaches usually move into that track instead of a career as a sports performer. McClelland also
believed that parents who help develop a sense of independence for children between the ages of
six and eight actually promote the achievement motivation in these offspring. McClelland also
related his contentions with Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory in that high achievement
people are also interested in the job as a motivator in itself.

McClelland's Achievement Theory's main tenets of motivation:

1) the capacity to set high personal but obtainable goals or objectives

2) the orientation towards personal achievement rather than the rewards of success
3) the need for job-relevant feedback (how well am I doing toward our objective) rather than
attitudinal feedback (how well-liked am I by others in the workplace)