itudinal feedback (how well do you like me?). PROCESS THEORIESProcess theories of motivation look at what people are thinking about when they decide whether or not to put effort into a particular activity. We will examine the equity , expectancy and the goal theories in this paper.Adam's Equity TheoryAdam's argues that people are motivated by "inequity". That means that a person looks at others who are doing the same or similar jobs to them and compare how much effort that they put into the job and how much they are rewarded for their work. For example a person who was working very hard in a job may see a colleague who does not put in much effort at all has the same rewards of salary, prestige, promotion etc. This would probably be a negative motivator, discouraging that person from working so hard. There are, on the other hand, positive motivators where a person feels that they receive more than others in the same job and so feel that they are being rewarded for their efforts.This contemporary equity theory of motivation argues that a major input into job performance and satisfaction is the degree of equity (or inequity) that people perceive in their work situation (Luthans, 180). As a result, motivation is heavily impacted by things like cognitive dissonance and the exchange theory. The theory is congnitively based because it focuses on the thought processes and perceptions of the employee. Inequity occurs when an employee perceives his/her outcomes to inputs and the ratio of a coworker's outcomes to inputs to be unequal and can be schematically represented as follows: person's outcomes/person's inputs * other outcome's/other's inputs = inequality If the person's ratio is not perceived to be equal to the comparitive person's ration, he/she will strive to restore equity. The strife is considered employee motivation, and the greater the perceived inequity, the more motivated an employee becomes. It is important to note that equality or ...
