Organisational supportThe performance of your organisation's staff is an equation of their ability to do the job (what they can do) multiplied by the effort that they are actually willing to put into the job multiplied by the amount that the organisation helps them to achieve their tasks.The job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through employees. To do this the manager should be able to motivate employees. But that's easy said than done! Motivation practice and theory are difficult subjects, touching on several disciplines. In spite of enormous nature , basic as well as applied, the subject of motivation is not clearly understood and more often than not poorly practiced. To understand motivation one must understand human nature itself and there lies the problem! So in this discussion I will focus on the the needs theories, Cognitive theories and the Reinforcement theory whch are the tools the manager need.APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATIONTheories are ways that we try to explain and understand complex and abstract issues and ideas. Abstract ideas are ideas like truth or love. They are very difficult to talk about because they are very hard to describe and define. They are not clear cut or concrete. Motivation is a fairly difficult area and there are a number of theories which have been developed to try to explain why people behave in the ways that they do and to try to predict or guess what people actually will do, based on these theories. Basically there are two general approaches to motivational theory. Content theories - what makes people tick. what turns them on or off. Process theories - how and by what goals people are motivated.CONTENT THEORIESThese theories suggest that people have certain needs and/or desires which have been internalised . (This means that as we have grown up we have learned that these are things that we want and need and we come to believe it so strongly that we think that it is a natura...
