{"id":628,"date":"2015-08-17T12:01:52","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T12:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/assignmenttask.com\/tutorhelp\/?p=628"},"modified":"2022-10-12T13:14:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T13:14:01","slug":"most-enduring-and-slippery-challenges-with-case-study-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/assignmenttask.com\/tutorhelp\/most-enduring-and-slippery-challenges-with-case-study-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Enduring And Slippery Challenges With Case Study Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Assignment<\/a><\/p>\n

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PSYCHOLOGY
\nEmployee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
\nby Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee<\/p>\n

Getting people to do their best work, even in trying circumstances, is one of managers\u2019 most enduring and slippery challenges. Indeed,
\ndeciphering what motivates us as human beings is a centuries-old puzzle. Some of history\u2019s most influential thinkers about human
\nbehavior\u2014among them Aristotle, Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, and Abraham Maslow\u2014have struggled to understand its nuances and have
\ntaught us a tremendous amount about why people do the things they do.
\nSuch luminaries, however, didn\u2019t have the advantage of knowledge gleaned from modern brain science. Their theories were based on careful and educated
\ninvestigation, to be sure, but also exclusively on direct observation. Imagine trying to infer how a car works by examining its movements (starting,
\nstopping, accelerating, turning) without being able to take apart the engine.
\nFortunately, new cross-disciplinary research in fields like neuroscience, biology, and evolutionary psychology has allowed us to peek under the hood, so to
\nspeak\u2014to learn more about the human brain. Our synthesis of the research suggests that people are guided by four basic emotional needs, or drives, that
\nare the product of our common evolutionary heritage. As set out by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria in their 2002 book Driven: How Human Nature
\nShapes Our Choices, they are the drives to acquire (obtain scarce goods, including intangibles such as social status); bond (form connections with
\nindividuals and groups); comprehend (satisfy our curiosity and master the world around us); and defend (protect against external threats and promote
\njustice). These drives underlie everything we do.
\nManagers attempting to boost motivation should take note. It\u2019s hard to argue with the accepted wisdom\u2014backed by empirical evidence\u2014that a motivated
\nworkforce means better corporate performance. But what actions, precisely, can managers take to satisfy the four drives and, thereby, increase their
\nemployees\u2019 overall motivation?
\nWe recently completed two major studies aimed at answering that question. In one, we surveyed 385 employees of two global businesses\u2014a financial
\nservices giant and a leading IT services firm. In the other, we surveyed employees from 300 Fortune 500 companies. To define overall motivation, we
\nfocused on four commonly measured workplace indicators of it: engagement, satisfaction, commitment, and intention to quit. Engagement represents the
\nenergy, effort, and initiative employees bring to their jobs. Satisfaction reflects the extent to which they feel that the company meets their expectations at
\nwork and satisfies its implicit and explicit contracts with them. Commitment captures the extent to which employees engage in corporate citizenship.
\nIntention to quit is the best proxy for employee turnover.
\nBoth studies showed, strikingly, that an organization\u2019s ability to meet the four fundamental drives explains, on average, about 60% of employees\u2019 variance
\non motivational indicators (previous models have explained about 30%). We also found that certain drives influence some motivational indicators more
\nthan others.<\/p>\n

Fulfilling the drive to bond has the greatest effect on employee commitment, for example, whereas meeting the drive to comprehend is most
\nclosely linked with employee engagement. But a company can best improve overall motivational scores by satisfying all four drives in concert.<\/p>\n

The whole
\nis more than the sum of its parts; a poor showing on one drive substantially diminishes the impact of high scores on the other three.
\nWhen it comes to practical implications for managers, the consequences of neglecting any particular drive are clear. Bob Nardelli\u2019s lackluster performance
\nat Home Depot, for instance, can be explained in part by his relentless focus on the drive to acquire at the expense of other drives.<\/p>\n

By emphasizing
\nindividual and store performance, he squelched the spirit of camaraderie among employees (their drive to bond) and their dedication to technical
\nexpertise (a manifestation of the need to comprehend and do meaningful work). He also created, as widely reported, a hostile environment that interfered
\nwith the drive to defend: Employees no longer felt they were being treated justly. When Nardelli left the company, Home Depot\u2019s stock price was
\nessentially no better than when he had arrived six years earlier. Meanwhile Lowe\u2019s, a direct competitor, gained ground by taking a holistic approach to
\nsatisfying employees\u2019 emotional needs through its reward system, culture, management systems, and design of jobs.
\nAn organization as a whole clearly has to attend to the four fundamental emotional drives, but so must individual managers. They may be restricted by
\norganizational norms, but employees are clever enough to know that their immediate superiors have some wiggle room. In fact, our research shows that
\nindividual managers influence overall motivation as much as any organizational policy does. In this article we\u2019ll look more closely at the drivers of
\nemployee motivation, the levers managers can pull to address them, and the \u201clocal\u201d strategies that can boost motivation despite organizational
\nconstraints.
\nThe Four Drives That Underlie Motivation
\nBecause the four drives are hardwired into our brains, the degree to which they are satisfied directly affects our emotions and, by extension, our behavior.
\nLet\u2019s look at how each one operates.
\n1. The drive to acquire.
\nWe are all driven to acquire scarce goods that bolster our sense of well-being. We experience delight when this drive is fulfilled, discontentment when it is
\nthwarted. This phenomenon applies not only to physical goods like food, clothing, housing, and money, but also to experiences like travel and
\nentertainment\u2014not to mention events that improve social status, such as being promoted and getting a corner office or a place on the corporate board.<\/p>\n

The
\ndrive to acquire tends to be relative (we always compare what we have with what others possess) and insatiable (we always want more). That explains why
\npeople always care not just about their own compensation packages but about others\u2019 as well. It also illuminates why salary caps are hard to impose.
\n2. The drive to bond.
\nMany animals bond with their parents, kinship group, or tribe, but only humans extend that connection to larger collectives such as organizations,
\nassociations, and nations.<\/p>\n

The drive to bond, when met, is associated with strong positive emotions like love and caring and, when not, with negative ones
\nlike loneliness and anomie. At work, the drive to bond accounts for the enormous boost in motivation when employees feel proud of belonging to the
\norganization and for their loss of morale when the institution betrays them. It also explains why employees find it hard to break out of divisional or
\nfunctional silos: People become attached to their closest cohorts. But it\u2019s true that the ability to form attachments to larger collectives sometimes leads
\nemployees to care more about the organization than about their local group within it.
\n3. The drive to comprehend.
\nWe want very much to make sense of the world around us, to produce theories and accounts\u2014scientific, religious, and cultural\u2014that make events
\ncomprehensible and suggest reasonable actions and responses. We are frustrated when things seem senseless, and we are invigorated, typically, by the
\nchallenge of working out answers. In the workplace, the drive to comprehend accounts for the desire to make a meaningful contribution. Employees are
\nmotivated by jobs that challenge them and enable them to grow and learn, and they are demoralized by those that seem to be monotonous or to lead to a
\ndead end. Talented employees who feel trapped often leave their companies to find new challenges elsewhere.
\n4. The drive to defend.
\nWe all naturally defend ourselves, our property and accomplishments, our family and friends, and our ideas and beliefs against external threats. This drive
\nis rooted in the basic fight-or-flight response common to most animals. In humans, it manifests itself not just as aggressive or defensive behavior, but also
\nas a quest to create institutions that promote justice, that have clear goals and intentions, and that allow people to express their ideas and opinions.
\nFulfilling the drive to defend leads to feelings of security and confidence; not fulfilling it produces strong negative emotions like fear and resentment.<\/p>\n

The
\ndrive to defend tells us a lot about people\u2019s resistance to change; it\u2019s one reason employees can be devastated by the prospect of a merger or
\nacquisition\u2014an especially significant change\u2014even if the deal represents the only hope for an organization\u2019s survival. So, for example, one day you might
\nbe told you\u2019re a high performer and indispensable to the company\u2019s success, and the next that you may be let go owing to a restructuring\u2014a direct
\nchallenge, in its capriciousness, to your drive to defend. Little wonder that headhunters so frequently target employees during such transitions, when they
\nknow that people feel vulnerable and at the mercy of managers who seem to be making arbitrary personnel decisions.
\nEach of the four drives we have described is independent; they cannot be ordered hierarchically or substituted one for another. You can\u2019t just pay your
\nemployees a lot and hope they\u2019ll feel enthusiastic about their work in an organization where bonding is not fostered, or work seems meaningless, or people
\nfeel defenseless.<\/p>\n

Nor is it enough to help people bond as a tight-knit team when they are underpaid or toiling away at deathly boring jobs. You can certainly
\nget people to work under such circumstances\u2014they may need the money or have no other current prospects\u2014but you won\u2019t get the most out of them, and
\nyou risk losing them altogether when a better deal comes along. To fully motivate your employees, you must address all four drives.
\nThe Organizational Levers of Motivation
\nAlthough fulfilling all four of employees\u2019 basic emotional drives is essential for any company, our research suggests that each drive is best met by a distinct
\norganizational lever.
\nHow to Fulfill the Drives That Motivate Employees
\nFor each of the four emotional drives that employees need to fulfill, companies
\nhave a primary organizational lever to use. This table matches each drive with
\nits corresponding lever and lists specific actions your company can take to
\nmake the most of the tools at its disposal.
\nThe reward system.
\nThe drive to acquire is most easily satisfied by an organization\u2019s reward
\nsystem\u2014how effectively it discriminates between good and poor performers,
\nties rewards to performance, and gives the best people opportunities for
\nadvancement. When the Royal Bank of Scotland acquired NatWest, it
\ninherited a company in which the reward system was dominated by politics,
\nstatus, and employee tenure. RBS introduced a new system that held
\nmanagers responsible for specific goals and rewarded good performance over
\naverage performance. Former NatWest employees embraced their new
\ncompany\u2014to an unusual extent in the aftermath of an acquisition\u2014in part
\nbecause the reward system was tough but recognized individual
\nachievement.
\nSonoco, a manufacturer of packaging for industrial and consumer goods,
\ntransformed itself in part by making a concerted effort to better meet the
\ndrive to acquire\u2014that is, by establishing very clear links between
\nperformance and rewards.<\/p>\n

Historically, the company had set high businessperformance
\ntargets, but incentives had done little to reward the
\nachievement of them. In 1995, under Cynthia Hartley, then the new vice
\npresident of human resources, Sonoco instituted a pay-for-performance
\nsystem, based on individual and group metrics. Employee satisfaction and engagement improved, according to results from a regularly administered
\ninternal survey.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Hewitt Associates named Sonoco one of the top 20 talent-management organizations in the United States. It was one of the few
\nmidcap companies on the list, which also included big players like 3M, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Dell, and IBM.
\nCulture.
\nThe most effective way to fulfill the drive to bond\u2014to engender a strong sense of camaraderie\u2014is to create a culture that promotes teamwork,
\ncollaboration, openness, and friendship. RBS broke through NatWest\u2019s silo mentality by bringing together people from the two firms to work on welldefined
\ncost-savings and revenue-growth projects. A departure for both companies, the new structure encouraged people to break old attachments and
\nform new bonds. To set a good example, the executive committee (comprising both RBS and ex-NatWest executives) meets every Monday morning to
\ndiscuss and resolve any outstanding issues\u2014cutting through the bureaucratic and political processes that can slow decision making at the top.
\nAnother business with an exemplary culture is the Wegmans supermarket chain, which has appeared for a decade on Fortune\u2019s list of \u201c100 Best Companies
\nto Work For.\u201d The family that owns the business makes a point of setting a familial tone for the companywide culture. Employees routinely report that
\nmanagement cares about them and that they care about one another, evidence of a sense of teamwork and belonging.
\nJob design.
\nThe drive to comprehend is best addressed by designing jobs that are meaningful, interesting, and challenging. For instance, although RBS took a hardnosed
\nattitude toward expenses during its integration of NatWest, it nonetheless invested heavily in a state-of-the-art business school facility, adjacent to
\nits corporate campus, to which employees had access. This move not only advanced the company\u2019s success in fulfilling the drive to bond, but also
\nchallenged employees to think more broadly about how they could contribute to making a difference for coworkers, customers, and investors.
\nCirque du Soleil, too, is committed to making jobs challenging and fulfilling. Despite grueling rehearsal and performance schedules, it attracts and retains
\nperformers by accommodating their creativity and pushing them to perfect their craft. Its employees also get to say a lot about how performances are
\nstaged, and they are allowed to move from show to show to learn new skills. In addition, they get constant collegial exposure to the world\u2019s top artists in
\nthe field.
\nPerformance-management and resource-allocation processes.
\nFair, trustworthy, and transparent processes for performance management and resource allocation help to meet people\u2019s drive to defend. RBS, for
\ninstance, has worked hard to make its decision processes very clear. Employees may disagree with a particular outcome, such as the nixing of a pet project,
\nbut they are able to understand the rationale behind the decision. New technology endeavors at RBS are reviewed by cross-business unit teams that make
\ndecisions using clear criteria, such as the impact on company financial performance. In surveys, employees report that the process is fair and that funding
\ncriteria are transparent. Although RBS is a demanding organization, employees also see it as a just one.
\nHow to Make Big Strides in Employee Motivation
\nThe secret to catapulting your company into a leading position in terms of
\nemployee motivation is to improve its effectiveness in fulfilling all four basic
\nemotional drives, not just one. Take a firm that, relative to other firms, ranks in
\nthe 50th percentile on employee motivation. An improvement in job design
\nalone (the lever that most influences the drive to comprehend) would move
\nthat company only up to the 56th percentile\u2014but an improvement on all four
\ndrives would blast it up to the 88th percentile.
\nDirect Managers Matter, Too
\nAt the companies we surveyed whose employee motivation scores were in the
\ntop fifth, workers rated their managers\u2019 ability to motivate them as highly, on
\naverage, as they rated the organization\u2019s ability to fulfill their four drives. The
\nsame pattern was evident within the bottom fifth of companies, even though
\ntheir average ratings on all five dimensions were, of course, much lower than
\nthose of companies in the top fifth.
\nAflac, another perennial favorite on Fortune\u2019s \u201c100 Best Companies to Work For,\u201d exemplifies how to match organizational levers with emotional drives
\non multiple fronts. (For concrete ways your company can use its motivational levers, see the exhibit \u201cHow to Fulfill the Drives That Motivate Employees.\u201d)
\nStellar individual performance is recognized and rewarded in highly visible ways at Aflac, thereby targeting people\u2019s drive to acquire. Culture-building
\nefforts, such as Employee Appreciation Week, are clearly aimed at creating a sense of bonding. The company meets the drive to comprehend by investing
\nsignificantly in training and development. Sales agents don\u2019t just sell; they have opportunities to develop new skills through managing, recruiting, and
\ndesigning curricula for training new agents. As for the drive to defend, the company takes action to improve employees\u2019 quality of life. Beyond training
\nand scholarships, it offers benefits, such as on-site child care, that enhance work\/life balance. It also fosters trust through a no-layoff policy. The
\ncompany\u2019s stated philosophy is to be employee-centric\u2014to take care of its people first. In turn, the firm believes that employees will take care of
\ncustomers.
\nThe company examples we chose for this article illustrate how particular organizational levers influence overall motivation, but Aflac\u2019s is a model case of
\ntaking actions that, in concert, fulfill all four employee drives. Our data show that a comprehensive approach like this is best. When employees report even
\na slight enhancement in the fulfillment of any of the four drives, their overall motivation shows a corresponding improvement; however, major advances
\nrelative to other companies come from the aggregate effect on all four drives. This effect occurs not just because more drives are being met but because
\nactions taken on several fronts seem to reinforce one another\u2014the holistic approach is worth more than the sum of its constituent parts, even though
\nworking on each part adds something. Take a firm that ranks in the 50th percentile on employee motivation. When workers rate that company\u2019s job design
\n(the lever that most influences the drive to comprehend) on a scale of zero to five, a one-point increase yields a 5% raw improvement in motivation and a
\ncorrespondingly modest jump from the 50th to the 56th percentile. But enhance performance on all four drives, and the yield is a 21% raw improvement
\nin motivation and big jump to the 88th percentile. (The percentile gains are shown in the exhibit \u201cHow to Make Big Strides in Employee Motivation.\u201d)
\nThat\u2019s a major competitive advantage for a company in terms of employee satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and reluctance to quit.
\nThe Role of the Direct Manager
\nOur research also revealed that organizations don\u2019t have an absolute
\nmonopoly on employee motivation or on fulfilling people\u2019s emotional drives.
\nEmployees\u2019 perceptions of their immediate managers matter just as much.
\nPeople recognize that a multitude of organizational factors, some outside
\ntheir supervisor\u2019s control, influence their motivation, but they are
\ndiscriminating when it comes to evaluating that supervisor\u2019s ability to keep
\nthem motivated. Employees in our study attributed as much importance to
\ntheir boss\u2019s meeting their four drives as to the organization\u2019s policies. In
\nother words, they recognized that a manager has some control over how
\ncompany processes and policies are implemented. (See the exhibit \u201cDirect
\nManagers Matter, Too.\u201d)
\nEmployees don\u2019t expect their supervisors to be able to substantially affect the company\u2019s overall reward systems, culture, job design, or management
\nsystems. Yet managers do have some discretion within their spheres of influence; some hide behind ineffective systems, whereas others make the most of
\nan imperfect model. Managers can, for example, link rewards and performance in areas such as praise, recognition, and choice assignments. They can also
\nallocate a bonus pool in ways that distinguish between top and bottom performers. Similarly, even in a cutthroat culture that doesn\u2019t promote
\ncamaraderie, a manager can take actions that encourage teamwork and make jobs more meaningful and interesting. Many supervisors are regarded well by
\ntheir employees precisely because they foster a highly motivating local environment, even if the organization as a whole falls short. On the other hand,
\nsome managers create a toxic local climate within a highly motivated organization.
\nAlthough employees look to different elements of their organization to satisfy different drives, they expect their managers to do their best to address all
\nfour within the constraints that the institution imposes. Our surveys showed that if employees detected that a manager was substantially worse than her
\npeers in fulfilling even just one drive, they rated that manager poorly, even if the organization as a whole had significant limitations. Employees are indeed
\nvery fair about taking a big-picture view and seeing a manager in the context of a larger institution, but they do some pretty fine-grained evaluation
\nbeyond those organizational caveats. In short, they are realistic about what managers cannot do, but also about what managers should be able to do in
\nmeeting all the basic needs of their subordinates.
\nAt the financial services firm we studied, for example, one manager outperformed his peers on fulfilling subordinates\u2019 drives to acquire, bond, and
\ncomprehend. However, his subordinates indicated that his ability to meet their drive to defend was below the average of other managers in the company.
\nConsequently, levels of work engagement and organizational commitment were lower in his group than in the company as a whole. Despite this manager\u2019s
\nsuperior ability to fulfill three of the four drives, his relative weakness on the one dimension damaged the overall motivational profile of his group.\u2022 \u2022 \u2022
\nOur model posits that employee motivation is influenced by a complex system of managerial and organizational factors. If we take as a given that a
\nmotivated workforce can boost company performance, then the insights into human behavior that our article has laid out will help companies and
\nexecutives get the best out of employees by fulfilling their most fundamental needs.
\nNitin Nohria is dean of Harvard Business School
\nBoris Groysberg is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the coauthor, with Michael Slind, of Talk, Inc. (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). His work
\nexamines how a firm can be systematic in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage by leveraging its talent at all levels of the organization. Follow him on Twitter @bgroysberg
\nLinda-Eling Lee (llee@hbs.edu) is a research director at the Center for Research on Corporate Performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
\nRelated Topics: M OTIV ATIN G PEOPLE
\nThis article is about PSYCHOLOGY
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