Question

Question 3

A manager seeking to get the best out of employees is to ensure that they have job satisfaction. The level of employee job satisfaction seems to have dwindled worldwide in recent years. What has even worsened the matter is the high level of unemployment in various nations in the world. Several graduates especially in Ghana are going around looking for non-existing jobs and employers are fully aware of this situation.

Employers are confident that even if some workers leave today, they can get good replacement the next day. Because of that they do not make conscious efforts to motivate their employees. The resulting effect is increased number of industrial actions such as strikes, demonstrations among others. Recently, the lecturers at the Technical Universities in Ghana went on strike for several months over unpaid allowance and currently, over twelve labor groups are on strike over their pensions.

1. Select any of the contemporary theories of motivation and apply it to motivate these lecturers to come to work?

The government decided to call all the leaders of all the labor groups in Ghana and doubled their salaries and tasked them to convince their members to take the offer given by government which they gladly accepted. These leaders went back to their members and cooked various stories to convince them to call off the strike. However, a whistleblower has informed some of the members about the monies taken by their leaders and they are very upset and feel betrayed by the government and union leaders.

2. How will you apply the equity theory to first explain the behavior of the members and how the leaders can apply it to encourage them to come back to work?

3. How would you have applied Herzberg’s two factor theory to solve this problem if you were the Minister of Employment?

Answer 1

a) The theory is Expectancy theory

It says that a person beliefs or motivation is dependent upon expectations that he has from the outcome. Thus, the strength of an expectation and attractiveness of it would drive the motivation in a person.

So, here it can be seen that people were expecting certain rewards for their work, but when they were not given, what was expected. It led to demotivation and even criticism for the authorities.

Thus, management must understand the expectations of lecturers, which is to get an unpaid allowance and get them back to their work.

b) Equity theory means that an individual receives for the work has an immediate effect on their motivation. Hence, an individual would create a balance between what he gives to what he gets in return.

Thus, it can be said that people working more, expected a similar allowance, and were demotivated when it was not given.

Thus, for leaders to encourage their people, it is necessary to keep things transparent, giving them the amount for which they worked. As mentioned, it comes in a hygiene factor and if that is not provided to people, it would result in dissatisfaction.

c)The theory is Herzberg -Two-factor theory

It says that certain factors are motivating factors that cause job satisfaction and some other(hygiene factor) whose absence can cause dissatisfaction. Thus, to keep an employee motivated there should be both hygiene and motivating factors.

Motivating factors can be advancement, recognition, while hygiene factors are salary, supervision, policies, etc.

Here, it is the problem of hygiene factors as people were not paid allowances. Thus, to get back to normal they must be given their allowances.

Thus, the minister of employment can do the above things