Equity Theory

J Stacy Adams's Equity Theory

Equity Theory in business seeks to describe a relationship between employees motivation and their perception of being treated fairly. The theory suggests that employees seek to ascribe values to their inputs and outputs.

- How much people are willing to contribute depends on how fair they think they are being treated.

- Comparison of input-output ratio

- Rewards should be distributed on the basis of performance

How to Motivate Theory X and Y People

How do you motivate Theory X and Y People?

Theory X
• Manager tries to motivate through fear
• Employees must be rewarded, coerced, intimidated and punished
• Constant supervision
• Maintain tight control over employees
• Make decisions and provide directions for employees

Theory Y
• To provide opportunities for self-development of employees
• Maximize intellectual potential of employees
• Accept creative and innovative ideas provided by employees to solve organizational problems.

In Reality...
Punishment produces negative rather than positive results increased the discontentment amongst employees

Cash is NOT the top most motivating factor.
Top 2 factors
1) approval, praise, and recognition
2) trust, respect and high expectations

On the other hand, Persuasion and Power of Influence is more powerful than coercion.

You may want to read: Principle of Influence

Relationship of Motivation and Emotion

Emotion (an indefinite subjective sensation experienced as a state of arousal) is different from motivation in that there is not necessarily a goal orientation affiliated with it. Emotions occur as a result of an interaction between perception of environmental stimuli, neural/hormonal responses to these perceptions (often labeled feelings), and subjective cognitive labeling of these feelings (Kleinginna and Kleinginna, 1981b).

Evidence suggests there is a small core of core emotions (perhaps 6 or 8) that are uniquely associated with a specific facial expression (Izard, 1990). This implies that there are a small number of unique biological responses that are genetically hard-wired to specific facial expressions. A further implication is that the process works in reverse: if you want to change your feelings (i.e., your physiological functioning), you can do so by changing your facial expression. That is, if you are motivated to change how you feel and your feeling is associated with a specific facial expression, you can change that feeling by purposively changing your facial expression. Since most of us would rather feel happy than otherwise, the most appropriate facial expression would be a smile.

Read On

Signs of a Troubled Employee/Student

You may be interested to take note of those who are under your charge. They often need a listening ear or need having someone to talk to and perhaps needed counselling. So watchout for these troubled souls. You can make the different in their lives!

Signs of a troubled employee/student include:

· Sudden change of behavior
· Preoccupation
· Irritability
· Increased accidents
· Increased fatigue
· Excessive drinking
· Reduced production
· Difficulty in absorbing training
· Substance abuse