Motivation

Peter Drucker 2 , on the other hand, claims that the old "carrot and stick" approach will become increasingly less appropriate, and that CEOs ought to be very careful when trying to replace it, because she can easily fall into psychological despotism if they follow some authors who confuse motivation with manipulation. Then, what can a CEO do in order to achieve a successful implementation of these techniques hitherto mentioned? This note is intended to provide CEO’s with some initial ideas in this regard. To begin with, the CEO must know how to answer the following questions (1) what is motivation? (2) What are the most relevant theories on the subject? And, (3) how should a CEO approach this topic? Developing a concept of motivation3 The concept of motivation is a fairly new one4: it originated from the ideas of two psychological schools (comparative and functional) that resulted from the publication of the book The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin in 1859. Since then, a number of theories have originated and have addressed the issue of “what drives a person” from a plethora of perspectives. These theories can be classified according to the following parameters: a) Homeostatic mechanism. According to this parameter, man is motivated to act when, given the emergence of an imbalance in his internal forces, he feels driven to act and restore the balance. It is comparable to a thermostat that regulates room temperature to keep it within a preset range, through activating or deactivating the air-conditioning equipment. b) Role played by motivation in determining behavior. According to certain theories, motivation plays a primarily qualitative role (i.e. it defines the type, intensity and direction of the action to be carried out), according to other theories, however, motivation only plays a quantitative role (i.e. limited to the energetic component of the action –its strength–) and that the direction taken by an action will depend on other factors, such as...