Motivation and Management Style

Motivation:

General:

In business, motivation is an initiative driver that forces, tempts, and guides individuals to devote themselves to work. In a tangible or intangible form, the motivation may be higher salaries, more employment benefits, better working environment, or key positions in the companies. Motivation is usually exercised by the upper level upon the lower level within an entity to increase efficiencies and profits, or by the management to attract outstanding outsiders. For example, Yahoo’s offer of CEO position and significant amount of return might be the motivation for Marissa Mayer to jump from Google to Yahoo.

Self-motivation:

Self-motivation, different from the traditional motivation, is exercised by an individual to motivate him/herself to reach a goal. A strongly self-motivated individual usually performs the duty at maximum, and isn’t readily influenced by frustration and sense of failure. I personally believe that this type of employee is what the firms favor because of the active working attitude originated from self-motivation.

Management Styles:

* Autocratic Leadership (also known as transactional leadership): an autocratic manager usually makes decision upon his/her own view and rarely asks opinions from employees (or “followers”). This type leadership could be beneficiary in a fast-paced working circumstance or emergencies because the decisions must be made timely and quickly. An autocratic manager prefers to keep the entity the same without change and may motivate employees to trust his/her capability of making good decisions. I think that under this type of management, the effectiveness and efficiency of the companies’ operation may directly result from the management’s decision making skills.

* Democratic Leadership: a democratic manager, as the opposite of an autocratic manager, prefers to include employees into the decision making process. Under this style of management, employees are motivated to grow...