Process Perspectives of Motivation

The process perspectives of motivation are a group of theories that explain how employees select behaviours in order to satisfy their needs and determine whether they had made the right choices. One of these theories is the equity theory and it can underlie the switch for salary to commission pay. The equity theory involves employee’s perceptions on how fairly they are being treated relative to their other employees. If employees believe that they are being treated fairly in terms of their input and outcome being similar then they will be motivated. As noted before not all salespeople will be able to increase their earnings with the switch to commission pay. This is because some items are harder to sell then others. For example salespeople who sell “big ticket items” like furniture or men’s suits will benefit from the switch. But even with an increase in effort other salespeople who sell smaller items such as women’s lingerie, might not be able to earn the same salary as before or even keep their jobs. This would mean that under the equity theory employees will not be able to earn the same amount of commission as other employees even with an increase in effort and therefor they will not be motivated.

Process perspectives on motivation deal with how motivation occurs. Expectancy theory suggests that people are motivated to perform if they believe that their effort will result in high performance, that this performance will lead to rewards, and that the positive aspects of the outcomes outweigh the negative aspects. Equity theory is based on the premise that people are motivated to achieve and maintain social equity. Attribution theory is a new process theory.

The reinforcement perspective focuses on how motivation is maintained. Its basic assumption is that behavior that results in rewarding consequences is likely to be repeated, whereas behavior resulting in negative consequences is less likely to be repeated. Reinforcement contingencies can be arranged in the...