Expectancy Theory

Expectancy Theory There are several different contemporary theories that deal with motivation. One popular theory is the expectancy theory which is composed of three different relationships; effort-performance, performance-reward, and rewards-personal goals. Each of these relationships is an important part of the theory and is based upon the employee’s beliefs in the if/then actions of the effort/performance/rewards dynamic. The effort-performance relationship equates to how much effort the employee believes he has to put in, to work at a certain level. One example of this would be, the effort I put into earning the Comptia Security+ certification. The effort I put into studying allowed me to get the highest score in our IT department (we all took the same class). The performance-reward relationship is about how much the employee believes that their performance will lead to obtaining a goal. In my example of earning the Security+ certification, I believed that if I ignored the distractions and studied, I could pass the certification test. The ultimate outcome was for me to be able to use the certification to meet the requirements for my job. The rewards-personal goals relationship is when the employee has to decide if the rewards his organization offers is worth it to put in the effort /performance necessary to receive the reward. In my case, since putting in the effort and performance means I was able to accept a new job and continue to meet gain requirements for a promotion, I feel the time is well spent to earn industry certifications. In the scenario where the company institutes a new production process, Supervisor B finds out that Supervisor A’s employees have issues with all three relationships of the Expectancy theory. There are several things that the company can do to get the employees to feel positive about the change and

to want to put their time and energy into the new process. The consequences of the employees not buying into the new process could...