激励理论--Motivation-论文.pdf

1. Introduction Motivation is one psychological feature which could encourage one employee to do something to achieve a desired goal (Urdan, 2006). To evaluate the principles of motivation and explore how they motive the employees, some theories, including process theory and content theory, have been proposed. Two of them, hierarchy of needs proposed by Maslow in 1943 and expectancy theory proposed by Victor H. Vroom in 1964, will be analyzed in this research (Wikipedia, 2012). In this research, the background of two motivation theories will be introduced in advance. Furthermore, in order to analyze the extent to which motivation theory is useful in understanding what motivates people in the job, one questionnaire will be conducted and the data collected from it will be discussed comprehensively. Thirdly, the analysis on the effectiveness of motivation theory would be conducted based on the data collected from the questionnaire. In this sector, some theoretical knowledge obtained from the literature would be combined with the analysis. Finally, the conclusions of this research would be presented. 2. Background Brief summary of two theories (1) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Hierarchy of needs which was proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 is often presentedin the shape of one pyramid, with the most fundamental levels of needs, such as air, water and food, at the bottom and the advanced levels of needs, such as the self-actualization, at the top (Hassen, 2007). In this pyramid, the needs for food, safety, friendship, esteem, achievement, self-actualization and so forth, are included (Saeednia, 2011). According to the principles of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if the basic or fundamental needs of the employees’ could not be satisfied, hardly could they pay much attention to the higher levels of needs. In this research, the practice of the basic principles of Maslow’s hie