How Motivation Affects Behaviour in Organisations?

Motivation and Behaviour:

Motivation causes GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOUR. If a person strongly feels the need of something he will behave in such a way that he tries to satisfy himself so that he does not feel the lack of that particular thing. This can be explained as follows with the help of a figure.

Needs that Affect the Human Behaviour:

A human need creates tension in the mind of the individual and this need transforms itself into want depending upon the environment. Again, there will be tension in the mind which will be satisfied only by a particular behaviour of the individual which will release the tension. That particular behaviour may be caused by the incentives, which exist to satisfy the need. Satisfaction of one need will lead to the feeling of another different need or the same need at an interval of time. Thus, this process is a continuous one.

However, if the need is not satisfied because of some reasons, the person may feel frustration. Frustration can be defined as the accumulation of tension because of non-fulfillment of needs. At this stage, the person will try to modify his behaviour to eliminate factors responsible for non-fulfillment of his needs in one particular situation only. There will be numerous such factors, some of which will be beyond his control. Thus, the situation can be that he is not in a position to remove his frustration by satisfaction of needs.

Frustration is not an ideal situation for an individual, so he will try to change this situation by choosing some alternative behaviour. As human beings are different from each other, this type of behaviour will not be uniform.

However, some common forms of behaviour are:

1. Aggression:

A person who is denied the need satisfaction may become aggressive. Different forms of aggression may be displacement (attacking the source of frustration or towards some other object), Negativism (passive resistance operating consciously or unconsciously) and fixation (non-adjustive reaction).

2. Withdrawal:

Another way of overcoming frustration is withdrawing from the scene physically or psychologically. The different forms of withdrawal may be fantasy, regression or flight.

3. Compromise:

The individual try to compromise the situation. Various forms of compromise may be identification, projection, rationalization or reaction formation.