What is motivation? In psychology, "motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior" (Geen, 1995). Motivation should not be confused with personality or emotion because it is a temporal and dynamic state. To have motivation is to have encouragement. There are a number of different terms that can describe motivation; basically a motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional athlete or a more short term goal like finishing a new video game. Motivation in the work place is one of the most important factors driving financial success in organizations today. Organizations spend millions of dollars every year trying to find new ways to motivate employees.
There are two basic motivation types. The first is what motivates an individual to do something on their own by internal needs and drives. For example, the feel of hunger makes a person want to eat, that individual will be motivated to find food to satisfy that urge of hunger.
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English: Shows early psychological student motivat...
The Hungry Hustlerz: Starvation Is MotivationThis type of motivation is referred to as intrinsic. The other type of motivation is how one individual gets another to do something which is not caused by intrinsic motives (Deci & Ryan, 1985). So what really motivates an employee? Is it just money, or does motivation consist of a number of different variables? The drive of an individual or employee is the ultimate factor of motivation. Drive motivates us to eat, sleep, work and play everyday in life. Without drive we would be incapable of reaching any level of success in life, and without drive there would not be goals which would result in failure of everything. The grand theory of drive has been studied by the most renowned psychologist of our time. Since the early 1900's, Woodworth, Freud, and Hull have studied the...