05. Engineering Management 2 - People in Organisations

Management

… is the art of getting things done through people

Peter Drucker

Performance:

Managers are concerned with the performance of people and groups
$\text{Performance} = f(\text{ability}, \text{effort}, \text{support})$
- Ability is a function of individual attributes
- Effort is a function of motivation
  - Motivation is a function of individual attributes, individual needs and how they are being met

What makes people behave as they do? What motivates people? How do groups work?

Individuals react differently to identical situations:

Individual Attributes

Nature:

Biographic attributes: age, sex, gender, size
Competency attributes: intelligence
Personality attributes: leadership, work ethics, values, emotional intelligence, personality type etc.

Nurture:

Biographic attributes: strength, fitness etc.
Competency attributes: education, experience
Personality attributes: leadership qualities, values, heuristics, cultural affects

Three categories of theories of motivation:

Content/needs theories of motivation:
- Maslow’s hierarchy
- Herzberg’s motivation hygiene
- McClelland’s three needs
Process theories of motivation:
- Equity
- Expectancy
- Goal-setting
Reinforcement theory of motivation

Three types of needs, one of which dominates for each person:

Need for achievement (nAch)
- Drive to excel, achieve relative to standards
- Need individual responsibility, challenging but achievable goal
- Dislike ambiguity
- Are careful to not put themselves in situations where they won’t succeed
- Often like to work alone
Need for affiliation (nAff)
- Desire to be friendly, have close interpersonal relationships, opportunities to communicate
- Favour collaboration over competition
- Have difficulty becoming managers; want to be liked more than managing
Need for power (nPow)
- To make others behave in a way they would otherwise not
- Need control over other people, attention, recognition
- Want control organizational resources to meet the goal

Also known as the two factor theory or intrinsic-extrinsic motivation theory.

Hygiene factors eliminate dissatisfaction; these are baseline requirements that are expected:

Motivators increase job satisfaction:

J. Adams.

Employees try to maintain equity between inputs and outputs compared to others in similar situation.

This is based on people’s perception of themselves; no one things of themselves as a slacker.

\frac{\text{Outcomes (self)}} {\text{Input (self)}} = \frac{\text{Outcomes (others)}}{\text{Input (others)}}

Victor Vroom.

Before committing effort to a task, people ask:

Very much supported by empirical evidence.

Based on behavior modification (operant conditioning).

See Pavlov’s dogs.

Types:

Reinforcement schedule, continuous/intermittent, effects this; intermittent reinforcement works much better.

The approaches are a bag of tricks - pick one or a few, noting that some are not compatible with each other.

To determine if some approach works, rely on scientific data, personal experience and common sense.

If recommending one approach as an area for improvement, evaluate the likelihood of the manager being able to implement it.