Motivation Concept Card Template (Job Design, Expectancy, Goals, Equity)

Motivation Concept Card: [Team, role or course case]

A concept card for work motivation as it is taught in the leadership and organisational behaviour core of a leading MBA programme: need theories (Maslow 1943; Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman 1959), expectancy theory (Vroom 1964), goal setting (Locke and Latham 1990 and 2002), the job characteristics model with the motivating potential score (Hackman and Oldham 1976), self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan and Deci 2000), equity theory (Adams 1965) and the design of incentives. It is for MBA students preparing a class, a case or an exam, and for managers who want a structured, evidence-based way to diagnose why people are or are not putting effort into a job. Source basis: the original works cited below and later meta-analyses, written up in original words. The settings (Tallow Creek Medical Center, Northfield Outdoor Co.) and every number are fictional and were computed in Python. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

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Contents

• When to use it
• The idea in plain language
• Formulas and notation
• The theories in more depth
• Assumptions and limits
• How managers use it
• Worked example A (fully solved)
• Worked example B (half solved)
• Exercise C (unsolved)
• Connections to other cards
• Common mistakes and misconceptions
• Self-test questions
• My notes and next steps
• Sources and further reading
• Answer key

When to use it

One-sentence rule: use this card when you need to explain or change the direction, intensity and persistence of effort that people bring to a job, and you want to pick the lever (the work itself, goals, rewards, fairness or the social context) that the evidence says will move it.

Motivation is one of three drivers of performance. A common teaching shorthand is performance as a function of ability, motivation and opportunity: high motivation cannot make up for missing skill or a broken process. Check the other two before you redesign incentives.

The idea in plain language

Motivation is the set of forces that start work-related behaviour and decide its direction (what people work on), intensity (how hard) and persistence (for how long). The theories in this card divide into two families.

Content theories ask what people want. Maslow (1943) proposed that people are driven by needs that become active roughly in order: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. Herzberg and colleagues (1959) interviewed engineers and accountants about good and bad periods at work and concluded that the things that cause dissatisfaction when missing (pay, supervision, policy, working conditions: "hygiene" factors) are different from the things that create satisfaction and effort when present (achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, growth: "motivators"). Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan and Deci 2000) holds that people have three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) and that work which supports them produces higher-quality, self-endorsed motivation.

Process theories ask how people decide to put in effort. Expectancy theory (Vroom 1964) says people choose effort by weighing three beliefs: will my effort lead to performance (expectancy), will performance lead to outcomes (instrumentality), and how much do I value those outcomes (valence)? Goal-setting theory (Locke and Latham 1990 and 2002) shows that specific, difficult goals that people accept, with feedback, lead to higher performance than vague "do your best" goals. Equity theory (Adams 1965) says people compare the ratio of what they get to what they give with the same ratio for a referent person, and act to remove an unfair gap.

Job design links the two: the job characteristics model (Hackman and Oldham 1976) says five features of the work itself (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback) create three psychological states (meaningful work, felt responsibility, knowledge of results), which in turn drive internal motivation, satisfaction and quality. The motivating potential score (MPS) combines the five features into one number.

A manager's practical summary: make the work worth doing (job design, self-determination), make the path from effort to result to reward clear and believable (expectancy, goals), and make the system fair (equity and justice). Incentive pay sits on top of these, never in place of them.

Formulas and notation

Motivating potential score (Hackman and Oldham 1976), each dimension scored 1 to 7:

The three meaningfulness dimensions are averaged (one can partly make up for another); autonomy and feedback multiply, so a very low score on either pulls the MPS down sharply. The range is 1 to 343.

Expectancy theory (Vroom 1964), motivational force towards an action:

Equity theory (Adams 1965), the perceived comparison:

Incentive cost with a threshold, target and cap, when performance $X$ follows a distribution $f(x)$:

The theories in more depth

Need theories: Maslow and Herzberg

Maslow (1943) wrote about a hierarchy of needs in which a need that is largely satisfied stops being a strong motivator and the next one becomes active. He described the ordering as flexible, not rigid. The pyramid drawing that appears in most textbooks is not in Maslow's paper: Bridgman, Cummings and Ballard (2019) trace it to later management writers. Reviews of the empirical evidence (Wahba and Bridwell 1976) found little support for a strict, universal order. The lasting managerial use is a reminder: people whose pay or job security is in doubt are unlikely to respond to appeals to growth and purpose.

Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (1959) used critical incidents: they asked people to describe times they felt exceptionally good or bad about their job. Good periods were described in terms of the work and achievement; bad periods in terms of the context. The two-factor theory follows: removing dissatisfiers produces "no dissatisfaction", not motivation. House and Wigdor (1967) criticised the method: people tend to credit themselves for good events and blame the environment for bad ones, which could create the two factors by itself. The theory is still useful as a diagnostic split, and it inspired job enrichment.

Self-determination theory

Deci and Ryan (1985) and Ryan and Deci (2000) distinguish types of motivation along a continuum: amotivation; external regulation (to get a reward or avoid a punishment); introjected regulation (to avoid guilt or protect self-worth); identified regulation (because the person values the result); integrated regulation (because it fits the person's identity); and intrinsic motivation (because the activity is interesting in itself). The more autonomous forms predict persistence, quality and well-being better. Support for the three basic needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) moves people along the continuum. A meta-analysis of experiments (Deci, Koestner and Ryan 1999) found that expected, tangible rewards made contingent on doing an interesting task tend to reduce later free-choice interest in it. Cerasoli, Nicklin and Ford (2014) found that intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives both predict performance, with incentives more strongly linked to the quantity of performance and intrinsic motivation more strongly linked to its quality. Gagné and Deci (2005) apply the theory to work organisations.

Expectancy theory

Vroom (1964) modelled the force to act as expectancy times the sum of instrumentality-weighted valences. The multiplicative form carries the main lesson: if any one belief is near zero, motivation is near zero, however large the reward. A big bonus for a target people believe they cannot reach (low $E$), or for a result the organisation has failed to reward in the past (low $I$), motivates little. Porter and Lawler (1968) extended the model with ability, role perceptions and the feedback loop from rewards to satisfaction. A meta-analysis (Van Eerde and Thierry 1996) found modest correlations, stronger for within-person choices among options than for comparisons between people, which is how managers should use the model: to compare designs for the same people.

Goal setting

Locke (1968) and the review by Locke and Latham (2002) report that specific, difficult goals lead to higher performance than easy goals or "do your best", through four mechanisms: they direct attention, raise effort, increase persistence and prompt people to find task strategies. Moderators are goal commitment (helped by importance and self-efficacy), feedback on progress, task complexity (for complex new tasks, learning goals such as "find five ways to cut triage time" can beat outcome goals) and ability. Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky and Bazerman (2009) warn of side effects of over-prescribed goals: narrowed focus, unethical shortcuts, more risk taking and loss of intrinsic motivation. Use goals with a guard-rail metric and a conversation about how the goal will be reached.

Job characteristics model

Hackman and Oldham (1975) built the Job Diagnostic Survey to measure the five core dimensions, and Hackman and Oldham (1976) tested the model. Skill variety, task identity and task significance create experienced meaningfulness; autonomy creates experienced responsibility for outcomes; feedback from the job creates knowledge of results. The effects are stronger for people with high growth-need strength and adequate skill and context satisfaction. A large meta-analysis (Humphrey, Nahrgang and Morgeson 2007) supported the motivational characteristics and added social characteristics (support, interdependence, feedback from others) and contextual ones.

Equity theory and organisational justice

Adams (1963, 1965) argued that people compare their own outcome-to-input ratio with a referent's. Under-reward produces resentment, over-reward can produce guilt (people tolerate this much more readily). People restore equity by changing inputs (less effort), changing outcomes (asking for a rise, or in extreme cases taking resources: Greenberg 1990 recorded higher theft after a temporary pay cut, lower where the cut was explained with care), distorting perceptions, changing the referent or leaving. Later research separates distributive justice (fair outcomes), procedural justice (fair process) and interactional justice (respectful treatment and honest explanation); Colquitt (2001) validated a four-factor measure in which interactional justice splits into interpersonal justice (dignity and respect) and informational justice (honest, adequate explanation). Managers often cannot change the outcome but can always improve the process and the explanation.

Incentive design

Incentives work through expectancy and instrumentality, so they are only as good as the measure they reward. Kerr (1975) showed how organisations often reward one behaviour while hoping for another. Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) showed formally that when a job has several tasks and only some can be measured, strong pay for the measured task pulls effort away from the unmeasured ones, so weaker incentives can be optimal. Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) found that small payments can perform worse than none, because they turn a social or intrinsic reason into a market one. Practical rules: reward what you can measure well, protect the unmeasured parts of the job with guard-rails, keep targets reachable for most people, explain the plan, and price its expected cost before launch (Worked example A, part 3).

Assumptions and limits

The theories are complementary lenses, not rivals that you must choose between. A good diagnosis usually uses two or three of them, and names which one points to the cheapest lever with the strongest evidence.

How managers use it

• Role design and job crafting. Score the five job dimensions for a role, raise the lowest multiplicative term first (autonomy or feedback), and give people room to reshape tasks within limits.
• Goal and OKR setting. Turn vague aims into specific, difficult goals with feedback loops and a guard-rail metric; see business/okr. Use learning goals for new, complex work.
• Incentive plan review. For each proposed plan, estimate expectancy (can people reach it?), instrumentality (do we reliably pay?), valence (do they want what we pay?), the multitask risk and the expected cost.
• Recognition. Recognition is cheap and links to esteem needs, motivators and competence support. It works best when specific, timely and tied to behaviour the person controls.
• Pay communication. Use justice research: explain the criteria and the process, allow voice and appeal, and deliver decisions respectfully, especially when the outcome is bad news.
• One-to-one conversations. Ask about autonomy, competence and relatedness ("what part of your job would you most like more say over?"); see meetings/one-on-one.
• Retention. Exit and stay interviews coded by hygiene factor versus motivator help separate "fix the context" from "redesign the work".

Worked example A (fully solved): redesigning a patient-access role

Situation (fictional). Tallow Creek Medical Center employs 40 patient-access coordinators, who register patients, check insurance and schedule follow-up appointments. Error rates on registration rose and annual turnover reached about a third. An anonymous survey gave team-average scores on the five core dimensions. A redesign pilot then gave each coordinator ownership of a patient's access journey from first call to discharge appointment, rotation through scheduling, insurance checks and the help desk, authority to fix registration errors without a supervisor sign-off, and a daily dashboard of their own error and wait-time figures.

Part 1. MPS before and after.

Part 2. Which single lever matters most? Add one point to each dimension in turn, starting from "before".

Because the three meaningfulness scores are averaged, one extra point on any of them adds only a third of a point to the average. Autonomy and feedback multiply, so a point there moves the score far more, and the lowest multiplier (feedback, 2.5) gives the largest gain. The managerial reading: the cheapest high-impact step was the daily dashboard, which also needed no change to job grades.

Part 3. Expectancy check on two incentive designs. Tallow Creek also wants nurses to complete a new sepsis screening at triage. Two designs were proposed. Values are a focus-group estimate on the scales in the notation table.

Excel: put E in B2, the three instrumentalities in C2:E2 and the three valences in F2:H2, then =B2*SUMPRODUCT(C2:E2,F2:H2). D1 offers a bigger bonus but most nurses do not believe one person can lift a whole unit to 95% (E = 0.4). D2 has more than twice the motivational force because the goal is reachable and the recognition is reliable. Note that MF is a relative index: compare designs for the same group, never read it as a probability.

Part 4. Pricing the bonus. D2 pays a target bonus of USD 6,000 a year to each of 200 nurses. Unit performance (percent of target) is assumed normal with mean 100 and standard deviation 8. The plan pays nothing below 90%, 50% of target at 90%, 100% at 100%, rising linearly to a cap of 150% at 110% and above.

To get the expected payout in Excel, build 20 rows of one-point performance bands from 90 to 110 (lower bound in column A). In each row, the band probability is =NORM.DIST(A3+1,100,8,TRUE)-NORM.DIST(A3,100,8,TRUE) and the payout at the band midpoint is =IF(A3+0.5<100,50+(A3+0.5-90)*5,100+(A3+0.5-100)*5). Sum the products with SUMPRODUCT and add 150% times the cap probability. Because the schedule is linear inside each band, this gives the same 94.72% as exact integration in Python.

With a standard deviation of 4 instead of 8, the probability of no payout falls to 0.0062 and the expected payout rises to 99.69% of target: a less volatile measure makes the plan more believable (higher expectancy) and more expensive. Finance should budget for the expected cost and hold a reserve for the maximum.

Recommendation sentence. "Keep the coordinator redesign: it raised the MPS from 25 to 125, mostly through autonomy and feedback. For sepsis screening, choose D2: its reachable unit goal and reliable recognition give more than twice the motivational force of D1 at an expected cost of about USD 1.14m a year, with a guard-rail metric on screening quality so that speed does not replace accuracy."

Worked example B (half solved): the emergency triage nurse

Situation (fictional). The emergency department's triage nurses rate their job SV 6.0, TI 4.0, TS 6.5, A 3.5 and F 4.0. Managers are considering two changes: standing protocols that let triage nurses start tests without a physician order (autonomy to 5.0), or a shift-end summary of each patient's outcome (feedback to 5.5). A separate self-scheduling scheme is proposed to reduce unpopular night shifts.

Self-scheduling scheme: expectancy 0.7; outcomes are better shift choice (I 0.6, V 0.8), a small bonus for covering gaps (I 0.5, V 0.5) and still being assigned some night shifts (I 0.9, V -0.6).

6. Compute the sum of I x V and the motivational force. [ ]
7. The force is low despite a valued main outcome. Which term drags it down, and what would you change? [ ]

Exercise C (unsolved): a store associate role

Northfield Outdoor Co. store associates rate their job SV 3.0, TI 3.5, TS 4.0, A 2.5, F 3.0. A proposed redesign makes associates owners of one product category (ordering, display, customer advice, weekly sales review), with scores expected at SV 4.5, TI 5.0, TS 4.5, A 4.0, F 5.0. An associate with three years' service earns USD 19.50 an hour; a newly hired associate doing the same job is paid USD 21.00 because the market rate rose.

1. Compute the MPS now and after the redesign, with the Excel formulas.
2. Compute the equity ratio of the long-serving associate's hourly pay to the new hire's, assuming equal inputs.
3. Name three ways the long-serving associate might restore equity, according to Adams.
4. Which justice dimension can the store manager improve even if the pay budget is frozen, and how?
5. Name one risk of the category-ownership redesign for associates with low growth-need strength.

Connections to other cards

Common mistakes and misconceptions

1. "Money does not motivate." It does, through expectancy and instrumentality, especially for measurable quantity. The claim that matters is narrower: contingent tangible rewards can crowd out interest in tasks that were already interesting, and pay cannot fix poorly designed work.
2. Treating Maslow's pyramid as proven. Strict, universal ordering is not supported, and the pyramid drawing is a later invention.
3. Assuming hygiene factors do not matter. Herzberg's claim is that they prevent dissatisfaction; unfair pay can still drive people out.
4. Adding the MPS terms. Autonomy and feedback multiply; averaging all five hides a near-zero multiplier.
5. Setting stretch goals nobody believes. A target with near-zero expectancy produces near-zero force, or cheating to reach it.
6. Paying for what is easy to measure only. Multitask problems shift effort away from quality, teamwork and safety; add guard-rails.
7. Reading expectancy scores as probabilities of success. MF is a relative index for comparing options.
8. Ignoring the referent. Equity is about comparison; a rise that is generous in absolute terms can still feel unfair.
9. Forgetting process and explanation. Procedural and interactional justice often matter more than the outcome to how people react.
10. Using one lever for everyone. Valences and growth-need strength differ; ask and segment.

Self-test questions

1. State the MPS formula and explain why autonomy and feedback are not averaged with the other three dimensions.
2. Compute the MPS for SV 5, TI 5, TS 5, A 2, F 6, and for SV 4, TI 4, TS 4, A 6, F 6. What does the comparison show?
3. Expectancy is 0.5, instrumentality 0.8 and valence 0.9 for a single outcome. Compute MF. What is MF if expectancy rises to 0.9?
4. Give Herzberg's two factor groups with two examples each, and the main methodological criticism.
5. Name the three basic needs in self-determination theory and one managerial practice that supports each.
6. What did Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) find about tangible rewards, and when does the effect apply?
7. List the four mechanisms by which goals affect performance and two moderators.
8. When can a learning goal beat a specific performance goal?
9. Give two of the side effects of goal setting described by Ordóñez et al. (2009).
10. Explain the multitask problem of Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) with a hospital example.
11. Distinguish distributive, procedural and interactional justice.
12. In Worked example A, why does a one-point rise in feedback raise the MPS more than a one-point rise in autonomy?

My notes and next steps

Sources and further reading

• Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
• Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., and Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The Motivation to Work. Wiley.
• House, R. J., and Wigdor, L. A. (1967). Herzberg's dual-factor theory of job satisfaction and motivation: a review of the evidence and a criticism. Personnel Psychology, 20(4), 369-390.
• Wahba, M. A., and Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow reconsidered: a review of research on the need hierarchy theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15(2), 212-240.
• Bridgman, T., Cummings, S., and Ballard, J. (2019). Who built Maslow's pyramid? Academy of Management Learning and Education, 18(1), 81-98.
• Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and Motivation. Wiley.
• Porter, L. W., and Lawler, E. E. (1968). Managerial Attitudes and Performance. Irwin.
• Van Eerde, W., and Thierry, H. (1996). Vroom's expectancy models and work-related criteria: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(5), 575-586.
• Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3(2), 157-189.
• Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (1990). A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance. Prentice Hall.
• Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: a 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717.
• Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., and Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: the systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16.
• Hackman, J. R., and Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(2), 159-170.
• Hackman, J. R., and Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250-279.
• Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., and Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332-1356.
• Deci, E. L., and Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. Plenum.
• Ryan, R. M., and Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., and Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668.
• Gagné, M., and Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331-362.
• Cerasoli, C. P., Nicklin, J. M., and Ford, M. T. (2014). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: a 40-year meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 980-1008.
• Adams, J. S. (1963). Towards an understanding of inequity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), 422-436.
• Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 267-299.
• Greenberg, J. (1990). Employee theft as a reaction to underpayment inequity: the hidden cost of pay cuts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(5), 561-568.
• Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: a construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386-400.
• Kerr, S. (1975). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Journal, 18(4), 769-783.
• Holmstrom, B., and Milgrom, P. (1991). Multitask principal-agent analyses: incentive contracts, asset ownership, and job design. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 7 (special issue), 24-52.
• Gneezy, U., and Rustichini, A. (2000). Pay enough or don't pay at all. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 791-810.
• Textbooks, by name only: Robbins, S. P., and Judge, T. A., Organizational Behavior (Pearson); Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., and Wesson, M. J., Organizational Behavior: Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace (McGraw Hill).
• Open resource: OpenStax, Organizational Behavior (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), https://openstax.org/details/books/organizational-behavior, chapter on work motivation.

Answer key

Worked example B.

6. Sum of I x V = 0.6 x 0.8 + 0.5 x 0.5 + 0.9 x (-0.6) = 0.48 + 0.25 - 0.54 = 0.19; MF = 0.7 x 0.19 = 0.133 (=0.7*SUMPRODUCT({0.6,0.5,0.9},{0.8,0.5,-0.6})).
7. The near-certain, strongly unwanted outcome (night shifts, I 0.9, V -0.6) almost cancels the valued shift choice. Lower its instrumentality (cap night shifts per person, rotate fairly and publish the rule) or raise the valence of covering them (premium pay, first pick of holidays).

Exercise C. (1) Now: =AVERAGE(3,3.5,4)*2.5*3 = 26.25; redesign: =AVERAGE(4.5,5,4.5)*4*5 = 93.33. (2) 19.50 / 21.00 = 0.929 (=19.5/21), so the long-serving associate is under-rewarded relative to the referent. (3) Any three of: reduce effort or discretionary help, ask for a rise, take more breaks or perks, change the referent ("new hires are paid for a tight market"), distort the comparison, or leave. (4) Procedural and interactional justice: explain how pay rates are set, give a timetable and criteria for review, let people raise the issue, and say so respectfully and honestly. (5) People with low growth-need strength may experience the added responsibility as stress rather than enrichment; offer choice and support rather than forcing the change on everyone.

Self-test.

1. MPS = ((SV + TI + TS) / 3) x A x F. The three meaningfulness dimensions are averaged because each contributes to the same psychological state and can partly substitute for one another; autonomy and feedback each create a separate necessary state (responsibility and knowledge of results), so a near-zero value cancels the rest.
2. (5 + 5 + 5) / 3 x 2 x 6 = 60; (4 + 4 + 4) / 3 x 6 x 6 = 144. Lower meaningfulness with high autonomy and feedback beats higher meaningfulness with low autonomy.
3. MF = 0.5 x 0.8 x 0.9 = 0.36 (=0.5*0.8*0.9); with E = 0.9, MF = 0.648, an 80% rise from expectancy alone.
4. Hygiene: pay, supervision, company policy, working conditions, relations with colleagues. Motivators: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and growth. Criticism (House and Wigdor 1967): the critical-incident method invites self-serving attribution, so the split may be produced by the method itself.
5. Autonomy: let people choose how to reach a goal; competence: stretch tasks with coaching and feedback; relatedness: team rituals, mentoring, being treated as a person.
6. Expected, tangible rewards contingent on doing or completing an interesting task reduced later free-choice intrinsic interest; verbal positive feedback tended to increase it. The effect applies to tasks people already found interesting, not to dull tasks.
7. Mechanisms: direction of attention, effort, persistence, task strategies. Moderators: commitment, feedback, task complexity, ability (any two).
8. On complex, novel tasks where people do not yet know the strategies; a performance goal can cause premature focus on output instead of learning how to do the task.
9. Any two of: narrowed focus that neglects unmeasured parts of the job, more unethical behaviour, distorted risk taking, a weaker learning culture, lower intrinsic motivation.
10. If nurses are paid on the share of patients screened within 15 minutes, effort may shift from careful screening and patient communication (hard to measure) to fast box-ticking (easy to measure). Weaker or balanced incentives, audits of quality and team-level measures reduce the problem.
11. Distributive: fairness of the outcome. Procedural: fairness of the process (consistency, voice, accuracy, appeal). Interactional: respect and honest, adequate explanation from the decision maker.
12. Both multiply, but a point is worth more on the lower base: feedback goes from 2.5 to 3.5 (+40%), autonomy from 3.0 to 4.0 (+33.3%), so the MPS rises by 10.0 points versus 8.33.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Based on the original works on work motivation cited above (Maslow 1943; Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman 1959; Vroom 1964; Adams 1965; Hackman and Oldham 1976; Deci and Ryan 1985; Locke and Latham 1990 and 2002) and the later reviews and meta-analyses listed. The text, worked examples, exercises and questions are original; no survey instrument, textbook text or published case is reproduced, and Tallow Creek Medical Center and Northfield Outdoor Co. are fictional. This card is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any business school, publisher or professional body. Check your course's notation and readings before you rely on it. Template licence: MIT.