MASLOWV VICTOR VROOM

MaslowV Victor Vroom

MaslowV Victor Vroom

Introduction

This paper provides a comparison of Maslow's Hierachy of Needs and Victor Vroom's expectancy theory which states that people are motivated if they can see a link between their effort (of completing a task) and the expected performance, as well as a link between the expected performance and the desired outcome or reward.

Comparison

One model of motivation that has gained a lot of attention, but not complete acceptance, has been put forward by Abraham Maslow. Maslow's theory argues that individuals are motivated to satisfy a number of different kinds of needs, some of which are more powerful than others (or to use the psychological jargon, are more prepotent than others). The term prepotency refers to the idea that some needs are felt as being more pressing than others. Maslow argues that until these most pressing needs are satisfied, other needs have little effect on an individual's behaviour. In other words, we satisfy the most prepotent needs first and then progress to the less pressing ones. As one need becomes satisfied, and therefore less important to us, other needs loom up and become motivators of our behaviour.

Maslow represents this prepotency of needs as a hierarchy. The most prepotent needs are shown at the bottom of the ladder, with prepotency decreasing as one progresses upwards.

SELF-ACTUALISATION - reaching your maximum potential, doing you own best thing

ESTEEM - respect from others, self-respect, recognition

BELONGING - affiliation, acceptance, being part of something

SAFETY - physical safety, psychological security

PHYSIOLOGICAL - hunger, thirst, sex, rest

The first needs that anyone must satisfy are physiological. As Maslow says:

"Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love and esteem would probably hunger for food more strongly than anything else".

Once the first level needs are largely satisfied, Maslow maintains, the next level of needs emerges. Individuals become concerned with the need for safety and security - protection from physical harm, disaster, illness and security of income, life-style and relationships.

Similarly, once these safety needs have become largely satisfied, individuals become concerned with belonging - a sense of membership in some group or groups, a need for affiliation and a feeling of acceptance by others.

When there is a feeling that the individual belongs somewhere, he or she is next motivated by a desire to be held in esteem. People need to be thought of as worthwhile by others, to be recognised as people with some value. They also have a strong need to see themselves as worthwhile people. Without this type of self-concept, one sees oneself as drifting, cut off, pointless. Much of this dissatisfaction with certain types of job centres around the fact that they are perceived, by the people performing them, as demeaning and therefore damaging to their self-concept.

Finally, Maslow says, when all these needs have been satisfied at least to some extent, people are motivated by a desire to self-actualise, to ...