有意义的工作激励理论的动机外文翻译

有意义的工作激励理论的动机外文翻译 外 文 翻 译 原文: Meaningful Motivation for Work Motivation Theory The July 2004 AMR Special Topic Forum on the Future of Work Motivation Theory opens up new research directions to help us understand what motivates wor- kers to work, but it says comparatively little about why we should motivate workers to work. That is, what is the motivation for work motivation theory? Perhaps the lack of emphasis on this question results from a perception that the answer is quite obvious: we need to motivate workers in order to boost productivity. Indeed, the special issue editors?Steers, Mowday, and Shapiro 2004?briefly address the question as a des- cryiptive matter. They suggest that the motivation for managers to answer it is to enhance individual and group performance, while the motivation for researchers is to support theories of effective management. The lack of attention to the question as a normative matter, however, is remarkable, especially since the guest editors make a direct connection between early developments in motivation theory and the history of philosophical and psychological ethics. The ethics of work motivation theory are important because motivational efforts can exert control over individual moral autonomy. Among other things, motivation usually involves the manipulation of values that motivate individuals to work for organizational ends. In other words, factors that individual workers regard as valuable need to be channeled or redirected to augment organizational productivity Manipulation of values does not necessarily mean subverting or disregarding moral autonomy; to the contrary, one common theme in work motivation theory is that effective motivational strategies often seek to satiate workers in order to support their productivity. For example, Fried and Slowik 2004 discuss the role of time in goal-setting theory, supporting the conception that workers’ individual goals are relevant motivational values but also showing that subjective time considerations may influence the power and prioritization of goals. Similarly, Kanfer and Ackerman 2004 argue that the effectiveness of motivational strategies would benefit from accounting for workers’ age-related changes. Among other things, these examples imply that effective work motivation includes ascertaining what is valued by the individual worker so that motivational strategies can leverage it, where possible. This approach to work motivation may be characterized as “pulling,” in that proponents recognize values that motivate parti- cular individuals and seek to align them with organizational performance. As the guest editors imply, it would be highly unusual nowadays to encounter a work motivation theory that advocated “pushing” as an effective long-term strategy. Pushi- ng?compelling productivity by force with little or no regard for employee autono- my?will, at best, have a temporary positive influence on the direction of action while draining it of vigor and persistence. Still, the guest editors’ reminder that “motivation derives from the Latin word for movement movere” 2004: 379 brings to mind actual managers whose conception of their role seems limited to the task of getting employees off of their “lazy duffs” to be productive. One can easily form the impression from the forum’s discussion of work motivation that the preference for pulling over pushing is more practical than moral. Locke and Latham’s 2004 discussion of historical interest in work motivation sug- gests that individual values e.g., work satisfaction, cognitive growth have been positioned as means to productive ends e.g., economic growth, job performance. If pushing were likely to result in greater productivity gains than pulling, one might conclude that researchers would be debating how hard to push and when to crack the whip, rather than which strings to pull?mechanistic metaphors evoked by the auth- ors’ statement that “the concept of motivation refers to internal factors that impel action and to external factors that can act as inducements to action” Locke & Latham, 2004: 388; emphasis added. The ethical issue regarding the motivation for work motivation theory concerns the moral status of the worker. Is he or she an instrument for organizational ends and/or an end in himself or herself? On the former view, the worker’s values are important to management only insofar as they can be channeled in productive ways. For example, an individual who is driven by material wealth can be motivated to produce more of what the organization wants him or her to produce with pay-for- performance incentives, whereas another individual to whom recognition is important may be enticed when he or she is offered an impressive title and opportunities for greater managerial responsibility. On this view, the worker’s values are not important because they are individually valuable; they are important because they are organizationally valuable. Taken to its logical conclusion, this perspective suggests that individual values are organizationally valuable only to the extent that their benefits outweight their costs, and that their costs should be minimized. So, for example, if work satisfaction were an important individual value of a substantial percentage of the employee population in an organization experiencing high turnover, it would behoove manag- ement to consider strategies for increasing work satisfaction, which could potentially mean anything from complex work and family balance programs to job redesign. More than likely, as suggested by the forum articles, the solution would involve a complicated variety of strategies aimed at workers motivated by diverse factors, depending on their various ages, goals, affective experiences, and so on. However, it might be simpler, and less costly, to appeal to another widely shared individual value?material well-being?by throwing money at the problem with an across-theboard salary increase. In this case, this action might effectively address the turnover problem without fundamentally addressing the work satisfaction deficit. The example suggests that even though work satisfaction has individual value to many employees, it has a price. It also suggests that workers can be bought for that price. Without an ethical dimension, contemporary work motivation theory implies that, by pulling the right strings, management can play puppeteer to workers’ marionettes. This perspective does not seem to progress well beyond historical problems that the guest editors indicate work motivation theory has been advanced to address?among them, a view of workers as hedonistic, an overly paternalistic conception of management, and, generally, productivity declines that arise from a “failure to treat workers as human beings” Steers et al., 2004: 381; quoting Bendix, 1956: 294. Remarkably, the guest editors’ review of early developments in motivation theory suggests that philosophical and psychological ethics played a central role in the foundations of this topic. The early attention in motivation theory to hedonism has close ties to the utilitarian moral deal of imizing pleasure. The editors blame companies’ postindustrial pursuit of productivity imization without corresponding increases in employee rewards for the rise of unionization. By the middle of the twen- tieth century, need theories had focused researchers on the importance of work- ers’ values to their motivation and corresponding regard for workers as human beings. This regard, however, seems to take on a distinctly instrumental character in the edit- ors’ historical account of work motivation theory. The emergence of process theories and dominance of social scientific approaches to the topic in recent decades suggest the admittedly familiar and rather simplistic complaint that such approaches depict human beings as behavioral devices prone to instrumental manipulation. A fairer assessment of the current state of work motivation theory as depicted in the special topic forum articles, and more particularly of the presence of human values therein, is that individual values are increasingly given prominence as valid manag- ement considerations. The list of individual values addressed in the forum is conside- rable, including, for example, distributive and procedural justice, work and non-work- related goals, learning and development, incentives and recognition, and social ident- ity, among other themes already referenced above. Even affective experience is exa- mined for its role in producing behavioral outcomes. The bad news, from an ethical perspective, is that these values tend to be charac- terized as warranting contingent recognition?that is, they are valuable to manag- ement if they can be shown to have significance for the implied selfjustifying value of productivity. This amoral though not necessarily immoral perspective culminates in Kehr’s 2004 model of work motivation and volition in the concluding forum article, which Kehr develops to address questions about individual behavior and intrapersonal motive conflict. These “questions are of theoretical and practical relevance” Kehr, 2004: 479 insofar as they pertain to “work-related issues” that revolve around the object of organizational performance. This is not to claim that Kehr and the other forum authors do not regard the moral status of the subject as important. However, it is to say that the tendency of work motivation theorists to refrain from explicitly ack- nowledging the normative issues that arise when motivational efforts exert control over individual moral autonomy seems to dehumanize the worker. That tendency runs counter to the spirit of another recent discussion, in AMR, of the motivation to work?a book review essay entitled “Revisiting the Meaning of Meaningful Work” Diddams & Whittington, 2003. The historical themes in that essay, drawn from the books’ lengthier discussions, are consistent with the guest edit- ors’ historical accents on work motivation theory?for example, the question of how to motivate workers as factory-based industrialization emerged, the fundamental value of a work ethic and the relative value of money in social notions of individual success, and the relationship between moral autonomy and meaningful work. On the topic of the intersection between usefulness and meaningfulness, which is a possible analogue for the relationship between productivity and morality, the authors state: Ciulla 2000 argues that modern work could still provide meaning through usefulness. Nevertheless she argues that work-related activities are not the sole determinants of inherently meaningful work; both the objective and subjective contexts of work also provide meaningfulness. The objective element of meaningful work is made up of the moral conditions of the job itself 2003: 510. In the meaningful work literature, the socalled objective conditions that institutions have a moral obligation to provide include free choice to enter, honest communication, fair and respectful treatment, intellectual challenge, considerable independence to determine work methods, democratic participation in decision making, moral development, due process and justice, nonpaternalism, and fair comp- ensation e.g., see Arneson, 1987; Bowie, 1998; Ciulla, 2000; Schwartz, 1982. The similarity of this list to the partial list of individual values addressed in the special issue on the future of work motivation theory is striking. The critical difference is the depiction of those values within work motivation theory as means to productive ends and within meaningful work theory as institutional moral obligations to individual workers, or ends in themselves Surely, meaningful work is an important work motivator. It is also obvious that productivity is an important motivation for work motivation theory. Although the special topic forum articles provide a map for future progress to be made in understa- nding the human values that influence work motivation, they do not explicitly ackno- wledge individual human value other than as an instrument to productive ends. Given the editors’ historical account of how a “failure to treat workers as human beings” has led in the past to productivity declines, we have both moral and instrumental reasons to revisit normative questions as we progress toward the future of work motivation theory. Meaningful work theory constitutes a normative basis for institutions to provide many of the same work conditions for which work motivation theory constitutes an empirical basis; in addition, meaningful work theory raises “subjective” questions about what else is desirable to the individual worker. Hopefully, making the link between meaningful work and work motivation theory will stimulate further inquiry and research into meaningful work, which, unlike work motivation theory, suffers from a paucity of research attention. In addition, this link might convince some work motivation researchers, and even managers, that there is more to the motivation of work motivation theory than workers’ productivity? namely, most workers’ human desire for meaningful lives. Source: Debra L. Shapiro ,Richard M. Steers , Richard T. Mowday .2005Academy of Management Review. Vol. 30, No. 2, P235-238 译文: 有意义的工作激励理论的动机 2004年7月AMR的专题论坛上,关于未来工作激励理论展示了新的研究方向,来帮助我们了解是什么激励员工的工作,但是它对于为什么我们要激励工人工作的原因说的相对比较少。也就是说,什么是工作激励理论的动机是什么?可能我们会在看法上对这个问题缺乏重视,以至于答案很明显:我们需要激励工人来提高生产力。事实上,特刊编辑斯蒂尔斯,莫迪,黛布拉2004把之作为一个重要事项简单阐述了这个问题。他们建议,管理员对于动机的回答是为了加强个人和组织的绩效,而研究人员是为了支持有效的管理理论。事实,对于这个问题缺乏重视是非常值得注意的,特别是在做出早期发展中激励理论和哲学,和心理学,和伦理学史的直接联系之后。 工作激励理论的伦理动机很重要,因为对个人可以发挥道德自律控制的作用。除此之外,激励通常涉及个人价值观,操纵个人价值观,换言之,对职工个人的需要加以引导或重新导向,以增加组织的生产力。 值的操作并不一定意味着颠覆或者违反道德的自主性;与此相反,一个在工作激励理论的共同主题是,有效的激励策略往往寻求满足工人的需求,以达到管理者要求的工作效率。例如,费尔德和什洛维克(2004年)在目标设定理论的时间作用上的讨论,证实员工的个人目标是有确切的激励作用的,而且显示考虑主观时间,可能影响工作的效率和目标的优先次序。同样,坎费尔和阿克曼(2004年) 认为,激励策略的有效性将受益于对工人的改变。 除其他事项外,这些例子表明有效的工作动机,包括确定哪些是有价值的个体劳动者,在可能的情况下,激励策略可以利用它。这种方法,工作的动机可能被定性为“拉”,支持者承认个人激励的价值,并寻求与组织目标保持一致的表现。作为特邀编辑表示,主张“推”作为一种有效的长期战略,这将是极不寻常的工作激励理论。推动生产力,很少或根本没有考虑员工的自主权。尽管如此,特别编辑提醒我们,“动机源于拉丁词movere”(2004年),能联想到实际管理人员取得的成效。 人们易形成在论坛上探讨工作激励,“拉”比“推”更切合实际的印象。洛克和莱瑟姆讨论的(2004年)工作动机表明,个人价值观(例如,工作满意度,认知增长)已经作为一种手段被运用于各方面(例如,经济增长,工作绩效)。如果,“推”比“拉”提高的生产率大,人们可能会得出结论,研究人员将讨论如何努力“推”,何时下任务,而不是“拉”,“动机的概念是指内部因素的推动作用,外部因素作为行动的诱惑”(洛克和莱瑟姆,2004年)。 道德问题,关于工作激励理论的动机涉及工人的道德地位。员工只是实现组织目标的工具?员工的价值对于管理者是十分重要的,可以通过多种方式加以引导。例如,对于以物质需求为主要需求的员工,工资按业绩奖励,这样员工就会努力生产更多的产品;然而,另一种员工有成就需要,当管理者为其提供一个令人渴望的位置或机会时,他就会努力表现。从这个角度来看,工人的价值并不重要,因为它们的价值独立;它们又是重要的,因为他们在组织上存在一定的价值。 采取的合乎逻辑的推论,个人价值受限于组织价值,只有他们的利益大于成本,而应尽量减少他们的成本。因此,举例来说,如果工作满意度是根据员工在 组织中营业额的百分比衡量个人价值的,它理应考虑增加管理工作来表示满意,这可能意味着复杂的工作和家庭之间的平衡,致使工作的再设计。 比论坛上的文章所提出更多可能的是,该解决方案将涉及各种复杂的战略因素,比如不同年龄,目标,情感体验等,其目的是为了激励工人。不管怎么样,它可能比较简单,成本更低,通过抛出问题,全面加薪,呼吁另一个广泛的个人价值??物质生活??在这个问题上花钱,进行一个全面的加薪调整。在这种情况下,这一行动可能没有从根本上有效地解决问题。这个例子表明,尽管工作的满意程度包括许多员工的个人价值,它也有一个价格。 这也表明,这个价格工人是可以买的。如果没有道德的层面,当代工作激励理论表明,“拉”的权利,管理可以发挥木偶工人的作用。这种观点似乎并没有进步,超越历史看清楚问题,特邀编辑指出工作激励理论已得到先进的发展,其中享乐主义观点是一个过于家长式的管理理念,并且,通常出现生产力下降的情况( 斯蒂尔斯等,2004年;本迪克斯,1956年)。 值得注意的是,特邀编辑的激励理论在早期发展的表明,哲学和心理学伦理是这个主题发挥中心作用。编辑们指责,为了工业的崛起,企业追求生产最大化,但在员工的待遇上没有得到相应的增加。到了二十世纪中叶,需要理论侧重于对员工的个人动机和员工作为人的相应方面的重要性的研究。然而在这方面,在编辑的工作激励理论历史记录里,似乎有了一个明显的工具,工作激励理论的出现和社会科学方法的优势,近几十年来频繁显现。 一个专题论坛,对工作激励理论的现状的评估更公平,对其中特别是人的存在价值,被视为有效管理的考虑因素日益突出。在论坛上讨论个人价值的人数是相当可观,其中包括很多方面,例如,分配和程序公正,工作和非工作相关的目 标,学习,发展,激励,认可,社会认同,在上面提到的其他方面等,甚至情感体验用来检验其生产行为结果的作用。 从道德的角度来看,坏消息是这些价值观往往被视为值得肯定,也就是说,如果他们能证明生产力价值隐含的重要意义,它们是有价值的管理。这种不道德的(尽管不一定不道德)观点处处表现凯汉弗的(2004年)的工作激励模式,总结论坛文章的意志,凯汉弗发展了解决有关个人行为和个人动机的冲突问题。这些“理论和实际意义的问题”(凯汉弗,2004年),只要它们是属于围绕组织绩效“与工作有关的问题”。这不是声称不把凯汉弗和其他论坛的作者注重的道德地位作为重要课题,它是说,工作激励理论的倾向,不明确的承认规范问题的产生。 最近另一个讨论的精神显现出背道而驰的趋势,在AMR上,一篇关于工作动机的书评文章题目为“再论有意义的工作的意义”(迪戴蒙斯,惠廷顿,2003年)。这篇文章的历史题材,来自一本名为“漫长的讨论与特邀编辑的意志是一致的”书,例如,随着工业化的出现,如何激励这时期工厂的工人,一个工作伦理的基本价值,在社会概念里的个人成功是金钱的相对价值,道德自律性和有意义的工作之间的关系。论实用性和意义之间的交集,这是一个生产力与道德的关系,并且是可以模拟的,文章提交者(2000年)认为,现代的工作还可以通过有用性表现出其意义。不过,丘拉还指出,工作是否有意义,与工作有关的活动不是唯一的决定因素;无论客观还是主观的工作环境都能提供意义。工作有意义的客观因素是由工作本身的道德条件组成的(2003年)。 在充满意义的文学工作中,所谓的客观条件是 制度 关于办公室下班关闭电源制度矿山事故隐患举报和奖励制度制度下载人事管理制度doc盘点制度下载 在道义上有责任,提供包括选择进入的自由,沟通的坦诚,待遇的公平,相互尊重,挑战的智力性,确定工作方法中相对的独立性,参与决策的民主性,道德的发展,程序和司法的公正,补 偿的公平(例如,见阿内森,1987;施瓦茨,1982)。这个列表的部分名单中对处理个人价值的特殊问题时,在未来的工作激励理论中有惊人的相似性。最关键的区别是,这些价值观在工作激励理论中的描述,作为完成生产的手段,有意义的工作原理作为个体劳动者的道德责任制度,或者是他们自己的目标。 当然,有意义的工作是一项重要的工作动力。生产率对于工作动力来说是很明显也是很重要的诱因。虽然专题讨论提供了一个蓝图,是通过对个人价值影响工作动力的理解会在将来取得进展,但是他们还不明确接受个人价值这个观点,除非有富有成效的结果或收益。在过去导致生产力下降的情况,我们对未来的工作激励理论的规范性问题的进展发现,其中有道义和工具的原因。有意义的工作原理构成规范机构,提供了许多相同的工作,工作激励理论是实证依据,此外,有意义的工作原理提出了“主体”问题,对个体劳动者是有意义的。 我们希望的是,使有意义的工作和工作激励理论产生联系,这将刺激进一步调查和研究有意义的工作,与工作激励理论不同,它缺少研究者的关注。此外,这种联系可能说服一些研究人员,甚至是管理人员。大多数员工渴望有意义的生活。 出处:黛布拉L.夏皮罗,理查德M.斯蒂尔斯,理查德T.莫迪.管理学会评论,第二卷,2005(8):235-238