Extrinsic Motivation in the Workplace

Abstract

This article explores the concept of extrinsic motivation that are used by companies and organizations to increase the performance and productivity of the employees through external punishments or rewards. In order to better understand extrinsic motivation, the article also debates the self-determination theory’s three psychological needs for intrinsic motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Following this, the article covers the categorization of the four types of extrinsic motivation, based on the degree of self-determination. These types are analyzed, and examples are provided to show how a company’s performance can be optimized. The article concludes that companies should be careful when making use of extrinsic motivation as this might impact the intrinsic motivation of the employees. Furthermore, extrinsic motivation is only a short-term solution and should not be the only motivational factor, thus making it important that the company also tries to fulfil the employee’s psychological needs in order to maintain the intrinsic motivation of theirs.

Introduction

In the realm of project, program and portfolio management, motivation plays an impactful role as to whether an initiative is successful or not. Motivation refers to the forces that drive individuals to take actions towards a specific goal or objective. While motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic, extrinsic motivation is particularly relevant to advanced project, program, and portfolio management. Extrinsic motivation refers to the external factors that influence an individual's behavior, such as rewards, recognition, or punishment. In project, program, and portfolio management, extrinsic motivation is often used to incentivize and reward team members for achieving specific milestones or delivering excellent results. By aligning individual incentives with project objectives, organizations can create a culture of high performance and thus create better results.

Extrinsic Motivation

To understand extrinsic motivation, one must first understand where the term becomes relevant. In the 1930s, the American psychologist and behaviorist B. F. Skinner, began studying reinforcement theory. The reinforcement theory builds upon the assumption that an individual’s behavior can be shaped through the consequences of its actions. Behaviors or actions that lead to positive consequences are more likely to occur again, whereas those leading to negative consequences are less likely to be repeated. This phenomenon is also referred to as the law of effect and aims to understand and predict the impact of the consequences. The consequences that reinforcement theory aims to predict the outcome of, can be referred to as extrinsic motivation. The external factors, reward or punishment, can be used in different ways. The rewards can be classified into two categories: intangible rewards and tangible rewards. Intangible rewards refer to emotions and psychology and are non-physical. Examples of this would be recognition, sense of accomplishment or praise. Tangible rewards refer to items or objects and are physical. Examples of this would be salary, bonusses or gifts. To decrease the likelihood of a certain action repeating itself, one can apply the other category of extrinsic motivation, punishment. As with rewards, there are also two main categories for punishment: positive punishment and negative punishment. To apply positive punishment, one must add something unpleasant to decrease the undesired behavior. This could be assigning an employee with extra work or simply assigning them an unpleasant task. Moving on to negative punishment, it involves removing something desirable, also with the goal of decreasing an undesired behavior. This could be things such as taking away an employee’s bonus or privileges.

Self-Determination Theory

When applying extrinsic motivation, one must consider how it affects the individual's intrinsic motivation. To understand the impact of extrinsic motivation on intrinsic motivation, the self-determination theory (SDT) was developed by Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan. According to SDT , an individual has three different psychological needs to be intrinsically motivated : autonomy, competence, and relatedness. If one of these basic needs are not met, it might result in frustration, loss of interest or being disengaged in their work, thus reducing their intrinsic motivation. A lack of autonomy in one's work can be caused by having little to no control over tasks, decisions, or schedules. This could be a consequence of being micromanaged, thus taking away the individual’s room for independent thoughts and actions. Following this, the employee might start feeling like they have no impact, and the work is becoming less meaningful. An example of lack of competence at work could be that an employee is assigned to a task that they cannot solve, which could be due to a lack of training or them being unfamiliar with the task. This can cause the employee to doubt their abilities and feel like they are underqualified for the task, which can lead to frustration and feeling insecure. An example of lack of relatedness could be if an employee feels disconnected from their coworkers or organization. This can lead to loneliness and a feeling of doing work that is meaningless as they are not part of the “community”. When looking at the different forms of extrinsic motivation, SDT specifies four different forms that are shown on the self-determination continuum on figure 1. These include external regulation, introjection, identification, and integration. To the far left in the black box, amotivation is located. Here, the individual is not motivated and few to none of their basic needs are met. To the far right in the green box is the opposite situation, an individual entirely driven by intrinsic motivation. When moving from left to right on the continuum, the form of motivation becomes gradually more intrinsic.

Figure 1: Continuum of self-determination, own figure based on reference 6