After reading an external blog of Janet Choi’s: Why does your work matter?, a dazzling subtitle popped up on my screen: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is Wrong. In my opinion, Janet misunderstood the principles of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I cannot agree with anything she said.

In Janet’s blog, “Take another look at the bottom levels of Maslow’s motivational hierarchy, which are more about carrots and sticks, the kind of incentives that have been proven to be ineffective and misguided.” Moreover, she argues that “What the hierarchy misses entirely is that the search for meaning is intrinsic and deeply essential.”

Without any further clear explanations on “Carrots and sticks incentives”, it seems to me that Janet argues that the bottom parts of Maslow’s pyramid are ineffective and only the pursuit of meaning is the key to motivating people.

However, Janet’s idea sounds absurd to me. The bottom parts of Maslow’s hierarchy include factors like food, money and security needs. People are strongly intrinsically motivated to satisfy these basic needs in order to survive, and this is the nature rule that cannot be against. It is pointless to talk to a homeless person about his motivation to pursue the meaning of life. Moreover, money is necessary for the first and second level but also plays a part in other levels such as status and esteem.

Nevertheless, it is not deniable that there are some limitations about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Not everyone fits into this hierarchy, some people may only be motivated by money.Moreover, it is actually difficult to identify which needs have been met and which level an employee is on.

However, Maslow did update his theory and concluded that factors from the hierarchy are interchangeable depends on different individuals. Moreover, cultural differences are also taken into consideration that different countries may have different perceptions of defining the same type of need.

Photo:

W.Kremer. C. Hammond (September 1, 2013). Abraham Maslow and the pyramid that beguiled business.http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23902918

The Wolf of Wall street, as a must-watch movie for Commerce students, shows us the story about Jordan Belfort’s crazy life. As Jeremy Chen mentioned in his blog, Jordan earns billions of dollars through artificially manipulating stock prices, and he ends up putting himself in jail because of fraud. Throughout the whole movie, Jordan encourages and leads his employees to engage in various kinds of illegal activities like drugs and prostitution.

    Although it seems that Jordan is nothing but an awful unethical human being, it is incontestable that he is a successful motivational speaker. The way that Jordan Belfort motivates his employees through giving radical motivational speeches impressed me the most.Jeremy said that Jordan Belfort demonstrates the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In my opinion, Jordan perfectly utilizes the principles of Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory to motivate workers and make himself to the top of the Wall Street.

Jordan often attracts poor or undereducated people to become his employees.In another word, people who have barely nothing in their pockets. In this case, new employees crave for money in order to survive. The tremendous amount of commission they receive from selling penny stock to customers immediately satisfy job dissatisfaction factors of receiving salaries and job security.

However, the key point of Herzberg’s two-factory theory is that if all of the hygiene factors had to be addressed to avoid worker dissatisfaction but they would not in themselves create a well-motivated workforce. In another word, workers can be not dissatisfied but not motivated either.

At this point, Jordan knows exactly what to give to his employees, the motivational factors! Jordan starts to give radical motivational speeches to his employees to create a sense of recognition, and he inspires the deepest desire of workers to seek achievement and personal growth from their jobs.

As Jordan always says in his motivational speeches: “I believe in every single one of you”, this creates a sense that every employee in the company is considered to be a valuable asset to the firm. As a result, employees satisfy one of the motivational factors of recognition and create a sense of loyalty.

“There is no nobility in poverty,” Jordan says. Employees constantly receive a distorted idea that only money can define their status and achievements. With the biased concept that Jordan purposely implants in employees’ minds, employees consider the quickest way to earn more money is to engage in more irrational behavior like frauding customers and selling more bad performing stocks to them.

However, one of the most important factors is the fact that employees are motivated to seek for personal growth. In my opinion, the pursuit of personal growth is similar to the pursuit of self-actualization from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Like personal growth, self-actualization is nearly never permanently achieved and “Maslow (1968) estimated that less than 1% of adults achieve total self-actualization.”(D. Martin. K. Joomis.) As a result, employees are intrinsically motivated to engage in more irrational and illegal activities to compensate their restlessness.

Citations:

Martin. K. Joomis. (2007). “Building Teachers: A Constructivist Approach to Introducing Education.” (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth). Page 72–75. http://www.cengage.com/resource_uploads/downloads/0495570540_162121.pdf

Photos:

Grant J. (January 21, 2014). The Wolf of Wall Street: The Emptiest Three-Hour Movie You’ll Ever See. http://earnthis.net/wolf-wall-street-emptiest-three-hour-movie-youll-ever-see/

Tagove. (September 15, 2016). How to Motivate Your Team for Better Customer Service. https://www.tagove.com/motivate-team-better-customer-service/

“Dingdong Dingdong”, the first year of university is coming to an end, three more years to go, and we will all dive into the pool of labor workforce, how exciting is that? Nevertheless, which company would you choose? A large corporation or a small company? Goldman Sachs, a dream workplace for business school students according to the survey from COMM 291, 36% of us chose to work for Goldman Sachs. Sandstorm Gold, a small-cap gold royalty company with a positive prospect. However, I have been thinking, if I got the chance, what would I choose?

The key difference between larger corporations and small companies is the organizational structure.

For large corporations like Goldman Sachs, the organizational structure is mature and often comes with a long chain of command. The structure of the corporation is hierarchical where each level of employees report upwards through many different management levels. Within this structure, a large number of skilled managers are employed and the delegation between each level is reasonably low. However, this comes with an advantage of narrow span of control, which provides good opportunities for promotion. Employees can see clearly of their career path, and they know they will be promoted as long as they achieve some specific pre-set goals. A clear career promotion path is especially crucial for ambitious employees like us, and this can be a constant motivational drive. Nevertheless, the communication process might be slow and not flexible since information needs to be passed through layers and layers of management levels. However, a potential attitude of “ THEM AND US” can be formed and employees might be demotivated since they rarely see senior management on the top. Beside organizational structure, the working experience in large corporations is certainly going to be the stepping-stone to any company you apply for.

For small companies like Sandstorm Gold, the organizational structure has fewer hierarchies and wide span of control. The structure enables employees to communicate with managers more easily and quickly. It also enables the company to work as a team since the wide span of control give employees the feeling that they are equally important, and they are motivated to work together. Cooperation between departments is always important since the synergy power enables the company to achieve higher goals. Moreover, the large of delegation encourage employees to be highly motivated since their belongingness to the company, and they are more willing to take responsibilities. Nevertheless, it is obvious that comparing with large corporations, the salary or bonus might not be as attractive as large firms. However, the working experience might be much valuable since small companies require their limited number of employees to be multi-skilled and broaden their views of knowledge like knowing mining process is essential for Sandstorm Gold.

Pictures:

Goldman Sachs: http://www.goldmansachs.com/worldwide/brazil/

Sandstorm Gold: http://www.sandstormgold.com/

As all kinds of social media software like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat being invented, people have become social media addicted, even the US president Donald Trump loves Twitter. Imagine a casual working day, the Facebook breaking news pop up on you screen, would you click and sneak a peak expecting your boss will not notice? Well, you better watch out, your boss might be looking at you through monitoring your computer, or from the teeny weeny camera sits on the ceiling above your head.

The term employee monitoring refers to the act of monitoring employee activities for ensuring appropriate performances. But to what extent? However, the boundary of monitoring has become more and more blurry in many corporations.

The over-monitored working environment affects employees in many ways. First, the act will change the nature of motivation among employees. It is not deniable that people might get lazy sometimes. But, there are many employees are committed to finishing their tasks efficiently. These efficient workers often have a high achievement or power motivation according to McClelland’s motivation theory. The motivation is intrinsic as they complete tasks that are in themselves pleasurable and self-rewarding. Intrinsic motivation is often desired since employees are motivated internally by themselves, and the willingness to take their job seriously push up the level of productivity. Nevertheless, the monitored environment will change the nature of the motivation from intrinsic to extrinsic. The extrinsic motivation will be formed since employees are scared of being punished for any inappropriate behavior, and they complete their tasks just to “escape” the intimidating situation. The extrinsic motivation should be avoided since as long as it is formed, workers are hard to motivate unless they are given constant monetary or fiscal rewards. However, this will become very costly for a corporation to maintain the motivation level.

Second, the employment monitoring method underestimates the intelligence of humans. The human brain is the most complex feature in the universe, and every employee has the same brain structure as his manager. Employees have demand characteristics when they know that they are being watched, which means they know how to behave better in front of their boss, so there is a huge potential of employees pretending to do their work efficiently. Well, the company has policies, while employees have their own ways of getting around them. Employees might go to the washroom while they want to look at their cellphones or they might make many excuses to run away from work.

From my perspective, an appropriate amount of monitoring is needed to track performance and protect trade secrets. However, the over-monitoring working environment is not suggested since this method will not only invade employees’ privacy but also decrease their motivation to work.

Picture: Adam Dachis/March 2oth,2012/“How Can I Tell If I’m Being Monitored at Work and What Can I Do About It?”/.http://lifehacker.com/5894689/how-can-i-tell-if-im-being-monitored-at-work-and-what-can-i-do-about-it

From my perspective, it is worth noticing that the cultural difference between western and eastern countries. Western countries like Canada and USA often have an individualistic culture where firms emphasize on the uniqueness of individuals, and their creative ideas are highly valued. However, Eastern countries like China and India often have a collective culture where firms value the harmony within the corporation, and individuals often need to comprise in order to accomplish the main chosen goal as a whole.

But how do these different cultures affect behavior within organizations?

For individualistic culture companies, the culture often encourages employees to be creative and generate new ideas. Managers and leaders often have democratic or laissez-faire leadership style. Democratic leadership style encourages both managers and employees are involved in business decision making, and laissez-faire leadership style encourages managers to give workers necessary information and employees are left to make their own decisions. Both leadership styles will highly motivate workers since they feel they are part of the corporation. The royalty of employees rises along with the decrease in labor turnover. Nevertheless, one of the disadvantages is that individuals might bias themselves of their abilities, and they are less likely to compromise. This comes with the consequence of slow decision-making process and conflicts between employees.

For collective culture companies, the culture often encourages employees to create the harmony within the organization. Leaders often maintain a supreme power over the decision-making process. Having collective culture does not necessarily mean that the firms discourage new ideas and employee participations. The key is that at the point of decision-making, although individuals might have completely different ideas, and they cannot agree even a bit of the decision that the leader made, but they have to consider the overall company as their priority and their personal ideas can be sacrificed in order to achieve the common goal. Individuals are more likely to “fit in” instead of “stand out”. This may discourage some employees since they might feel less belongingness and there is a huge “ gap” between management level and them. However, this often comes with a quick decision-making process which is crucial for situations like if the firm is in crisis and decisions need to be made quickly.

It is not fair to judge which culture is better for organizations. It is important to consider that nature of the company. For example, if it is an advertising company, the individualistic culture is preferred to enable employees’ creativity. If it is a mining company, the collective culture is encouraged since employees need to do exactly what they are told to do.

Picture: Kristin Hohenadel/ OCT. 1 2015 12:24 PM/The cultural between east and west, as told in pictograms/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/10/01/yang_liu_s_east_meets_west_pictograms_about_cultural_differences_from_a.html

From my perspective, the worst job is being a package line worker.

1. The job is repetitive, and do not require many specific skills. Therefore the workers might have low motivation since the tasks are boring.
2. There is a blurred career promotion path. The chance of getting promoted is very small since the majority of manufacturing corporates often have a wide span of control, therefore some ambitious workers might feel demotivated.
3. There is a potential risk of the quality issue which depends on the method a company chooses to pay its workers. If a company is paying its workers at a piece rate, workers might focus on how to get things done quickly in order to get more money, and they might ignore the quality of the products. If a company is paying its worker at a wage, workers might be unmotivated and have low productivity since no matter how many units they produce, they still get the same salary.

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