Business Mgt Forums

I need a 150-word reply to each of the following two forum post made by my classmates:

Forum #1[1]

The current design of my job is more of a mix between idiosyncratic deals and the bottoms-up approach. As an educator you have more room to define and create your own job boundaries in the sense of how to guide the curriculum. Obviously, there are set standards that must be met, but it’s up to my discretion on how to implement designed lessons to better meet the needs of my particular students.

If the opportunity arose to utilize more of an idiosyncratic deal (i-deals) approach to redesign my job, I believe it would be a little difficult to say. At my current job I already have a lot of flexibility in my schedule and numerous opportunities for career development. In the text it discusses i-deals as the process by which employees and managers negotiate tasks completed by employees. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013) Though this is a current aspect within my building to a certain extent. At the beginning of the year teachers within my building sit down with our principal and “negotiate” the goals in which we will meet each year, by providing evidence/data to support these goals. These goals can be anything from academic goals for students, teaching styles, and so on.

As for how to make my job more motivating, is kind of a catch twenty-two. You can always provide incentives and rewards for teachers, but if you begin to provide these you may come across individuals who cheat the system if you will. You don’t want a teacher trying to cheat the system to earn additional rewards/incentives when it comes to children’s education. Our students are our priority and our goal is to educate them to our fullest capability in the limited time we have with them. Though I believe teachers would love to have additional rewards/incentives it becomes challenging to provide such. I believe student rewards/incentives would be more justifiable in an educational setting.

As far as feedback goes, teachers are constantly observed by a variety of people ranging from the principals, instructional coaches, and superintendents. We are given positive feedback almost immediately to help guide our instruction and techniques in our everyday classroom. This is similar to in the classroom as well teachers give immediate feedback to students to help guide instruction and further enhance the learning objectives.

The theories I reviewed in the text were that of Maslow’s, Alderfer’s, and McClelland’s need theories. Maslow proposed that motivation is a function of five basic needs arranged in a prepotent hierarchy. (Maslow,1943) Though Alderfer discussed that there were three core needs to explain behavior—existence, relatedness, and growth. He proposed that more than one need can be activated at a time and frustration of higher-order needs can influence the desire for lower-level needs. (Alderfer, 1972) While on the other hand McClelland proposed that motivation and performance vary according to the strength of an individual’s need for achievement. (McClelland,1993)

Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (Eds.). (2013). Motivating employees through job design. Organizational Behavior (10 ed.). Retrieved from GCU Library

Forum #2[2]

As discussed in our reading this week, many successful people have one thing in common; their lives are centered around goals (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p. 221).  If we do not challenge ourselves to establish short and long-term goals, there is virtually no way to measure the effectiveness of our daily endeavors.  Goals can vary in complexity but in order to accomplish life’s toughest obstacles, difficult goals must be set and the objectives to accomplish these goals must be understood.  Expectancy theory has challenged the notion of difficult goals however, and under the expectancy theory, it is believed that people are more motivated to behave in ways that produce value outcomes (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p. 219).  Under Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, one would argue that the level of motivation and behavior that an individual displays in any given situation is predictable as long as there are multiple ways to accomplish the tasks at hand.  

An example of the Vroom Expectancy Theory that I can relate to in my professional life is when I started with my organization a few years ago and changed the way that we approach water meter replacements.  Prior to my arrival, water meter replacements were solely based on the age of the meter.  Technicians were tasked with replacing 5,000 water meters per year.  After my arrival, we changed to an age and consumption based replacement program.  The age of a water meter does not matter as much as how much water has flowed through the meter.  Meters have internal components that break down over time as a result of excessive use.  When meters start to fail, the fail in favor of the customer since the meter is less accurate.  Since a utility must pay to treat every single gallon of water that it produces, the goal for unaccounted water loss is 10% or less.  Our agency was right at 10% when I arrived and two years later, we are at 7.5% which is considered low for the industry.  The lower the percentage, the higher the revenue for the utility.  As a utility, we challenged the mindset and philosophy towards meter replacements.  We still continue to replace 5,000 water meters per year but the meters that we are now replacing are the meters that were more prone to failure.  By using the traits of the expectancy theory, we were able to accomplish the same annual result of replacing water meters and additionally increased the amount of loss revenue due to old antiquated water meters.  

References

Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (Eds.). (2013). Motivation through goal setting. Organizational Behavior (10 ed., pp. 207-208). Retrieved from GCU Library

[1] Original Forum Question Was:  What is the current design of your job? Assume that the opportunity arose for you to utilize the idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) in redesigning your job. What would you do to make your job inherently more motivating? How would you design the feedback and reward systems in the new job? Be sure to include comments on two content theories and two process theories and highlight the significance of each theory.

[2] Original Forum Question was: Goal setting research suggests that people should be given difficult goals. Provide an explanation that reconciles this research finding with expectancy theory. Use a practical example (preferably work related) to illustrate this.