1.

(a) Critically evaluate the different theories of motivation which is still valid in
the modern post COVID context. Illustrate your answer with examples from
your organisation.

The significance of motivation in organisations and job satisfaction is fundamental for the
achievement of organisational goals and objectives. Motivation is a well recognized concept
in Management and Leadership Practice of Organisations. Motivation among employees in
organisations is a key Manager’s function. Motivation theories help managers to understand
the best approaches to use to motivate Employees.

Motivation should be a priority for organisations to make employees their main asset and
retention. There are three main theory categories, namely content theories, process theories
and contemporary theories (Saif, Nawaz, Jan & Khan, 2012). In fact, these theories include
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene (or two-factor) theory,
Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness and Growth theory, and McClelland’s needs theory. How
motivation comes about and how it leads to satisfaction is explained by process theories;
theories that fall into this category include Porter-Lawler’s model and expectancy theory by
Vroom. The theories of motivation maybe categorized according to their definitions and
purpose but critical analysis reveal that they are all linked, they lead to serving satisfaction in
employees. The application of both content and process theories must be put into practice to
motivate employees successfully.

In the context of COVID-19, understanding travel motivators and factors influencing tourists’
behaviour and intention in choosing a travel destination is beneficial to tourism planning and
marketing (Lam & Hsu, 2006). Wong and Yeh (2009) emphasize perceived health risk as an
important aspect of travel behaviour and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as the
preferred framework to study it. Among different personal risks, health-related risk has been
the most prominent as travellers think twice before deciding to travel, especially in
pandemics (Cochrane, 2008). While the perception of health-related risk may vary among
different tourists, it is considered a key element in the decision-making process when
choosing destinations (Reisinger & Mavondo, 2005).

These theories specify the needs that people have and the way these needs contribute to
motivation and job performance. These needs may be psychological and physiological in
nature.

Protection motivation theory:

Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) was proposed by Rogers (1975) as a cognitive

framework of behaviour for the purpose of predicting and mediating health-related behaviour.
It was developed from fear appeal or awareness of a threat to wellbeing of an individual and
change of attitude. In 1983, the revised model accepts that a person’s decision to undertake
preventive behaviour is due to their motivation to protect themselves from threats. This
decision is based on two aspects: threat appraisal and coping (Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1997;
Janmaimool, 2017).
Higher perception of vulnerability and severity will motivate an individual towards risk
preventive behaviour, while higher perception of rewards despite current risk will display
influenced behaviour (Janmaimool, 2017). On the other hand, coping appraisal includes self-
efficacy (perceived individual capability to exhibit behaviour), response efficacy (perceived
effectiveness of suggested risk-preventative behaviour) and response cost (cost of acting on
the suggested behaviour) (Rogers, 1983; Janmaimool, 2017). The PMT framework has been
utilised in many studies to understand and predict protective behaviour in mostly health-
related threats and in the general decision-making process (Maddux, 1993). In tourism, PMT
has been applied to explore climate change-related threat, carbon reduction behaviour of
tourists (Horng et al., 2014); perceived risk in tourism (Williams & Baláž, 2013); destination
choice (Cismaru, 2009); and tourist intentions, prediction of tourist activity and adapted
response behaviour (Verkoeyen & Nepal, 2019).

Hygiene and physical health have been the most important aspects of health-protective
behaviour, while mental health has become another crucial aspect during the current scenario
of racial discrimination and prejudices stemming from the virus’ origin (Zheng et al., 2020).
It is expected that those who already have high consideration of health, hygiene and mental
health-related factors will perceive the current health risk at a much higher level. A study by
Ivanova et al. (2020) showed that hygiene, disinfection and a reliable health system in a
destination will be significant factors in travellers’ decisions.

The use of both content and process theories must be put into practice to motivate employees
effectively. At Ceridian, there has been established a COVID-19 Response Team, instituted a
work from home policy and moved key conferences to virtual formats, all without disrupting
the normal course of business. In anticipation of how this disease might spread globally,
throughout this period, Ceridian`s CEO has sent regular communications to reassure
employees that they are taking necessary measures to protect their health and well-being and
to communicate changes to the way they work.

Ceridian Business Continuity Plan post COVID context:

With this in mind, Ceridian continues to follow the guidelines of the World Health
Organization and are well positioned to ensure the continued safety and success of its
employees and clients for several reasons, including:

A business continuity team has been setup who has proven experience navigating
emergency events.  This team is fully activated and is supporting our key business operations
across the globe.

 Ceridian workforce and key functions are geographically dispersed across facilities,
ensuring continuous support should there be a concentration of COVID-19 cases in a
particular region. 
 Its sophisticated tools and technologies enable the employees to work remotely,
without disruption, to fully serve the needs of our customers. Moreover, they have a
long-standing work from home policy that makes our current transition seamless.   
 Ceridian is and has been a virtual working culture for many years with virtual teams
committed to delivering successful implementations, customer services, and
operational support.
Work from Home (WFH):

A Gartner (2020) survey of 229 Human Resources (HR) departments showed that
approximately one-half of the companies had more than 80% of their COVID-19 and the
Workplace employees working from home during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic –
and estimated substantial long-term increases for remote work after the pandemic. The need
for millions of workers to WFH in response to COVID-19 has accelerated recent remote
work trends facilitated by the rise of connectivity and communication technologies. Given the
probability that COVID-19 will accelerate trends towards WFH past the immediate impacts
of the pandemic (Gartner, 2020), it is clear that the unpredictable ways in which people work
outside of traditional workplace will warrant growing amounts of attention for both research
and practice.

Virtual Leadership and Management:

The role of leaders to determine organisational outcomes that have a broad impact on
employees at all levels is especially clear in the wake of a crisis (Antonakis & Day, 2017).
With the COVID-19 emergency requiring millions of employees across different hierarchical
levels to work from home, it is encouraging to note that leadership can also work well from a
distance (Antonakis & Atwater, 2002). Prior research shows that successful leaders are those
skilled to make the right decisions and provide reassurance through a balanced mix of
optimism and realism regarding the future. Research on the effectiveness of leaders during
and after the COVID-19 crisis should examine an array of activities, including the degree to
which remote leaders are persuasive if they (a) clearly state their values that will guide
institutional actions; (b) understand and openly discuss the travails and hopes of their
organizations; (c) clearly communicate an ambitious vision of the direction that the unit will
head toward; and, (d) demonstrate confidence that strategic goals can be achieved.

Stress and Burnout:

Employees will need resources to effectively deal with pandemic-specific and generically
uncertain job demands. Organisations may use top-down interventions to take care of
employee health and well-being with a goal to restore balance between job demands and
resources. As a starting point; businesses and their leaders need to learn effective sense
making and provide means that preserve employee well-being and performance (Combe &
Carrington, 2015) by providing (a) immediate tangible resources, such as information (e.g.,
about working from home, prevention of transmission), employee assistance programs
(EAPs), or access to counselling, therapy, and training; and (b) psychological resources such
as feedback, support, and inspiration through regular contact with their employees using
video calls.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

According to Smith & Cronje (1992), the way Maslow’s theory is explained relies on the fact
that people want to increase what they want to achieve in life and their needs are prioritized
according to their importance. Deriving from the hierarchy of needs by Maslow, content
theories of job satisfaction revolve around employees’ needs and the factors that bring them a
reasonable degree of satisfaction (Saif et al., 2012). Based on the basic physical, biological,
social and psychological needs of human beings, Maslow came up with a five-stage theory
that places the needs of the individual in different categories and prioritizes their attainment.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs forms the basis of theories that try to explain job satisfaction. In
the post COVID context, we are more concerned for our safety and for our financial security.
The motivation shifts to these shorter term and more urgent needs, and away from longer
term, aspirational pursuits. Most of us gain little pleasure from internet shopping; working
from home for large amounts of time is depressing; not being able to socialise limits our
ability to satisfy emotional needs, and most of us have lost sight for the moment of longer-
term aspirations. We will become either resigned to these factors, or as is more typical for
humans, we will innovate and adapt. 

Maslow’s Theory – Limitations and Criticism

Though Maslow’s hierarchy makes sense intuitively, little evidence supports its strict
hierarchy. Actually, recent research challenges the order imposed by Maslow’s pyramid.
As an example, in some cultures, social needs are regarded higher than any others.
Further, Maslow’s hierarchy fails to explain the “starving artist” scenario, in which the
need for aesthetic supersedes physical needs. Additionally, little evidence suggests that
people satisfy exclusively one motivating need at a time.

While scientific support fails to reinforce Maslow’s hierarchy, his theory is very popular,
being the introductory motivation theory for many students and managers, worldwide.

“Theory X and Theory Y” of Douglas McGregor :

McGregor, in his book “The Human side of Enterprise” states that people inside the
organization can be managed in two ways. The first is basically negative, which falls under
the category X and the other is basically positive, which falls under the category Y. After
viewing the way in which the manager dealt with employees, McGregor concluded that a
manager’s view of the nature of human beings is based on a certain grouping of assumptions
and that he or she tends to mold his or her behavior towards subordinates according to these
assumptions.
Under the assumptions of theory X :
 Employees inherently do not like work and whenever possible, will attempt to avoid it.
 Because employees dislike work, they have to be forced, coerced or threatened with
punishment to achieve goals.
 Employees avoid responsibilities and do not work fill formal directions are issued.
 Most workers place a greater importance on security over all other factors and display
little ambition.
In contrast under the assumptions of theory Y :
 Physical and mental effort at work is as natural as rest or play.
 People do exercise self-control and self-direction and if they are committed to those
goals.
 Average human beings are willing to take responsibility and exercise imagination,
ingenuity and creativity in solving the problems of the organization.
 That the way the things are organized, the average human being’s brainpower is only
partly used.

On analysis of the assumptions it can be detected that theory X assumes that lower-order
needs dominate individuals and theory Y assumes that higher-order needs dominate
individuals. An organization that is run on Theory X lines tends to be authoritarian in nature,
the word “authoritarian” suggests such ideas as the “power to enforce obedience” and the
“right to command.” In contrast; Theory Y organizations can be described as “participative”,
where the aims of the organization and of the individuals in it are integrated; individuals can
achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts towards the success of the organization.
However, this theory has been criticised widely for generalization of work and human
behavior.
 Comparison & Contrast of Management Theorists
Management Douglas McGregor William Ouchi
Concept (Theory X & Y) (Theory Z)
Tends to categorise people as one type or
another: either being unwilling or
unmotivated to work, or being self
Believes that people are innately self
motivated towards work. Threats and
motivated to not only do their work, but
Motivation disciplinary action are thought to be used
also are loyal towards the company, and
more effectively in this situation, although
want to make the company succeed.
monetary rewards can also be a prime
motivator to make Theory X workers
produce more.
Theory Z managers would have to have a
Theory X leaders would be more
great deal of trust that their workers
authoritarian, while Theory Y leaders
could make sound decisions. Therefore,
Leadership would be more participative. But in both
this type of leader is more likely to act as
cases it seems that the managers would still
"coach", and let the workers make most
retain a great deal of control.
of the decisions.
The manager's ability to exercise power
As mentioned above, McGregor's
and authority comes from the worker's
managers, in both cases, would seem to
trusting management to take care of
keep most of the power and authority. In
Power & Authority them, and allow them to do their jobs.
the case of Theory Y, the manager would
The workers have a great deal of input
take suggestions from workers, but would
and weight in the decision making
keep the power to implement the decision.
process.
This type of manager might be more likely
Conflict in the Theory Z arena would
to exercise a great deal of "Power" based
involve a great deal of discussion,
conflict resolution style, especially with the
collaboration, and negotiation. The
Conflict Theory X workers. Theory Y workers
workers would be the ones solving the
might be given the opportunity to exert
conflicts, while the managers would play
"Negotiating" strategies to solve their own
more of a "third party arbitrator" role.
differences.
Theory Z emphasises more frequent
Performance Appraisals occur on a regular basis.
performance appraisals, but slower
Appraisals Promotions also occur on a regular basis.
promotions.

Conclusion:

Dealing with COVID-19 in the post-digital era makes it different from previous pandemics.
While travellers’ protective behaviour can affect their perception of the health-related risk of
this ongoing pandemic, the mass media, parasocial interactions on social media and
destination websites can also influence and manipulate future travel intentions and behaviour.

If hygiene factors (factors outside the job itself, such as working conditions, salary and
incentive pay) are inadequate, employees become dissatisfied. Managers enrich worker’s jobs
so that their jobs become more challenging and also by providing feedback and recognition
(Dessler, Barkhuizen, Bezuidenhout, Braine and Plessis, 2011, p433). According to Perry
and Hondeghem (1999), the individuals desire to perform, and provide services to customers;
with the consent to do well are enough factors to motivate. Performance at work is related to
the employees pay of which the employee may not have control of that reward as it is
external.

There are also other factors that are external such as promotion at work, security of the job,
salary increment that may give meaning to employees’ motivation. Therefore, for firms to
continue existing and retaining its workforce, they must keep on working on strategies that
can help in motivating its employees. Motivated employees have a sense of belonging and
loyalty to the organization and always work hard to be associated with the results of their
labour. Motivation has effect on employees as individuals to achieve and as well as ability to
be innovative because they believe in themselves which will benefit the company to meet its
objectives (Yang Jie, 2010). Therefore, motivation’s concept is to provide employees with
guarantee of job security, nice working condition, loyalty and a sense of belonging to the
enterprise, as well as the workforce given some challenges of motivation. All employees
should understand the company’s vision and goals and work together towards those.

Summary of Implications, Issues for Future Research, and Insights for Action regarding
COVID-19 and the Workplace:
 Table 1: Summary of Implications, Issues for Future Research, and Insights for Action
regarding COVID-19 and the Workplace by Kevin M. Kniffin; Harvard Business School