Process-based perspectives are concerned with how motivation occurs. Rather than attempting to identify specific motivational stimuli, process perspectives focus on why people choose certain behavioral options to satisfy their needs and how they evaluate their satisfaction.
The equity theory of motivation is based on the relatively simple premise that people in organizations want to be treated fairly. The theory defines equity as the belief that we are being treated fairly in relation to others and inequity as the belief that we are being treated unfairly compared with others.
Equity theory is just one of several theoretical formulations derived from social comparison processes. Social comparisons involve evaluating our own situation in terms of others’ situations. In this course, we focus mainly on equity theory because it is the most highly developed of the social comparison approaches and the one that applies most directly to the work motivation of people in organizations.
People form equity perceptions by comparing their situation with that of someone else’s. If they perceive equity, they are motivated to maintain the current situation. If they perceive inequity, they are motivated to use one or more of the strategies shown here to reduce the inequity.
7 ноя 2018
