2. Literature Review This Chapter Summarises And Critically Appraises The

2. Literature Review
This chapter summarises and critically appraises the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ideas expressed in the literature associated with the subject area of motivation in work place. Through investigation of various texts on motivation and human behaviour at work place, the author of this report is of the view that the available literature is very diverse and needs careful review to achieve full understanding behind the various associated concepts.
The first section of this chapter provides a general overview and discussion on motivation, providing a background to the study and building the foundation of the research. The following section provides a deeper insight into environmental and cultural influences on motivation.
2.1 Motivation
2.1.1 Motivation Defined
"Motivation" comes from the Latin term, meaning "to move"(Smith, 1999). Many social scientists suggest that motivation is the psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction and persistence of behaviour (Atkinson, 1964). Vroom (1964) defined motivation as an internal force, based on an individual's conscious and unconscious requirement which drives people to achieve.
Although motivation is defined from different perspectives, there are some common characteristics in almost all and specifically the above mentioned definitions. Firstly, motivation is traditionally considered as an individual phenomenon. Each individual is unique, which means that different people have different needs, expectations, values, attitudes, reinforcement histories and goals. Secondly, motivation is usually described as intentional, i.e. motivation is supposedly under the employee's own control. Any changes in behaviour that are seen as influenced by motivation are typically viewed as actions that the individual has chosen to engage in. Thirdly, motivation is multifaceted. The two factors of greatest importance have been the arousal and direction of behaviour. Finally, the purpose of motivational theories is to predict behavior. Motivation is concerned with action and the internal and external forces that influence one's choice of action. Motivation is not the behaviour itself, and it is not performance (Mitchell, 1987). In fact, motivation is a need-satisfying process, which reveals when one's needs are satisfied or motivated by some factors (motivators) due to which one will exert high levels of effort towards organisational goals (Robbins, 1993).
2.1.2 Traditional Motivational approaches
Traditionally, work motivation theories have been categorized as 'content' and 'process' theories (Campbell and Pritchard, 1976). Content theories (e.g. Herzberg, 1968; Maslow, 1954) on the one hand, explain work behavior as the employee's attempt to satisfy some needs. They explain employee behavior as being initiated and sustained by a deprived need, and stopped when the need is satisfied.