Sweet Rewards: An Exercise to Demonstrate Process Theories of Motivation

Abstract

Motivation is a fundamental component in management and organizational behavior courses. At the same time, it can be a complicated topic for teaching and learning due to the number of popular models and theories. The activity described here is a simple and fast way to illustrate the components of two of the most important and practical motivation theories—Equity Theory and Expectancy Theory. The impact of the activity will be realized the moment a disproportional reward is made. We outline implementation steps and provide an extensive list of questions to check students’ understanding of motivation theories. We also provide additional resources (i.e., media suggestions, discussion slides) to enhance classroom presentations. This exercise is designed primarily for management and organizational behavior courses. It can be used effectively with a variety of audiences (i.e., undergraduate, graduate, executive).

An experiential exercise for teaching theories of work motivation: using a game to teach equity and expectancy theories

“…While there are numerous theories of work motivation (Latham & Pinder, 2005), like others, we have found focusing on too many of these theories during one class overwhelms students and causes them to question academics' understanding of the topic (Anderson, 2007;Holbrook & Chappell, 2019). However, focusing on too few theories also limits students' education and understanding of why multiple theories of motivation exist.…”

“…Therefore, our exercise focuses on two basic theories of work motivation -Vroom's Expectancy Theory and Adams' Equity Theory. We chose to focus on these two theories because they are among the most influential theories of work motivation (Anderson, 2007;Holbrook & Chappell, 2019;Miner, 2003) and among the most frequently included in management and organizational behavior courses and textbooks (Miner, 2003;Miner, 2005).…”

Innovative Teaching Methods for Blended Learning Under New Education Policy, 2020: A Future Perspective

“…However, students often find it difficult to understand the Expectancy theory of Motivation during a lecture. Expectancy Theory is composed of multiple concepts which are confusing for students (Holbrook & Chappell, 2018). Even if students understand the concepts and relationships in Expectancy Theory, they are often unable to understand its application in their world (Grimes, 1975).…”

Employee Turnover in the Fast Food Restaurants: Investigating the Role of Human Resource Management Practices

“…Prouska et al (2016) emphasized that reward system includes all forms of financial and non-financial, direct and indirect, intrinsic and extrinsic an employee gets as part of an employment relationship. Every employee is willing to have some level of rewards after accomplishing a certain task (Holbrook & Chappell, 2019).…”