Organisasi psychology_An Introduction with Attitude_Christine E Doyle

Chapter 3
Pages 77

This poem has some personal resonance for me because when I was an undergraduate at Hull University, larkin was employed as its chief librarian. His lanky and rather gloomy figure was a familiar sight and I often wondered whether his celebrated denunciation of work and our mean spirited acceptance of its deadening hand extended to his role as custodian of our most important learning resource. I, who had come through adolescence via the nascent revival of feminism, saw work, or rather a career. As liberation. Being confined to the home and financial dependence was the slavery. Be that as it may, this is a nice illustration of the vast differences which can exist in the meaning of work for individuals and the fact that our attitudes to it are complex indeed.
It is also hints at another issues-work can mean different things to us at different points in our lives. Perhaps the differences between my views and those of Larkin are not as diametrically opposed as they ance were.
Thus B=V x E where B is motivated behavior, V is valence (how much we value the rewards on offer) and E is expectancy (how confident we are that we will actually get these valued rewards) It follows, therefore that if we don’t value the rewards or think it is unlikely we will get them anyway, we won’t be motivated to try very hard to get them. The questionnaires has been revised to look at student motivation so if your main life activity at present is studying for a degree, you can complete it as it stands. It would also be instructive to adjust the wording of the questions in your mind to cover your current paid employmeny or, if you don’t currently have a job, what you hope for in your future career. Box 3.1 provide guielines for interpreting your responses.
Here are some things that could happen to people who do their work especially well. How likely is it that each of these things would happen to you if you performed your work as a student especially well?

Question 1

1. You will get a tangible reward e.g., prize or award
2. You will feel better about yourself as a person
3. you will have an opportunity to develop your skills and abilities
4. You will have better job security in the future
5. you will be given chances to learn new things
6. you will get a better job n the future
7. you will get a feeling that you have accomplished something worthwhile
8. you will be given more freedom to pursue your own interests
9. you will be respected by the other students
10. your tutors will praise you
11. other students will be friendly with you.

Scale
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Not at all likely extremely likely



Question 2
Different people want different things from their work. Here is a list of things a person could have as part of his or her work. How important is each of the following to you with respect to your work as a student?

1. tangible rewards you may get
2. the chance you have to do something that makes you feel good about yourself
3. the opportunity to develop your skills and abilities
4. the amount of future job security you will have
5. the chances you have to learn new things
6. your future chances for getting a better job
7. the chances you have to accomplish something worthwhile
8. the amount of freedom you have for doing your work
9. the respect you receive from the other student
10. the praise you get from your tutors
11. the friendliness of the other students


Scale
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Not at all likely extremely likely





MOTIVATION
CONCEPTUALIZING MOTIVATION AT WORK

Essentially, motivation is concerned with effort at work. The motivated employee is assumed to work harder, longer and to a higer standard than the less motivated. There are four basics issues
1. arousal of motivation_ how to induce effort in the first place
2. direction_how to get effort directed at organizational goals
3. magnitude_how to get the maximum effort
4. maintenance_how to maintain a high level of effort. In a humorous (but very politically incorrect_ article, Herzberg (1968) described the various methods used to try to achieve all this, albeit in his view, with little success. The simplest method of getting someone to move, he says is to kick him in the pants_give him (sic) what might be called KITA. Negative physical KITA is illegal but has proved reasonably effective in the past_one think of Roman galley slaves and the like.

Page 118
Psychological health and well being
Physical health/ ill health is the result of complex processes _genetic predisposition, lifestyles, psychological well being and a host of other factors seem to be implicated as well as physical health and well being could be even more complex and involves at least three different levels of functioning
1. at the most serious level there is severe mental disturbarce such as clinical depression and post traumatic stress disorder (see Chapter 9 for more information on this)
2. At the next level there is general psychological well being which concerns feelings about oneself in relation to one’s world and can be context specific (e.g job related) or concept free (satisfaction with life in general).
3. 3.At another level we have people’s moods or affective states which can be relatively permanent orientations(feeling generally miserable at work) or relatively transient (reacting badly to the latest hassle)

Warr (1996a, 1998) contends that psychological well being is not a unitary concept but has three principal dimensions. These are displeasure to pleasure, anxiety to comfort and depression to enthusiasm. Thus, people may experience their works as difficult and effortful (high displeasure) and may suffer performance anxiety (highly anxiety) but still feel enthusiastic about their work, perhaps because it is seem as meaningful, worthwhileand bound up with the expression of their self concept. In fact, Warr cites evidence that higher level jobs are indeed associated with more job related anxiety but less job related depression. However such jobs could be experienced as impossibly demanding and exhausting. Job characteristics also impact more on some dimensions of well being than others Thus job characteristics also impact more on some dimensions of well being than others. Thus job with high work demands affect the anxiety comfort dimension more than the depression