26 chapter two literature review 21 introduction

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Chapter Two: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
Together with the attitude, personality and learning, motivation is a vital part
of understanding employee behavior. The concept of motivation contains
three important elements which are needs, drives and incentives. Motivation
is a psychological feature that gives to a person a level of commitment. It
introduces the intention of attaining the objective, derives by the
behavior.When we refer to an employee being motivated, it means that the
employee can find a cause and strength to complete the task that was given
to him, even if the task was challenging without the need for others to
encourage them, also without giving up. However, motivation by itself can't
complete the task that was given alone, having the ability and the required
skills with knowledge is also an important elements to complete the required
task.
The study will highlight the three independent variables which influences the motivation in the
banking industry as discussed earlier in chapter one. This chapter will review the literature on the
variables mentioned in this study.
2.2 Underpinning Theory
There are many theories that underpins the problem of motivation in
workplace. Hertzberg's motivation theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs
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theory, Vroom's theory of expectancy. Each theory has its own views on
understanding the psychological need of human being and response to
particular questions pertaining to motivation, engagement or individual
needs.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory is the most popular theory of
Motivation. According to Maslow(1943), he discussed five levels of employee
needs: physiological, safety and security, social, esteem or ego and self-
actualization. According to this theory, people have many needs which
motivate them to work, that those needs are arranged in a hierarchical
manner in such a way that lower level needs (physiological and safety) had
to be satisfied before the next higher level social need would motivate
employees to work hard and increase productivity.Maslow thought that
personal needs can be arranged in a hierarchicalorder; in essence, once one
of these needs has been satisfied, it will temporally lose its effect as a
motivator and the person will focus on satisfying the next higher need which
has been activated (Hilgert and Leonard, 1995; Luthans, 1995).The theory is
based on the assumption that a need affects a person’s activities until
he/shesatisfies it (Steers et al., 1996), thus the main motivator of people is
their desire to satisfy their needs.Self-actualization of employees cannot be
attained by the organization unless there are clear objectives that validate
what the individuals look for. Such ideas are in agreement to ERG theory,
which refers to existence, relatedness, and growth, demonstrating another
need-based perspective and can be perceived as an extended and revised
version of Maslow’s theory (Griffin & Moorhead, 2013, p. 95)
According to Herzberg's theory, the research shows that the absence of