Psychology and Work: Management Coursework

Psychology and Work
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Institutional Affiliation
Psychology and Work
Introduction
Positive psychological principles have increasingly become prevalent in today's workplace, but this area lacks a comprehensive, evidence-based overview of this growing trend (Mills et al., 2013). While workers may want to be more productive at work, employees tend to lack the motivation to get things done as anticipated. For decades, social scientists have always studied motivation to find out factors that motivate workers' behaviors. There are dozens of psychological theories of motivation at the workplace, which have been postulated for years. Examples of these theories include Hertzberg's two-factor theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Hawthorne effect, expectancy theory, and three-dimensional theory of attribution. Abi Green is the Managing Director of Company & Co. with an ambitious plan of expanding. The firm intends to recruit more employees in every department but will want to review human resources' best practices. Having completed her Masters in Business Administration, Green wants to apply evidence-based management and draw from different psychological theories about how organizations, teams, and individuals can be more productive. Green is ambitious in promoting a positive workplace culture where employees are engaged and motivated. This business report discusses some of the psychological theories, models, and approaches that will be relevant to Company & Co. With both home-based and remote workers, as well as noting some of the recommendations based on work-related psychology.
Workers in an organization face a myriad of challenges, including the rise in unemployment, downward spiraling of an economy, lack of access to quality and affordable healthcare, a decrease in consumer confidence, financial crisis, and anxieties about job losses in the future. Like Green's former company, many organizations witness workers with high levels of stress-related absence and serious workplace conflicts. These stressors have an impact on the lives of workers, and positive psychological theories play a significant role in helping people in the workplace to not only effectively cope with the challenges but also open their minds and hearts to progress with resilience, confidence, hope, determination, and vision for a better future (Froman, 2009). According to Mills et al. (2013), positive psychology is relevant in the workplace as it plays a role in various constructs, including appreciative inquiry, pliability, appreciation, enablement, work engagement, psychological capital, organizational and supervisor support, co-worker relations, constructive teamwork, and positive leadership. For many years, researchers have extensively addressed the issue of employees' productivity with the emergence of positive psychology endearing to explain the impact of an individual's positive traits on workers and organizations' performance and productivity (Kour et al., 2019). Drawing on psychological knowledge, theories, concepts, models, and approaches, Abi Green can promote a positive workplace culture with a motivated and engaged workforce through employee training and career development.
In the 1950s, Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist, made major milestones in determining the determinants of motivation in the workplace. Based on the results of 200 participants who were accountants and engineers, Herzberg extrapolated two categories of attitudinal factors classified as motivator and hygiene factors (Yusoff, Kian, & Idris, 2013). The former encapsulates factors that lead to facilitate satisfaction and motivation among employees. These factors include a sense of achievement, responsibility, gratitude, chances for personal development, advancement, or progress. On the other hand, hygiene factors are a source of dissatisfaction or lack of motivation among the employees. Some of the related factors are job security, relationships, work environment, company policy, and wages (Bexheti, L., & Bexheti, A., 2016). From the investigative study, the researcher noted that these factors worked independently of each other, and thus, organizations needed to perceive this aspect with the gravity it deserved. This position implies that Abi Green has to establish clarity over articulating these factors in the company. Green has to improve both factors to attain the happiest and most productive workforce from an overall viewpoint. In the quest to ensure that motivation is top-notch, the senior management has to facilitate appreciation and support. Involving the workforce in the company's daily operations enables the acquisition of important feedback, and retrospectively, the respective senior manager can provide them with appropriate methods in which they can grow and progress. It is ordinary for an organization to experience dissatisfaction among its employees, although this comes at a high cost where productivity is highly affected (Latif et al., 2013). To this end, there lies the need to guarantee the right treatment of all employees whereby they are exposed to the best working conditions, and also, the pay is an accurate reflection of their commitment and service to the firm. Along these lines, the management bears the task of ensuring fruitful, supportive, and fulfilling relationships. Each person is different from the other, and thus, the motivational factor that may work for one may differ for the other. This element must be considered to ensure everyone attains the utmost sense of belonging to the company.
Herzberg's work is phenomenal in that it digresses the broad motivational element into two categories. However, scholars and academicians cannot disregard Maslow's contribution to this discourse. Abraham Maslow is popular for formulating human beings' hierarchy of needs. Maslow developed this motivational theory depicting human needs in a hierarchical order consisting of five-tier levels within a pyramid (Aruma & Hanachor, 2017). Ordinarily, people will progress from the bottom to the top, whereby they ultimately attain self-actualization.
Nevertheless, physiological needs rank as the first and most fundamental needs considering that they are essential for human survival. These include clothing, shelter, water, food, sex, and sleep. The second level consists of security or safety needs meaning that people will ensure that they are secure for dangerous physical and social situations. In essence, they pursue health and wellbeing as well as personal and financial security. The third level is love, and belonging needs, whereby people will crave to be part of a social group, may it be from a friendship, peer, or family group. Onwards, there are esteem and prestige needs; others would refer to them as ego needs. In this regard, people acclimate to the need for strong confidence, admiration, reputation, recognition, status, respect, and self-worth. Having attained all these levels, the final step in the pyramid's apex is the self-actualization stage. Here, the...