Why study MOTIVATION?

People hire other people to work for them. From one or two up to hundreds of thousands. My Buy-In Scale posits a seven level response to being asked to do something.

1. Passion. What you ask is the #1 thing in my life. I may even blow myself up to do as you ask.
2. Engagement. I WANT to do what you ask me to do.
3. Agreement. I will do what you ask.
4. Compliance. I say I will do what you want and then I look for ways to cut corners or play just within the guidelines. I might go nine miles over the speed limit just to avoid arrest.
5. Apathy. I don’t care about what you ask me to do. Meh.
6. Passive Resistance. I will go slow, lose the paperwork, drag my feet.
7. Active Resistance. I will fight you on this. Organize a strike or sabotage the company.

Notice that this scale is essentially an ENERGY SCALE from high positive to high negative. If a manager threatens bodily harm, how will the person respond? If a person offers more money, how will the Other respond? etc.

I look at human behavior in three levels: Visible Behavior that you can capture on film, Conscious Thought which we may or may not reveal at Level One, and semi-conscious VABEs.

Each level involves different influence techniques:

1. Visible Behavior: rewards and punishments. Skinnerian theory.
2. Conscious Thought: science, logic, data, evidence. Cognitive theory
3. VABEs: clarity of purpose, vision, strategy. Symbols, flags, music, uniforms, religion, etc.

Scholars have been appropriately interested in “MOTIVATION” because of these challenges. Herzberg, Kohn (Punished by Rewards), Maslow, McClelland, Vroom, Skinner, and many others have studied motivation.

The basic question is “why are some people doing things and others are not?”  What makes one person get up in the morning and do things while another never seems to "apply" themselves?  Why are some people good workers and others are not?  

Here are two of hundreds of articles that one might find helpful.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED532670.pdf

https://www.knowledgehut.com/tutorials/project-management/motivation-theories