In 1964, Canadian professor of psychology Victor Vroom established the Expectancy Theory. In this theory, he considered people’s motivation and decided it depends on three factors: Expectancy, instrumentality and valence. Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg also worked on the relation between people’s needs and the efforts they make. Vroom distinguishes between the effort people put in, their performance and the final result. His theory mainly relates to motivation within a work environment. When employees can make varieties in their work, Victor Vroom claims that they will mostly choose that what motivates them the most.
Expectancy theory suggests an individual will perform or act in a definite way because they are motivated to select a explicit behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be. Expectancy theory is about the mental processes about choice, or choosing. It explains the procedures that an individual feels to make choices.
Expectancy Theory
Expectancy Theory has three modules
- Expectancy
- Instrumentality
- Valence
1. Expectancy
This is around what employees suppose from their own efforts and the relation to good performance. Part of this expectation is the level of difficulty of the employee’s experiences. Expectancy is the certainty that amplified effort will lead to increased performance i.e. if I work harder than this will be healthier. Expectancy is the confidence that one's effort (E) will result in achievement of chosen act (P) goals. Usually built on, an individual's past experience, self-confidence (Self-efficacy) and the perceived difficulty of the performance standard or goal.
1.1 Self-efficacy
The person's confidence about their capacity to successfully perform a specific behavior. The individual will measure whether they have the required skills or knowledge desired to achieve their goals.
1.2 Goal difficulty
when goals are set too high or routine expectations that are made too difficult. These will most likely results to low expectancy. This happens when the individual believes that their chosen results are unattainable.
1.3 Perceived control
Individuals must believe that they have some extent of control over the expected result. When individuals observe that the outcome is beyond their ability to influence, expectancy, and thus motivation, is low.
2. Instrumentality
Every employee is a part in the machine and a device that adds to the business results. From that viewpoint, instrumentality isn’t difficult to grasp. It’s about the employee’s performance being good sufficient to achieve the preferred result. Instrumentality is the confidence that if you execute well that a valued outcome will be received. The point to which, a first level outcome will lead to the second level outcome. Instrumental outcomes effort is commissions. With commissions concert is directly connected with outcome .If efficiency is high and many goods are sold the more money the person will make.
Causes related with the individual's instrumentality for results are trust, control and policies:
- Believing the people who will choose who gets what result, based on the performance,
- Control of how the decision is made, of who gets what outcome,
- Policies accepting, of correlation between performance and outcomes.
3. Valence
The concluding result that employees attain is valued differently by each individual. This value is grounded on their own basic needs. As such, it’s a good idea for an organization to find out what an individual employee prefer and what his personal needs are. One might prefer money, while another values more days off. Valence is the status that the individual places upon the expected outcome. For the valence to be positive, the person must prefer attaining the outcome to not attaining it.
The three elements are vital behind choosing one element over another because they are obviously defined:
- E>P expectancy: our assessment of the probability that our efforts will lead to the required performance level.
- P>O expectancy: our assessment of the probability that our successful performance will lead to certain outcomes.
November 13, 2018