Equity Theory Of Employee Motivation

2.2.5. EQUITY THEORY

Equity theory suggests that employee’ perceptions of a working situation in terms of how fairly they are treated compared with others influence their levels of motivation; motivation is a consequence of perceived inequity (Adams, 1965). According to equity theory, employees make comparisons. Employees determine their own work outcomes versus the effort or inputs required to achieve the outcomes, and compare these with outcomes and efforts of other employees. If they recognize that their compensation is equal to what others receive for similar inputs, they will believe that their treatment is fair and equitable. Education, experience, effort, ability etc. are the inputs to the job by the employees. Outcomes that employees

This schedule can be very helpful in the early stages of learning new types of behavior, because every desired behavior attempt by the employee has a pleasurable consequence for him/her. However, in daily operation of organizations, it may be difficult to reinforce every correct behavior. With a partial reinforcement schedule, the reinforcement is administered only after some occurrences of the correct behavior. Partial reinforcement schedules are more effective for maintaining behavior over extended time periods. It is done through fixed-interval schedule, fixed-ratio schedule, variable-interval schedule and variable-ratio schedule. The fixed-interval schedule rewards employees at specified time intervals. For example, if an employee demonstrates the correct behavior each day, reinforcement may occur every week such as a monthly gift certificate for a full month of on time attendance. With a fixed-ratio schedule, reinforcement occurs after a specified number of desired behaviors. For example, a sales representative may be awarded with a ticket to a sports or social event for every 20 pieces of products he/she sold. In a variable-interval schedule, reinforcement is managed at random times that cannot be predicted by the employee. An example would be a random inspection by the manufacturing supervisor of the production floor, at which time he or she praises employees on their hard working. The variable-ratio schedule is grounded on a random number of instances of the desired behavior, rather than on variable time periods. Reinforcement may occur after variable amounts of output. To conclude, reinforcement theory has important implications for the motivation of employees. It demonstrates that behaviors’ of employees that are positively reinforced are likely to be repeated and negatively