MGMT 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Santa Barbara City College, Equity Theory, Expectancy Theory
Document Summary
Whereas need-based perspectives simply try to understand employee needs, process perspectives go further and try to understand why employees have different needs, what behaviours they select to satisfy them and how they decide if their choices were successful. Equity theory focuses on employee perceptions as to how fairly they think they are being treated compared with others. Developed by psychologist j. stacey adams, equity theory is based on the idea that employees are motivated to see fairness in the rewards they expect from task performance. When employees compare this, they make a judgement about fairness. Either they perceive fairness in equity or don"t and in inequity so they feel resentful and act to change the inequity. Thus fairness is important to demotivate under-rewarded employees to respond in negative ways and to retain employees. Expectancy theory suggests that people are motivated by (1) how much they want something and (2) how likely they think they are to get it.
