Motivation in Change (Herzberg, Pink, Reinforcement)

A change asks people to stop doing something familiar and start doing something new, usually with extra effort at first. Motivation explains why some people make that effort and keep it up.

Two broad sources are usually distinguished:

• Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the task: pay, recognition, penalties, rules.
• Intrinsic motivation comes from the task itself: interest, a sense of progress, meaning.

The three theories in this entry look at the question from different angles. Reinforcement theory looks at the consequences that follow a behavior. Herzberg looks at what causes satisfaction and dissatisfaction at work. Pink looks at when external rewards help and when they harm intrinsic motivation.

Motivation in change is therefore not one lever but a design question: which consequences, conditions and kinds of work will sustain the new behavior.

B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning holds that behavior is shaped by its consequences. Behavior followed by a desirable consequence becomes more likely; behavior followed by an undesirable one becomes less likely.

The common confusion is between negative reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement, positive or negative, always increases a behavior.

At Larchfield Logistics, staff are moving to a new expense app. Recognizing teams whose claims all go through the app is positive reinforcement. Dropping the second approval step for app claims is negative reinforcement. Rejecting paper claims after the switch-over date is punishment.

Reinforcement theory therefore reminds change managers that what happens after people try the new way matters as much as what they are told before.

Frederick Herzberg and his colleagues interviewed engineers and accountants about times they felt especially good or bad about their jobs, and published the results in 1959. They concluded that satisfaction and dissatisfaction have different causes.

• Hygiene factors such as pay, working conditions, company policy, supervision and job security cause dissatisfaction when they are poor. Improving them removes dissatisfaction but does not, on its own, motivate.
• Motivators such as achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility and advancement create satisfaction and lasting motivation.

For change, this has two consequences. A change that worsens hygiene factors, such as cramped new offices or unclear pay rules, breeds resentment that no vision statement will fix. And improving pay or conditions alone will not build commitment to the new way of working.

Herzberg's two-factor theory therefore tells change managers to protect hygiene factors and to build motivators into the new roles.

In Drive (2009), Daniel Pink argues that for most knowledge work people are motivated by three intrinsic drivers:

• Autonomy: directing their own work, time, methods or team.
• Mastery: getting better at something that matters.
• Purpose: serving something larger than themselves.

Pink accepts that "if–then" rewards (do this and you will get that) can work for simple, routine tasks with clear rules. He argues that on tasks that need creativity and judgment they tend to backfire: they narrow attention and crowd out intrinsic motivation. He draws on research by Edward Deci, Richard Ryan and others on how external rewards affect intrinsic motivation.

For change, the message is to be careful with adoption bonuses for complex work, and to invest instead in choice over how to adopt, time to build skill, and a clear explanation of why the change matters.

Pink's Drive therefore makes the choice of incentives a design decision, not a default.

Each theory is useful, and each has known weaknesses.

• Reinforcement theory explains behavior well but says little about beliefs and meaning. Used alone, it can produce compliance that stops when the reinforcement stops.
• Herzberg's theory has been criticized for its method: people tend to credit good experiences to themselves and blame bad ones on their environment, which may have produced the two-factor split. Studies using other methods often failed to reproduce it (House & Wigdor, 1967).
• Pink's Drive is a popular synthesis rather than original research, and extends laboratory findings to workplaces. The effect of rewards on intrinsic motivation has been debated in the research literature, although a meta-analysis by Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) found that expected, task-contingent rewards tended to reduce it.

Motivation in change is therefore best approached with several theories at once, tested against what actually sustains adoption.