Ethical Security Solutions

Tuesday 28 August 2018

Motivation, satisfaction and lifelong learning

                  
Copyright ESIS 2018


Shamuel Kohen

INTRODUCTION

 The drive to motivate others and the need to be motivated by one’s own desire is a human being’s constant challenge. From being motivated to find a lifelong partner to give and receive love and companionship, all stem from long-term goals, and thus the person is motivated to seek out a partner in the hope of a desired and fulfilling future.

Without hope, we can see the human spirit crumble in his inability to envision a future filled with happiness and success and so they may not be motivated to push on. Lack of hope is the primary killer of any motivating “psychological techniques” one tries to employ upon himself.

Knowing that motivation is driven by a degree of hope, an organizational body of people or even an individual can be driven to take upon themselves the motivating process for lifelong learning and change. The hope of a positive and enjoyable outcome in the lifelong learning process and the journey is a great foreseeable intrinsic or even extrinsic reward.

Motivation can also be based on the ego, for example, to gain a sense of self-respect, self-confidence, as well as public recognition to boost self-esteem or ego. In turn, motivation has many factors that contribute to our gaining our needs and wants in the context of becoming a whole person.

Motivation can be viewed as an internal self-preservation mechanism that keeps the individual happy and fulfilled. Without this mechanism of self-determination (motivation) a human being can die away from the lack of hope, which destroys an individual’s motivating factor to act and follow through. This would be like giving up and dying because going on would be pointless and futile. In a work environment, motivation can be described as the individual forces that create the direction, level, and continuation of one’s effort used at work (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2002).

In the study of motivation and motivating factors in context to learning or lifelong learning, a person can take up the following subject and theories, for example, Maslow’s Theory of Need Hierarchy, Motivation and Hygiene Two Factor Theory, The Theory X and Theory Y, ERG Theory, Vroom’s Theory of Motivation (Performance Satisfaction) and Porter — Lawler Theory. These theories should and can be used as a foundation for a person to continue on this subject and therefore gain a broader understanding of the motivating factors in the context of motivation and learning.

I will use these theories and explain them more in this essay in relation to motivation in either work or lifelong learning environment. Through them, I will attempt to express and illustrate the concepts as well as ideas of motivation, and motivating factors in an organization when it comes to lifelong learning.

 PSYCHOLOGY AND MOTIVATING FACTORS OF LEARNING 

Motivating factors to learning in the context of a person’s work depend on cultural background, geographic background, and gender. And in some cases financial reasons the aspect of motivation we will not discuss in this writing.

According to Jackson, Gardner, and Sullivan (1992), there is continually more evidence that there is a major difference in how women and men make judgments on what is valuable to them. Even though some women who are starting their careers have better credentials for their first jobs, such as better verbal skills or higher GPAs. On average, men think that they bring better inputs to their jobs even if their credentials aren’t as good as the women’s.  Even in female-dominated fields, men have higher performance expectations than women. Women do value pay and promotions just as much as men do, but at the same time, they give more value to non-financial outcomes, such as interpersonal relationships.  There is no surprise then that since women think they can bring less value into the company and count more outputs as compensations of a job, women think that lower pay is more acceptable than what their male counterparts think (Jackson, Gardner & Sullivan, 1992).

Here we see some motivational factors in men’s versus women’s career income and job performance satisfaction as well as what motivates them. We can see that women and men have different outlooks when it comes to career needs and wants, we also see that the statement shows that women enter the workforce with a bit higher education than their male counterpart in their first jobs.

With all that said, we will keep the topic of the differences between men and women to this limit. I wanted to point this difference out to high light this issue if this question comes to the reader’s mind. 

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