FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

Work and Motivation

1. Work and responsibility

How would you guys feel if I gave all this up and went on Social Security?
1a Vocabulary
Which words do the following sentences define?
1 To inspire, to induce, to give a reason or incentive to someone to do something.
A motivate
B promote
C provoke
2 A person employed by someone else, working for money.
A earner
B employee
C employer
3 Relations between employers and employees, managers and workers, management and
unions.
A human relations B labour relations
C labour unions
4 Having control of something as part of your job.
A command
B power
C responsibility
5 Money paid (per hour or day or week) to manual workers.
A earnings
B salary
C wages
6 A fixed regular payment made by employers, usually monthly, for professional or office
work.
A earnings
B salary
C wages
7 Advantages that come with a job, apart from wages or salary.
A benefits
B profits
C supplements
8 To be raised to a higher rank or better job.
A motivation
B promotion
C sales promotion
9 Knowing that there is little risk of losing one's job.
A bureaucracy
B job safety
C job security
10 Having particular abilities, acquired by training.
A educated
B skilled
C talented
1

FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

1b Discussion

Which of the following statements seem to you to be generally true?

1 People dislike work and avoid it if they can.
2 Work is necessary to people's psychological well-being.
3 People avoid responsibility and would rather be told what to do.
4 People are motivated mainly by money.
5 Most people are far more creative and ingenious than their employers realize.
6 People are motivated by anxiety about their security.
7 People want to be interested in their work and, given the right conditions, they will enjoy it.
8 Under the right conditions, most people will accept responsibility and want to realize their
own potential.
1c Reading
You may have noticed that the statements above can be separated into two groups reflecting
two very different ways in which employers can treat their employees.
These two approaches were summarized by a well-known American theorist of the
psychology of work, Douglas McGregor, who named them Theory X and Theory Y. Read the
following text and then classify the statements above according to which theory they support.
Statement
Theory

FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

THEORY X AND THEORY Y

In The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor outlined two opposing theories
of work and motivation. What he calls Theory X is the traditional approach to workers and
working which assumes that people are lazy and dislike work, and that they have to be both
threatened (for example, with losing their job) and rewarded. It assumes that most people are
incapable of taking responsibility for themselves and have to be looked after. Theory Y, on the
contrary, assumes that people have a psychological need to work and want achievement and
responsibility.
Later theorists argued that Theory Y makes much greater demands on both workers
and managers than McGregor realized. Abraham Maslow, for example, spent a year studying
a Californian company that used Theory Y, and concluded that its demands for responsibility
and achievement are excessive for many people. He pointed out that there are always weak
and vulnerable people, with little self-discipline, who need protection against the burden of
responsibility. Even strong and healthy people need the security of order and direction.
Managers cannot simply substitute Theory Y for Theory X. They have to replace the security
provided by Theory X with a different structure of security and certainty.
1d Summarizing
Read the text again and complete the following sentences, using your own words as much as
possible.
1 According to Theory X, employers have to threaten workers because . . .
2 According to Theory Y, employers should give their workers responsibilities because . . .
3 Maslow criticized Theory Y because . . .
4 Maslow argued that even though they might want to be given responsibilities at work . . .
1e Discussion
One of the most important functions of a manager is to motivate the employees under his or
her authority. But how? What kind of things motivate you? Which of the following factors
have been or will be important for you in your choice of a job?
Classify them in order of importance.

good administration and good

labour relations
good working conditions: enough
space, light, heat and time, not too
much noise, and so on
an adequate wage or salary, and
benefits such as paid holidays, sick
pay, a pension, and so on

job security

a challenging, interesting
creative job
responsibility

contact with people

opportunities to travel
holidays
Are there any other important factors that are not listed here?

and

1f Writing
Write a short account (about 200 words) of the factors that have been or will be important for
you in your choice of a job.

FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

1g Reading
Another well-known theorist of the psychology of work, Frederick Herzberg, has
argued that many of the features listed above do not in fact motivate people. Read
the following text and find out why.
'SATISFIERS' AND 'MOTIVATORS'
It is logical to suppose that things like good labour relations, good working conditions,
good wages and benefits, and Job security motivate workers. But in Work and the Nature of
Man, Frederick Herzberg argued that such conditions do not motivate workers. They are
merely 'satisfiers' or, more importantly, 'dissatisfiers' where they do not exist. 'Motivators', on
the contrary, include things such as having a challenging and interesting job, recognition and
responsibility, promotion, and so on.
However, even with the development of computers and robotics, there are and always
will be plenty of boring, mindless, repetitive and mechanical jobs in all three sectors of the
economy, and lots of unskilled people who have to do them.
So how do managers motivate people in such jobs? One solution is to give them some
responsibilities, not as individuals but as part of a team. For example, some supermarkets
combine office staff, the people who fill the shelves, and the people who work on the
checkout tills into a team and let them decide what product lines to stock, how to display
them, and so on. Other employers ensure that people in repetitive jobs change them every
couple of hours, as doing four different repetitive jobs a day is better than doing only one.
Many people now talk about the importance of a company's shared values or corporate
culture, with which all the staff can identify: for example, being the best hotel chain, or
hamburger restaurant chain, or airline, or making the best, the safest, the most user-friendly,
the most ecological or the most reliable products in a particular field. Such values are more
likely to motivate workers than financial targets, which ultimately only concern a few people.
Unfortunately, there is only a limited number of such goals to go round, and by definition, not
all the competing companies in an industry can seriously claim to be the best.
1h Summarizing
Read the text again and complete the following sentences, using your own words as much as
possible.
1 Herzberg suggested that good labour relations and working conditions. . .
2 According to Herzberg, the kind of things that motivate. . .
3 The problem with saying that only challenging, interesting and responsible jobs are
motivating is that. . .
4 Ways of motivating people in unskilled jobs include. . .
5 The problem with trying to motivate workers by the belief that their company is the best is
that. . .

FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

2. Motivating staff
You will hear Steve Moody, the manager of the Marks & Spencer store in Cambridge, talking
about how he and the company try to motivate staff.
2a Listening
Listen to Part One of the interview and answer the following questions.
1 Which of the following things does Steve Moody say? If the statements do not match what
Moody says, what does he actually say?
A People require an acceptable salary.
B People need a nice working environment.
C People must understand what they are supposed to do.
D People must appreciate their boss and their colleagues.
E People must not be expected to do the same thing lots of times.
2 What is the reason he gives why some of his staff prefer working on the till or cash register
to other tasks?
3 What is the advantage of this for the store?
4 What are the other two tasks he mentions that are equally important in any store?
5 Steve Moody says that the work of management involves 'tailoring individuals' needs and
abilities to the operational needs of the store'. Give another word for tailoring.
6 Why does M&S also need staff who like to perform all sorts of different tasks?
2b Listening
Listen to Part Two of the interview.
1 Make a list of five or six factors that Steve Moody says motivate M&S staff.
2 What does he say is the effect of giving staff an annual bonus shortly before Christmas?
2c Discussion
1 Does what Steve Moody says coincide with the views of Frederick Herzberg that you read
about above? What about the views of Douglas McGregor?
2 In your working experience, even if it is only Saturday or temporary summer holiday jobs,
have your supervisors seemed to believe Theory X or Theory Y?
3 According to what you have read and heard, how would you attempt to motivate people
with the following positions?
a bus driver in a big city, who has to work irregular hours, including early morning,
evening, and night shifts
a nurse who works with seriously ill children
a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company, who visits hospitals and doctors
a shepherd (as in the cartoon on the first page)

FEAA English Course

Assistant Professor Adriana Lzrescu

2d Vocabulary
Use the words in the box once each to complete the paragraph below. Notice that the stressed
syllable changes in this group of words.
Verb
Nouns
Adjectives
pro'duce
'product
pro'ductive
pro'duction
'unpro'ductive
productivity
pro'ducer
'produce
A few years ago, Harry Coe's, a large (1) .., of tinned food (2)
...s, decided that some of their workers were not (3) ...
enough. Much of the work of preparing fruit and vegetables was done on rows of tables rather
than on a (4) ... line. So they decided to introduce a piecework
system, whereby workers got paid according to the amount of work they completed. The
company thought that this would motivate previously (5) workers,
and thereby increase (6) . Yet the new pay scheme did not (7)
.. the results they expected: after six months they were still processing
the same amount of agricultural (8) . , but there was a lot of
dissatisfaction among the workers who were now all earning different amounts of money.

English for Business Studies

Cambridge University Press 1997