Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivation

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Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivation March 22, 2012 Intrinsic Motivation As inventor and producer Henry Ford once told his employees, “Quality means doing it right even when no one is looking.” Henry Ford sought to motivate his employees to maximize productivity and increase the quality of the cars he produced. Similar to Ford, it has become a common theme in places of employment to motivate employees to make a company more productive and boost profits. However, motivation is not as simple as it may sound. It is the job of supervisors and managers to identify the most effective form of motivation for their own employees, which is not always a simple task. Continuous research on the most effective ways to motivate employees has carried on over the past several decades. The article: “Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, Productivity” written by Adam M. Grant explores the topic of employee motivation and argues that our intrinsic, and prosocial influences are the two most powerful motivators, and cause individuals to strive for their utmost best. Why? Why do professional baseball players put in hundreds of extra hours to improve their physical and mental capabilities? Why does a policeman cruise around the darkness-shrouded city every night in the wee hours of the morning? Is it because of the monthly bonus they might receive for the overtime? Or is it that they just can’t sleep at night without their time on the town? I would argue that at that level of dedication, no amount of external motivations would propel a person to put in that amount of extraneous effort. That is why the study of motivation is becoming increasingly important in our society. We need to discover what drives people to perform their best. From what we have discovered in the article

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