Critical Evaluation of the Concepts Motivation and Reward in the Workplace

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Personnel and Organisation, grade: 2,8, Durham University (Durham Business School), course: Managerial Psychology, language: English, abstract: This paper tries to critically evaluate the ideas of the relations between motivation as an explanation for human behavior and rewards as something that is given in return for showing a specific, desired behavior, based on the model of behavior first outlined by Skinner's work.

Starting with a definition of the terms motivation and reward, this paper explains the basic ideas of Behaviorism as one of the major psychological schools of thought and as one source of explanation for human behavior. As this particular approach focuses only on external drivers of human behavior a short excursus to the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation follows before motivation and the effectiveness of rewards is enquired in the specific context of the workplace.

Before going into detail it is important to clearly define the terms motivation and rewards, as especially the first can be understood in various meanings.