The main incentive theories are as follows

1. Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory

Abraham harold maslow (1908.04.01-1970.06.08) first put forward the theory of "hierarchy of needs" in 1943. He divided the complex needs of human beings into physiological needs, security needs, friendship and belonging needs, and. In 1954, Maslow developed human needs into seven levels, from low to high: physiological needs, security needs, friendship and belonging needs, respect needs, knowledge needs, beautiful needs and self-realization needs.

Herzberg's Two-factor Theory

Incentive theory-health care factor theory

In the late 1950s, Herzberg and his assistant visited 200 engineers and accountants in Pittsburgh, USA. The interview mainly revolves around two questions: what are the things that satisfy you at work and how long this positive emotion will last; What are the things that make them dissatisfied? Estimate how long this negative emotion will last. Based on the answers to these questions, Herzberg set out to study what makes people feel happy and satisfied at work, and what causes unhappiness and dissatisfaction. As a result, he found that what satisfied employees belonged to the work itself or the work content; What makes employees dissatisfied is the working environment or working relationship. He called the former an incentive factor and the latter a health care factor.

The effect of satisfaction of health care factors on employees is similar to that of health care on physical health. Health care can eliminate harmful things from the human environment, which can not directly improve the health level, but can prevent diseases; It is not therapeutic, but preventive. Health care factors include company policies, management measures, supervision, interpersonal relationships, material working conditions, wages, welfare, etc. When these factors deteriorate below the acceptable level, there will be dissatisfaction with work. When people think that these factors are good, they only eliminate dissatisfaction, and will not lead to a positive attitude, forming a neutral state of neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction.

David mcclelland's Theory of Achievement Needs

David McLelland, a professor at Harvard University, divides people's advanced needs into three categories, namely, power needs, communication needs and achievement needs.

In real life, an organization sometimes becomes a high-performance organization because it is equipped with people with high achievement motivation, but sometimes it also produces high-performance behavior because it puts people in highly competitive positions. McLelland thinks the former is more important than the latter. This shows that high achievement demand can be cultivated, and a set of training methods to motivate employees to realize demand has been established to improve productivity and cultivate suitable talents for high achievement demand positions.

The theory of achievement needs is also called the theory of incentive needs. In the early 1950s, david McLelland, a psychologist at Harvard University in the United States, focused on the needs after people's physiological and safety needs were met, especially the achievement needs, and thus put forward a new content-based incentive theory-achievement needs incentive theory. The main feature of achievement need incentive theory is that it pays more attention to the managed in top management, such as managers at all levels, officials of government functional departments, scientists, engineers and other senior talents whose survival and material needs are relatively met. Because of this feature, achievement needs incentive theory, which has great practical significance for scientific research management and cadre management besides enterprise management.

Alderfer's electroretinogram theory

"ERG" theory is the abbreviation of survival-interrelation-growth need theory. According to Odefer, there are three types of employees' needs: survival needs (e), relationship needs (r) and growth needs (g).

According to this theory, the less the needs of all levels are met, the more people are eager to get them; The more satisfied the lower demanders are, the more eager the upper demanders are. If higher-level needs are frustrated again and again, people will pursue the satisfaction of lower-level needs again. This theory not only puts forward the upward trend of satisfaction at the level of needs, but also points out the trend of setbacks to retrogression, which is very enlightening in management.

goal setting theory

After Fromm, American management scientists Locke and Hus put forward the "goal setting theory". To sum up, there are three main factors:

Target difficulty

The goal should be difficult, and the easy-to-achieve goal lacks challenge, which can not stimulate people's fighting spirit and has little incentive effect. Of course, unattainable goals can also be daunting, thus losing motivation. Therefore, the goal should be controlled at a level where the difficulty does not exceed the human capacity.

targeted

Goals should be clear and specific, such as "doing as well as possible" and "working hard", which are vague and abstract and have little incentive effect on people. Specific goals that can be observed and measured can make people clear the direction of struggle and their own gap, thus having better incentive effect.

Acceptability of goals

Only when employees accept organizational goals and coordinate with personal goals can goals play their due incentive function. Therefore, employees should be involved in the formulation of organizational goals, which can improve the acceptability of goals more than managers impose goals on employees, and make employees take achieving goals as their own business, thus improving the incentive effect of goals.