the behaviourists’ reject notions of motivation and argue instead that behaviour is
determined by its consequences with people learning from their experiences.
Lastly, job or work design theories such as Hackman and Oldham’s Job
Characteristics Model (Hackman and Oldham 1975, 1976, 1980) which focus on
characteristics of people’s jobs (such as skill variety, task identity, task
significance, feedback, and autonomy), how these interact with employees’
psychological states and the relationships with consequent individual (e.g.
motivation, job satisfaction) and organizational outcomes.
Most recently, Latham and Pinder’s (2005) Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
review provides a detailed analysis of the field and concludes that the social
cognitive, goal-setting and organisational justice theories currently dominate the
field of work motivation. With reference to the theories described in Korman et
al.’s (1977) review, Latham and Pinder (2005: 506) write that: expectancy theory
has been supplanted with goal-setting and social cognitive theories; and equity
theory has given way to organisational justice (noting that social cognitive and
organisational justice theories have emerged subsequent to Korman et al. al’s
1977 review).
Latham and Pinder go on to describe the later 20th century research having
focused on cognition while, in more recent years, attention has turned more
towards affect (emotion) and behaviour (and on how these interact with
cognition). Latham and Pinder’s findings also note how work motivation research
in general had expanded to encompass the study of a wide range of antecedents
and consequents^3 and also to take greater account of contextual factors including
(inter)national contexts (which contrast with the previous North American focus of
work motivation research). Descriptions of the social cognitive, goal-setting and
organisational justice theories are provided below.
Social-cognitive theory (SCT) was developed largely by Albert Bandura
(Bandura 1977) following on from earlier work social learning theories emanating
from that of Miller and Dollard (1941) which focused on the ways in which people
learn socially, i.e. from each other (Ten Eyck 2007). Bandura’s theory
emphasises the role of cognitive variables (such as an individual’s knowledge,
3
This point reflects Ambrose and Kulik’s (1999) conclusions relating to the
‘abandonment’ of motivation as researchers focus on increasingly specific aspects of
employee behaviour related to motivation (details below in Section 4.1.1).