1. Review the presentation written by Julie Jacobson titled Celebrating Success: Recognizing Municipal Employees.

2. Provide a short (250 words or less) summary of the presentation and how it relates to the week’s readings and discussion topic.

3. Identify two strategies suggested in the presentation and identify the theories, values, and/or incentives that inform the strategy (i.e., by doing x, we are assuming the employee is motivated by y).

4. Post an additional question to the group about the strategies used.

5. Cite the source

In this module, we shift our attention to people in public organizations. We approach this topic by first reviewing the literature and research findings on motivation and motivation theory (i.e., what motivates people and workers?). Then, we turn to understand values, incentives and work-related attitudes. Debates continue over what people are motivated by in our organizations as well as the most important needs, values, goals, and incentives, and the roles that they play.

It is important to start this module by identifying a common language as to what we refer when we talk about motivation. Motivation theorists often use terms such as need, value, motive, incentive, objective, and goal in overlapping ways, but Rainey (2015, p. 299) provides some clarity in the use of the terms:

Need: A resource or condition required for the well-being of an individual.

Motive: A force acting within an individual that causes him or her to seek to obtain or avoid some external objective or condition.

Incentive: An external object or condition that evokes behaviors aimed at attaining or avoiding it.

Goal: A future state that one strives to achieve, and an objective is a more specific, short-term goal, a step toward a more general, long-term goal.

Value: Can be defined as “an enduring belief that a specific model of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973, p.5).