Essay on Application of Motivation Theory

There are different controversial tendencies revealed in the global economics. The process of globalization has essentially influenced the way we accept the models of setting and leading businesses, the way we act as employers and employees and solve various problems. It goes without saying that many businesses have benefited much from all the innovations, and it is still the same natural many people have lost the opportunities they once used to have. The global financial crisis has also brought new accents into labor trends, and it is not a secret that it has also established new rules for the players of the market. A lot of ships have been sunk, and those who stayed afloat realized that a lot of efforts should be taken to succeed. The working environment has become highly competitive and sometimes even hostile. On the one hand, the levels of unemployment have grown and thus the employers seem to have received a wide range of candidates to obey their rules, but on the other hand the war for highly qualified specialists did not come to an end. If to look intently at the existing picture, it will become clear that the problem of incompetence at the workplace is widely spread and urgent. Therefore, this issue needs to be examined thoroughly and thus requires more attention from the scholar researchers.

In this work we are going to study the situation, to look for the most evident reasons and causes of the problem under consideration. What is more, we will try to apply the knowledge of motivation theories to the situation in order to work out certain recommendations to improve it and to find further ways of development in this field.

What is competence and what is it needed for?

When we come to speak about incompetence, it seems to be quite inevitable and reasonable to stop to consider the term “competence”. In fact, there are different approaches to this term, and the meaning of it is widely disputed in different circles. In the sphere of organizational development, in occupational literature and in the management development sector, competence goes on to stay one of the most diffuse terms. So, what do we usually mean when we talk about competence? Within the practice of human resources, we mean the ability of a person to perform the job in a proper way, if to be brief. When an employer or a human resources manager on his behalf looks for a candidate, he usually has a list of requirements one should satisfy. The matter is, to put out a full list of these requirements, the employer or HR manager should be well aware of what they are seeking for. What is more, they should have a wide range of options to be able to choose properly. These two conditions, if not provided, can lead to undesirable compromises. “A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees,” Shipmann et al. (2000, p. 704) defines. In each sphere competence may include different number of requirements, but when there is no professionalism, negative consequences can influence the rest of the staff, the employer, the owner, the clients and thus the society on the whole. To realize the seriousness of the issue, it is enough to think about a doctor lacking competence (including at least skill, knowledge, and behavior, which can be also understood as professional ethics). It goes without saying that competence is needed not only when there is a risk of fatal outcome. In some spheres negative implications of incompetence may be not so evident, but it doesn’t mean the employer as well the society can close their minds against this problem.