The Essence Of Motivation And The Transformation Of Subjectivity

When determining how the enterprise could survive and grow inthe compititive market, the employees’ working enthusiasm andinitiative-taking are key factors. So it is very important to perform astudy and research on this special subject: motivation.It’s been almost a century that scholars in academic field, mainly inthe western world, have developed many theories on motivation withsome outstanding research achievements by using different disciplines orapproarches. However, the employee’s lack of enthusiasm for work, thephenomena of “incentive strange circle” and “incentive syndrome” in theenterprise are still common in practice. Why these theories still can notsolve these problems in reality? This brings my study to pay moreattention to the philosophy of the motivation theories. Philosophy is atheory, the foundation of other concrete theory systems. If there were problems in a theory’s philosophy, further developing the theory wouldamplify these problems. After commpleted the literature review, thisstudy found that few researches discussed the meta-questions ofmotivation, such as the essence of motivation and the subject ofmotivation. There are some researches have been done in the phylosophyand phycological fields, but few is done in the management field. Andthe research on motivation philosophy and philosophical reflection on theexisting theory were inadequate. This study explored the problem ofexisting dominant theory of motivation from the aspect of philosophy,and proposed a new solution to implement and improve the currenttheory system.First, this thesis reviewed the western dominant motivationtheories regarding the meta-questions of motivation from the aspect ofphilosophy, and found that there were some defects in their philosophy.Further, based on the previous studies and combined with chinese traditional philosophy, it proposed a new philosophy of motivation,named Dao-oriented Motivation Philsophy. Then, in order to put thetheory into practice and easy to prove its effectiveness, a Dao-orientedMotivation Operating Model, named Points-based Incentive System wasrecommanded. Finally, using the field experiment method, this studymeasured the effects of the implementation results of this new System.The followings are the main conclusions achieved in the study:1. To amend the defect of western dominant motivation theories,this research recommended a new philosophy—Dao-oriented MotivationPhilosophy. In the view of motivation purpose, the basic idea of westernmotivation philosophy, under the hypothesis of "economic person", is theemployer’s benefit maximization. But Dao-oriented motivationphilosophy, under the hypothesis of "person who aspires to be holy",advocated a new idea that the purpose of motivation should be broughtup better staff whose mental models are more perfect. As we all knows, the better the staff, the better the products or services lead to, and thebetter economic benefit for the enterprise. In the views of motivationsubject-object relation, the western motivation philosophy inherited thedualist view of western philosophy, assumed that the employer is thesubject, vis-à-vis, and the employee is the object. Dao-orientedMotivation Philosophy proposed the theory of four motivation subjects,in which, everyone is the first subject of itself; the managers are thesecond subject of their subordinates; the subordinates as a whole is thethird subject of their superiors as the subordinates’ growth will be a greatmotivation for his superiors; and the stakeholders are the fourth subjectfor the enterprise as their behaviors and choices will either motivate orde-motivate other subjects. Following the motivational pattern, themainstream in the western motivation theory is a behavioristic andinstrumental rationality incentive method whose purpose is seekingemployers own advantage against employees. On contrary, Dao-oriented Motivation Philosophy is a new incentive model which based on theemployees’ self-motivation.2. This study added the "mental models" as a new content in theLocke’s Integrated Model of Work Motivation. In this way, themechanism of Dao-oriented Motivation Philosophy for action, logic andapproach can be described completely and clearly.3. This study proposed a new incentive operating model, namedPoints-based Incentive System, which contains a set of rules, operatingprocedures and methods. Its feasibility and effectiveness have beenproved through the experimental methods.4. This study measured the implementation effectiveness of thePoints-based Incentive System using the field experiment method. Theexperimental results indicated that the Points-based Incentive System cansignificantly improve the employee engagement and job satisfaction.There are five main innovative points regarding this study: 1. Analyized the motivation theory from the research perspectivein the aspect of philosophy to find and solve the motivation problemsfrom the "root directory".2. Proposed a new motivation philosophy—Dao-orientedmotivation philosphy.3. Merged a new construct,"mental models", into the Locke’sintegrated model of work motivation.4. Developed a new motivation model—Points-based IncentiveSystem.5. Conducted Empirical analysis in the research method on theimplementation effectveness of the Points-based Incentive System byapplying the field experiment method.