Comparison of Process Theories to Content Theories in Motivating Workforces

Haekyung Rhee

International Journal of Human Resource Studies, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 267-274

Abstract: Motivation theories have been classified into process theory and content theory in the literature. The effectiveness of each of them has been dealt with only in the textbooks and they were not experimented to see their applicability in the real workplace environment. In this essay, to observe this sort of applicability we resort to well known Working Stiff Workplace Diaries in order to find out how WSDs as a grass root type of employees’ sentiment and morale assert which particular one of the two major motivation theories. The whole ten diaries supplied by the Weblab were taken into the experiment. The methodology we have taken is that we measured the affinity of each of diaries to the two categories of motivation theories, that is, process theory and content theory. As a result, WSDs are found to be supportive towards content theory more than towards process theory. This shows that content theory prevails over process theory in the real workplace environment. Thus it seems to me that the issue such as whether process theories are superior to content theories must be reviewed and judged for its validity against these sort of real-world stories on experiences of real-world workforces. Otherwise, the discussion of the issue might result in of no use, since there would be lack or short of real world evidences of vindication.

Date: 2019
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