Building Effective Organizations Final Assignment

Dr. Dana Vashdi

A Case Study: Motivating soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force

Nofar Amikam Nofar.amikam@gmail.com

Tamar Ayalon Ayalon.tamar@gmail.com

3 June 2012

Section I: The Case

Serving in the army is fraught with many unique challenges frequent personnel changes, high tension work environment etc'. However, one of the main complex and significant challenge is to motivate soldiers in compulsory service. This is due to several reasons that appear in the case below; Nofar was a commander of a group of twenty soldiers in an intelligence unit, and a major part of her job included managing those young new soldiers, personally and professionally. The main challenge in this part of the job was to create motivation among them in a unique organizational environment, under massive time limits and pressure. This unique state derives from the following: First, there is a lack of monetary incentives, unlike most firms in the business world: Everyone, regardless of the quality of their job and their working hours, earns the same amount of salary as others in the same level of activity, which is very low. Second, a soldier can't receive a promotion when his manager chooses to do so, based on his achievements, since a promotion is dependent mostly on the time of service (rank hierarchy). Also, the turnover rate is very high (an average of one year left after the professional course) and since the soldiers know they won't stay a long time in their position, they lack motivation to invest in it. Another challenge is that officially, those soldiers are required to work a certain amount of hours daily, while in reality, due to the nature of the work, they are expected to stay for much more than that without receiving any rewards. This eventually reduces the motivation to work hard and stay those extra hours. Moreover, sometimes Nofar was forbidden to expose the reason of the work to her soldiers. This affected their motivation, since they could not find an internal rational reason for dedicating their time and effort. During her work, there were several solutions Nofar found to be helpful; first, creating a friendly and trust- based relationship with the soldiers helped motivate them even when the demands were more than what was officially required or when she couldn't explain the reason behind her request. Second, Nofar created positions with more responsibility inside the team, so there will be promotion possibilities. Moreover, she created pro-social motivation constantly, by talking with her team about the importance of their work to the IDF and to their country. This also motivated them by giving them the feeling they are not just a small meaningless part in a big system. We have decided to explore this case thoroughly in order to find ways to increase motivation among workers in such unique organization, since we are both knowledgeable of the military environment, making it easier for us to relate to it, accompanied with the belief that what we will learn will be helpful in standard businesses as well.

Section II: Motivation in the IDF

Researchers have argued that pro-social motivation facilitates enhanced persistence, performance and productivity, across various tasks and jobs by enabling dedication to a cause and creating commitment to the people who benefit from one's efforts; Persistence refers to the amount of time that employees invest in their efforts; Performance refers to the degree to which employees' behaviors achieve organizational objective; Productivity describes quantity of effort as outcome of performance; In our minds, this exact pro-social motivation the desire to benefit the country and its citizens is what should drive soldiers to go above and beyond the call of duty. In our story, for example, we wish that soldiers will remain and deliver performance well beyond their official service hours, sometimes doing so while not even knowing the reason for their work. Yet, as explained in the review given by Levi, Lomsky-Feder & Harel (2007), in recent decades, we observe the country's youth lack of enthusiasm to continue to bear the military burden, a phenomenon that was publicly portrayed as a motivation crisis. This process was conceptualized as retreat from obligatory militarism, which sees compulsory military service as an unconditional contribution to the state that does not refer to one's needs, and the adoption of contractual militarism, that is, making service conditional on its meeting the individuals ambitions and interests, although it remained a formal obligation. The reasons for the motivation crisis are beyond the scope of this review. What's important to understand is that following it the obligation to serve in the military was no longer taken for granted. Youngsters are negotiating with the army about their role in the army, the conditions under which they serve and even the very fact of them serving at all. The individuals ability to shorten or cancel his service due to apparent mental health conditions, and the weight the army gives to personal preferences with regard to ones role in the army, are two expressions of this bargaining. They make their considerations based on the package of incentives the army offers them, and their expectations for self-fulfillment as compared to alternative, extra-military routes (mostly employment or study). Only a reasonable match between the individuals expectations and what the army has to offer will motivate the youngster to agree to a demanding, or at least full, military service. In light of the changes described in the military, it is reasonable to assume that the pro-social cause by itself will not be sufficient to facilitate enhanced persistence, performance and productivity among the soldiers. We decided to explore this assumption and found a research that built on the self-determination theory, showing that even in occupations where pro-social motivation is expected to

be a psychologically meaningful variable, much like what we would expect to see in the military, it is alone not enough to influence workers;

Section III: Is pro-social motivation enough?

Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) suggests that pro-social motivation can be based on different levels of autonomous regulation; the desire to benefit others can be autonomously supported by feelings of identification and value congruence or can be coerced by feelings of pressure and obligation. Research conducted by Grant (2008) investigated this distinction and revealed that pro-social motivation is more likely to predict persistence, performance, and productivity when it is accompanied by intrinsic motivation. In addition, a negative relationship between pro-social motivation and the outcomes of persistence and productivity was evident when intrinsic motivation was low. It is important to emphasize that pro-social and intrinsic motivations are two different psychological processes that direct, energize and sustain action or "an inner desire to make an effort". Intrinsic motivation takes a hedonic perspective by emphasizing pleasure and enjoyment of the work itself as drivers of effort, the decision to expend effort is based on personal enjoyment and is thus fully volitional and autonomous, employees are process focused so that they see the work as an end in and of itself, and present focus so that they are concerned with the experience of performing the work itself; Pro-social motivation takes a eudaimonic perspective by emphasizing meaning and purpose as drivers of effort, in order to expend effort the employees are more likely to push themselves toward completing their work, they are outcome focused so that they see the work as a means to the end goal of benefiting others, and future focused so that they are concerned with achieving a meaningful outcome upon completing the work; The research's results can be explained, than, as followed; when intrinsic motivation is high, pro-social motivation is characterized by identified regulation: employees feel that completing their tasks is beneficial to their own self-selected goals, as they enjoy the process of working and value the outcome of helping others. As a result, pro-social motivation will increase employees willingness to invest time and energy in their tasks, persisting to perform them effectively and productively. Indeed, recent research on self-determination theory suggests that intrinsically motivated efforts to benefit others enable employees to fulfill their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Sheldon, Arndt, & Houser-Marko, 2003). Employees experience autonomy when acting freely to benefit others, competence in successfully helping others, and relatedness in connecting their actions to outcomes that matter in the lives of other people. When intrinsic motivation is low, pro-social motivation is characterized by introjected regulation: employees do not enjoy the process of working, but they put pressure on

themselves to do so in order to help others. Employees can respond to this pressure in one of two ways; they can either escape the pressure by directly reducing their engagement and effort levels or they can succumb to the pressure by expending additional effort to fulfill their obligations. In this case, their feelings of autonomy will be threatened, and they will be more likely to experience stress, that will eventually deplete their psychological resources for self-regulation and undermine their capabilities. Thus, in any case, when intrinsic motivation is low, pro-social motivation is less likely to enhance persistence, performance, and productivity. Though the army puts great emphasize on pro-social motivation, the findings described highlight intrinsic motivation as an important boundary condition for the benefits of pro-social motivation. The emphasis on one's needs and desires forces the military commanders to create intrinsic motivation among compulsory soldiers, so that a combination of enjoying the process and valuing the outcome will enable higher levels of persistence, performance and productivity. This has led us to explore the proper job design in theory in comparison to what happened in our case.

Section IV: How to cultivate both pro-social and intrinsic motivation?

In their research, Piccolo, Greenbaum, Den Hartog, & Folger (2010) referred to the importance effect of the Job Characteristics Model (JCM) along with ethical leadership on workers' motivation. JCM (Hackman & Oldman, 1976) proposes that high intrinsic motivation is related to experiencing three psychological states whilst working, derived from certain characteristics of the job: Meaningfulness of work refers to that the work must be experienced as meaningful (its contribution significantly affects the overall effectiveness of the organization). This is derived from: (1) Skill variety serving in an intelligence unit demands a variety of skills, natural and nurtured by training, so the work is neither boring nor overwhelming; (2) Task Identity Nofar's soldiers were well-aware of the fact that their work is what allows for combat units to practice their tasks in the field, so they saw their work at hand as more whole and complete, and felt pride in the outcome of that work; (3) Task Significance This issue was indeed addressed in our story, by Nofar's constant reminder of the importance of her team's work and its contribution to society over and beyond the self. This was done to motivate the team in a pro-social way, and it was interesting to learn that this act holds intrinsic motivation rewards in it; Responsibility is derived from autonomy, as in the job provides substantial freedom, independence and discretion to the individual. Nofar's soldiers definitely felt responsible for their work, since they were usually independent and had some amount of autonomy. Empowerment interventions are thought to increase intrinsic motivation by creating a sense of responsibility, but because they provide employees

with expanded opportunities to contribute and have an impact, they may simultaneously increase pro-social motivation. This was addressed in the case by promoting soldiers in a way of creating tasks that require higher responsibility. Knowledge of outcomes comes from feedback. It implies an employee awareness of how effective he is converting his effort into performance. This component was missing in Nofar's department, so that beyond the fact that soldiers sometimes did not know the reason to their work, they also didn't learn how effective their efforts were or how appreciated they are for their efforts. According to Piccolo et al., this model should be broader and include "ethical leadership" as well. In fact, the research claims that this type of leadership impacts the JSM elements and only then the employee's motivation will really enhance. This assumption derives from the fact that the JSM model emphasizes changes of the objective aspects of jobs due to the manager's influence. Ethical leaders perceive their role as having a substantial significance for the organization and for society as a whole. This perspective will likely to influence the way their employees perceive their own jobs. According to Piccolo, it will mostly influence two main characteristics: Task significance and job autonomy This research and others (Detert, Trevino, Burris, & Andiappan, 2007) suggest that the reason ethical leaders influence their employees in such way is due to their fair treatment, shared values, integrity and inspiration of favorable behaviors among their employees. They also encourage high levels of pride and commitment to the organization. In fact, by enriching the autonomy and significance of work that increases the positive job perception of the employees, ethical leaders eventually increase their employees' work motivation and therefore the amount of effort they invest in the work. In our presented case, we have identified a form of ethical leadership. As we described, Nofar had conducted many conversations with her soldiers about the important ethical role of their work and its influence on the whole organization as well as their country. In fact, she herself believed in it, that was her source of motivation, and this was probably shown not only in the conversations but in her behavior and other aspects in her work and therefore affected the soldiers as well. Taking this to account, we would like to summarize the comparison between the theory and what happened in fact in our case. As for the psychological stages of experiencing meaningfulness and feeling responsible, they do exist. What we found missing in the case is the third psychological stage that refers to the knowledge of result by providing feedback. According to different researches, this feeling enhance the employees' intrinsic motivation and is mostly dependent on the manager

behavior and actions. We assume that by taking this into consideration and acting to create this feeling among the soldiers, their motivation could have been higher.

Section V: the effect of manager-employee friendship

While it is agreed by all that employees' feelings and attitudes matters in the workplace, friendship between managers and employees is controversial. One can expect positive effects on motivation occurring due to the friendly feelings cultivated towards the manager, but there are some negative effects of friendship in the workplace, such as favoritism, heavy dependence on others and negative organizational politics. Since creating a friendly and trust- based relationship with the soldiers was one of the tools Nofar used in order to motivate them, we decided to explore for evidence whether it is a positive or rather negative motivation tool. Friendship is a manifestation of culture. Our case takes place in a western society within a unique military environment which is hierarchical in nature. This is why a research that tested the matter both in Korea and in the United States was a good fit for us (Song & Olshfski, 2008). Korea emphasizes hierarchically arranged positions between a superior and a subordinate. The U.S. workplace emphasizes rights and a contractual relationship between a superior and subordinates, and a more fluid relationship among the employees. The LeaderMember Exchange (LMX) Theory (Graen & Cashman, 1975) recognizes the importance of the social and psychological relationship between a leader and his members. It assumes it has a positive influence on many organizational outcomes, such as goal commitment, organizational productivity, and performance. Employees with higher LMX have a high level of goal commitment and are more willing to exert effort in the workplace. LMX studies, therefore, suggest that friendships between leaders and members should be encouraged. This was the theory on the basis of this research. This study measures workplace friendship in terms of friendship opportunity as well as friendship prevalence. Friendship opportunity has been defined as the presence of an opportunity for employees to cultivate a close relationship with their superior" and included conditions as easy access to the immediate superior, and the opportunity to meet with the supervisor in non-work-related activities. Friendship prevalence has been defined as the quality of relationship between a superior and subordinates in the workplaces and included measures such as: a declaration of friendship at work with the superior, extra-work activities, and the ability to discuss personal issues together. An employees positive work attitude has been defined as an employees voluntary and positive work attitudes toward organizational goal and achievement and included measures such as striving for higher quality work than required and willingness to perform more work than required.

Workplace friendships had a positive impact on employees work attitudes in both locations surveyed. Therefore, we conclude that this pattern of results is relevant to the military environment as well. The more opportunities for the subordinate to make friends with the supervisor, the more positive the subordinates work attitudes will be. The more the norms encourage communication between the subordinate and the supervisor (formalization), the more likely friendships will develop. The opportunity to form friendship is constrained by how the national culture manifests itself in work rules: More egalitarianism enables increased opportunity to form bonds with the boss, whereas emphasis on structure and roles constrains friendship opportunities. Finally, the quality of the friendly relationship has the strongest impact on the employees positive attitude toward work. Positive work attitudes have a better chance to increase organizational performance than negative work attitudes do, by enhancing motivation. This study supported the LMX theory and confirms the approach Nofar took to create norms that will encourage interaction between her and her soldiers, so that an opportunity for friendship will develop. However, the negative implication that such a friendship may have should not be disregarded. A manager is advised to have a balanced view of workplace friendships creating professional boundaries by clearly defining work-related policies and procedures, and remembering that socializing with subordinates requires some degree of formality in order to maintain the manager persona.

Section VI: Summary

We began by describing the deteriorating motivation for serving in the army, so to understand the environment in which our case took place. This led us to investigate, and learn that even in occupations where pro-social is expected to play a meaningful psychological role, it isn't enough, and intrinsic motivation must exist collaboratively with pro-social motivation to enhance persistence, performance, and productivity. An ethical leadership is required in order to design job characteristics that will cultivate psychological states of experiencing meaningfulness, feeling responsible, and knowledge of result. The last was not nurtured in Nofar's department. By giving the soldiers feedbacks on their performance, they would have learned how appreciated they are, and would strive to improve themselves when needed, resulting in higher intrinsic motivation. Lastly, we have examined the effects of creating a friendly relationship with the soldiers as a mean to enhancing motivation and learned that while negative implications may occur and precautions must be taken, this tool as the ability to foster positive work attitudes, leading to higher intrinsic motivation and increased organizational performance.

Bibliography 1. In-class motivation presentation. 2. Levy, Y., Lomsky-Feder, E., & Harel, N. (2007). From "Obligatory Militarism" to "Contractual Militarism"Competing Models of Citizenship. Israel Studies Journa, 12(1), 127-148. 3. Grant (2008). Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, and Productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 48-58. 4. Garg, P., & Rastogi, R. (2006). New model of job design: motivating employees performance. Journal of Management Development, 25(6), 572587. 5. Piccolo R., Greenbaum R., Den Hartog D., & Folger R. (2010). The relationship between ethical leadership and core job characteristics. Journal of organizational behavior, 31, 259-278. 6. Hackman J. & Oldham G. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational behavior & human performance, 16, 250- 279. 7. Song, S., & Olshfski, D. (2008). Friends at Work: A Comparative Study of Work Attitudes in Seoul City Government and New Jersey State Government. Administration & Society, 40(2), 147-169.

Section VII: Course Reflections

Nofar Amikam I.D: 039762521 Personally, I've learned from this class a lot about myself- my team work, my attitude as a manager, the way I manage interviews etc'. Each activity in class provided me an important and practical lesson for the future. For example: during our team works on the "island mission", I understood I do succeed in bringing my own ideas to the team and convincing the team to follow them, but I don't pay enough attention to others' points of view. I've learned that listening more to other team members can benefit me as an individual and the team as a whole. I know this is a lesson I will apply in the future and this will benefit me greatly. I felt that other activities (building a tower etc'), as well as your analysis afterwards, were very effective and interesting. Moreover, as a result of the final work, I've managed to examine a real personal situation and by analyzing it with the tools we have learned in class and from articles. This had taught me about my strengths, weaknesses and how I should act in in the future. Professionally, as a result of the models we were exposed to, I have learned to examine in a more rational and thorough way situations and fields that we usually manage in an impulsive way. An example for that is what we have learned about creativity and ways to encourage it in our organization- not only by motivating workers, but also by dedicating resources to aid the workers and allow autonomy). Also, the distinction between creativity and innovation was very important, since I know it will help me as an entrepreneur to pay as much attention on the implementation of an idea as on the idea itself. It will also benefit me in designing the culture in the organization- since now I know that promoting creativity is important, but a good manager need to know when to guide his workers to stop "creating" and start "inventing", in order to create a profitable tangible product and not just a theoretical one. In conclusion, I found that the course was very interesting and practical and I've gained tools that are great since they are based on theoretical models and yet reflects reality. Thank you for a great course!

Tamar Ayalon I.D: 021925615 I'll start by saying that I came ambivalent to this course, partly excited due to my previous experience as an HR officer in the army, and partly tired from the thought of the course being field with tons of theories, that are mostly intuitive in nature and which I've already been exposed to a lot in my bachelor's degree. Fortunately, I was surprised of the amount of contribution and practical knowledge gained from this course. It reminded me that there are many things that must be learned by doing, and once they are practiced in real life, they sometimes feel less intuitive. Regarding the matter, if there is one specific topic that touched me more than the rest and that I'm sure I'll continue to engage with further is teamwork. This program demands a lot of team-work, as do the field of strategic consultancy that I want to practice in the future. This demand did not exist in my bachelor's degree. Since I would describe myself as a dominant and assertive person, this made me reflect about my place in a team, even prior to this course. During the tasks that we were asked to perform as a team during the course, I tried to approach the tasks differently every time, so to find the position where I feel comfortable with the outcome that will be produced (meaning I have influenced the subjects that matter to me) while still enabling the rest of the team members to be heard and feel that they are influential. I'm yet still working on finding the correct balance, but an important lesson I took from this course is that the synergy of a team has the potential to produce outcome superior to the one of an individual, in many cases there is no one correct way to perform a task, so I'm advised to be more openminded to other people's thoughts and suggestions. This is the only course in the program that deals with organizational behavior and HR, topics I think should be addressed more, since though they are the "softer" sides of a manager's work, they are the only ones that are common to all managers, regardless of their field, and they are critical to how organizations function. I will definitely make use much of what we learnt in my professional life (other topics as well, I just preferred focusing on the issue that touched me the most). Thank for all!