Mitchell identifies motivation as ‘The degree to whichindividual wants and chooses to engage in certain specific behaviours'(Mitchell, 1982). There is a clear lack of motivation at BFGym due to how theorganisation is run and organised.
The top-down approach used at BFGym is alsoone of the main factors that leads to a lack of motivation with the staffthere. As anything that the managers say, the workers must abide by,potentially leaving the workers to feel trapped and ignored. Examples includechanging the breakout room into a new workout room, or setting the classes andfixed routines that can’t be changed.
Adams Equity Theory (1965) is a processtheory suggesting that people are motivated (or demotivated) depending on howthey’re rewarded in the workplace compared to others. This is particularlyclear with Nick, the new trainer from Nottingham as he states feeling ‘unfairlytreated and that probably his colleagues are taking advantage that he is new intown’, therefore as Nick perceives that the situation is inequitable he becomesdemotivated and may choose to reduce his inputs and effort, try to negotiate oreven possibly engage in some form of workplace resistance. But equity theoryemploys a unidimensional rather than a multidimensional conception of fairness(Leventhal, 1980), therefore motivation is dependent solely of what theindividual thinks. Furthermore, Goal Setting Theory (Locke and Latham 1990) isa different process theory that may explain the lack of motivation at BFGym. Itis an approach that focuses on setting effective goals to result in effectiveperformance. It identifies goals as being specific, measurable, achievable,realistic and time-related.
However, BFGym doesn’t incorporate any of thesefactors; the managers at BFGym haven’t created effective goals for theiremployees to work towards leaving them all to devise their own personal goalswhich may not meet the needs of the owners and can cause conflict between thestakeholders of the organisation or tunnel vision thus resulting in de-motivation.But goal theory has a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty andperformance (Locke and Latham, 1994), so if goals are set too high it couldresult in poor performance such as how Jo was forced to go by the classes setby management without consulting the instructors.
