Relationship Between Motivation and Economics (Essay Sample)

Motivation and Economics: A Case Study of Sharp Healthcare
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Motivation and Economics: A Case Study of Sharp Healthcare
Economics is a science of choice, which involves the aspect of scarcity. In other words, however, the study of economics encompasses how people apply knowledge, skill and effort to satisfy their material needs. This paper looks at how people in the workplace are motivated to achieve their material wants or needs by the management of the company. It is well understood that motivation is a significant aspect in the business environment for any given enterprise. Studies have shown that most employees waste notable amounts of time in the workplace for the mere reason that they lack motivation. This has significant impacts on not only their productivity but also the company’s profitability. Beck, Baker and Robbins (2001) define motivation as the disposition of workers to "exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals" so long as they are acclimatized to employ their efforts to satisfy individual needs and wants. In this sense, it emerges that there exists different kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. The former is self-generated while the latter is externally generated. Even so, both kinds of motivation can be activated in employees by action of a company’s management. Intrinsic motivation is manifested via occurrences like autonomy and opportunity at work whereas extrinsic motivation can be achieved in ways like promotion, pay and constructive feedback among others.
This paper focuses of motivation of employees as witnessed in Sharp Healthcare Company, which is based in San Diego, California. The company is a not-for-profit organization that is an integrated healthcare system with acute-care and specialty hospitals, a health plan and affiliated medical groups. Its vision involves a plan to transform the experience of healthcare employees in America, physicians and patients. It is also the largest private employer in San Diego (Burns, Bradley, & Weiner, 2012)
As abovementioned, economics is essentially about satisfaction of material needs or wants. In actuality, people’s wants and needs are the source of motive for meaningful economic activity. Still, successful companies go a step further to provide for motive in employees. For instance, Sharp Healthcare has remained a leader in the healthcare sector for it keeps a team of highly motivated workers. It also remains a fact that economic resources are scarce and so not all needs and or wants can be met all the time. This fact forms the prevailing economic problem that is universal in the sense that economic resources are limited even as people’s wants remain limitless. It is also the basis for the principles of individual decision-making that are opportunity cost, marginal benefits, trade-offs, and incentives (Hubbard & O’Brien, 2010).
At Sharp Healthcare, employees are subject to relatively more marginal benefits- that are fringe benefits (of extra pay) for their decision to be loyal to the company. In one way or another, such a form of motivation can also be observed as incentives, which imply anything that motivate an employee to maintain a particular course of action (Hubbard & O’Brien, 2010). Overall, the truth remains that individual decision-making requires one to compare the cost and benefits as a form of outcome for their decisions.
Sharp Healthcare’s management focuses on offering employees appropriate and competitive performance benefits. This in turn, makes the workers to feel important and become more committed to the organization. The trade-off that occurs in their individual decision-making allows for a buy-in to the company. From this perspective, one cannot decline to note that Sharp’s approach to motivating its employees is indeed successful.
It is also clear that the Management of Sharp Healthcare is focused on remaining dedicated to its employees as indicated in the company’s vision of transformation. In fact, the company has developed and maintained a successful strategy of motivation via its Six Pillars of Excellence. This has become its foundation for goal setting and strategic planning through management performance evaluations, enabling its employees to stay motivated (Burns, et al., 2012). The resultant effect is that the company has been able to maintain high quality of its services and or products.
The following section discusses how the company maintains it six Pillars of Excellence as a form of motivation for its workers. These pillars include aspects of effective communication, employee development and retention among others. In as much as communication is concerned the management of Sharp Healthcare maintains open channels of communication all through the entire organization. Undoubtedly, this has contributed to the tremendous performance and success of Sharp. Each year, the company holds quarterly forums that facilitate the sharing of important company information besides allowing employees to be recognized and rewarded for their efforts of realizing company goals and objectives (Burns, et al., 2012). On the other hand, this approach of open communication promotes employee involvement as it offers them a sense of belonging to the company. Every now and again, opinion surveys are conducted within the company to maintain a sense of togetherness and or strong relationship between the management and the workers- adding to their motivation. Opinions gathered involve employees’ ideas about the general work environment and thoughts of improvement plans. This is also vital when it comes to development of action plans for the company (Burns, et al., 2012). What is more is that the co...