Date:
2/19/2004
Contact: Wendel Sloan at 505.562.2253
Reporter: Marc Schoder
PORTALES—Dr. John Humphreys, assistant professor of management at Eastern New Mexico University, co-authored an article with Dr. Walter Einstein, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, titled "Leadership and Temperament Congruence: Extending the Expectancy Model of Work Motivation." Dr. Humphreys says, "We basically took and looked at work motivation modules, which is one of my interests in leadership behavior and subsequent follower work motivation." Most of the work motivations stopped in 1968, according to Dr. Humphreys. "Obviously, we haven't solved all the work motivation issues. There wasn't much in the way of new models around so we tried to review what was out there and look at work motivation models that were listed in most organizational behavior textbooks. We tried to decide what was missing." Dr. Humphreys and Dr. Einstein tried to propose a new model based on Porter and Lawler's model from 1968.
"We took their model and added several things. For example, we believed that you couldn't have a work motivation model that didn't include leadership, " says Dr. Humphreys.
The behavior that a leader exhibits has to be considered if you are interested in follower motivation, according to the professor. He also believes that personality of both leader and follower play a big part in how that relationship is carried out. "Our beliefs start off, for example, with employee need. Some employees want to be recognized for their work, while others don't care anything about being publicly recognized," says the occasional noon-time basketball player. Drs. Humphreys and Einstein took leadership, personality and work motivation literature and merged the three. Dr. Humphreys considers their model to now be more advanced than Porter's and Lawler's original model.
"In our model we look at those same needs and deficiencies, but we believe they come from one personality," says the former corporate employee. They also believe when they introduce the study that one must take into account the personality of the follower.
Dr. Humphreys also believes that leadership and leader behavior, as well as leader diagnosis skills, are very important. He adds that a leader has to be able to diagnose the situations they are in and the needs of the follower.
"We believe that the work motivation module is dyadic: it's a leader/follower model; we don't think you could separate that," says Dr. Humphreys. It would be the leader's responsibility to diagnose the situation and the needs of those followers, then present the objectives and tasks that fit the followers' skills and abilities as well as match their personality.
Dr. Humphreys adds that it may be a big task for each leader to understand his or her followers to the degree where one would know their needs as well as their personalities; to truly motivate workers in the real world a leader must have that information. Dr. Humphreys says the article will appear in a forthcoming issue of the "Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies." He has also been keeping himself busy with being selected as the new editor for the "Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management."