If you were a manager, wouldn’t you like to know how your employees decide whether to work hard or goof off? Wouldn’t it be nice to know whether a planned rewards program will have the desired effect—namely, motivating them to perform better in their jobs? These are the issues considered by psychologist Victor Vroom in his expectancy theory, which proposes that employees will work hard to earn rewards that they value and that they consider “attainable”.

As you can see from Figure 9.3, Vroom argues that an employee will be motivated to exert a high level of effort to obtain a reward under three conditions. The employee:

1. believes that his or her efforts will result in acceptable performance.
2. believes that acceptable performance will lead to the desired reward.
3. values the reward.

Expectancy Theory and the Workplace

To apply expectancy theory to a real-world situation, let’s analyze an automobile-insurance company with 100 agents who work from a call center. Assume that the firm pays a base salary of $2,000 a month, plus a $200 commission on each policy sold above ten policies a month. In terms of expectancy theory, under what conditions would an agent be motivated to sell more than ten policies a month?

1. The agent would have to believe that his or her efforts would result in policy sales (that, in other words, there’s a positive link between effort and performance).
2. The agent would have to be confident that if he or she sold more than ten policies in a given month, there would indeed be a bonus (a positive link between performance and reward).
3. The bonus per policy—$200—would have to be of value to the agent.

Now let’s alter the scenario slightly. Say that the company raises prices, thus making it harder to sell the policies. How will agents’ motivation be affected? According to expectancy theory, motivation will suffer. Why? Because agents may be less confident that their efforts will lead to satisfactory performance. What if the company introduces a policy whereby agents get bonuses only if buyers don’t cancel policies within 90 days? Now agents may be less confident that they’ll get bonuses even if they do sell more than ten policies. Motivation will decrease because the link between performance and reward has been weakened. Finally, what will happen if bonuses are cut from $200 to $25? Obviously, the reward would be of less value to agents, and, again, motivation will suffer. The message of expectancy theory, then, is fairly clear: managers should offer rewards that employees value, set performance levels that they can reach, and ensure a strong link between performance and reward.