Why do some people fail to cooperate, either in business or life? Why do deals and commitments fall through? Why do partners or lovers stop working together?
These are fundamental problems in all of our lives. Fortunately, they all have a fairly simple answer, involving the basics of motivation and expectation. So, let's take a look!
The questions above (particularly regarding the workplace) were explored by Victor Vroom, in his 1964 book, Work and Motivation. He was interested in identifying the basic dynamics of what motivated people to work together—or decide to end an interaction instead. The result was a model known as Expectancy Theory (sometimes called VIE Theory), with three components:
Thirty-two years later, a meta-analysis by Van Eerde and Thierry (1996) evaluated the relationship of those three components to various workplace outcomes. Specifically, they explored how each of the VIE components correlated with employee performance, effort, intention, preference, and choice. Overall, all three components had at least some correlation with all five workplace variables—with some having stronger relationships than others.
Specifically, although Van Eerde and Thierry were unable to assess significant differences between correlations, a potential pattern can be observed by visual inspection. Effort and time spent on a job were more related to valence (.34) than........