ABSTRACT
Motivation is one of the central topics in the social sciences, and work motivation plays a similarly central role in organizational behavior (OB). Work motivation has received as much intensive theoretical development as any topic in OB, and as this chapter will do, OB texts typically review a standard series of theories that have competed for acceptance among researchers. As with other major concepts, such as power, leadership, and attitude, scholars have exhaustively debated the proper definition of motivation, and have reported thousands of studies bearing on the topic.
