ABSTRACT
In everyday terms, motivation is about getting people to work to the maximum of their ability. It has been argued by Seivers that there was never a need to motivate individuals, or for theories about motivation, until the development of factories that made work become narrowly defined, boring and repetitive. Scientific Management and Fordism were essentially about the production of manufactured goods, but in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century there was an analogous development in the efficient production of services. Theories about motivating individuals have long been subdivided into two subsets. There are theories about what motivates individuals, and these are called content theories. There are also theories about how individuals are motivated, and these are called process theories. Maslow was essentially a social psychologist, some of whose work was applied to individual motivation. Aldefer, like Maslow, suggested that people are motivated by the opportunity to fulfil their needs at work.
