ABSTRACT
Understanding what motivates us, what properly captures and explains the full range of such motivations, is essential in making good personal decisions and managing people in organisations. To contribute to a better understanding of human motivations, this chapter summarises the classical and most popular content theories of motivation, resulting from decades of research, into a simple framework conceived as a “map”; a practical map that will help us to diagnose our own motivations and those of people working in our organisations. The chapter concludes by presenting a final critical thought on why this map is not yet accurate enough, given that the majority of existing classifications of human motivations have neglected the moral dimension. It seems that, after all, the human motivation theories being taught today in most schools and universities are not as “human” as we thought.
