Title: Motivation: Direction and Intensity – Organizational Behavior
Headings: Motivation: Direction and Intensity
Motivation: Direction and Intensity
Glossary
performance environment

Content: An employee who has accurate role perceptions knows both their expected outcomes and how to go about making those outcomes a reality. Incomplete or inaccurate role perceptions limit employees’ capacity to meet expectations, regardless of their abilities and motivation. The performance environment refers to those factors that impact employees’ performance but are essentially out of their control. Many environmental factors influence performance. Some factors facilitate performance, while others constrain it. A word processor who has to work with a defective personal computer is certainly not going to perform at peak levels, regardless of ability or desire. Students who are working full time and carrying a full load of classes may not do as well on an exam as they would if they could cut back on their work hours, despite the fact that they have high ability and high motivation. Motivation is the fourth major factor that determines whether a person will perform a task well. Motivation is a force within or outside of the body that energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior. Within the body, examples might be needs, personal values, and goals, while an incentive might be seen as a force outside of the body.