Abstract
Motivation comes from the Latin word "movere", to move (Kreitner, 1998) and is defined in organizational context as "the willingness to exert high levels of efforts towards organizational goals, conditioned by the efforts' ability to satisfy some individual needs" (Robbins, 1993). For Robbins, unsatisfied needs create tension that in turn makes the individual act to reach satisfaction. More clearly, people are always looking for satisfying their needs; making them feel that by acting in a certain way, they will receive a fair compensation that will help them to fulfill their needs is a strong motivator.
The perceived importance of motivation in firms' success is illustrated by the huge amount of research and papers concerning the subject, bringing sometimes confusion instead of understanding, due to their important divergences (Tai K. Oh, 1972). However, in spite of this apparent diversity, Ramlall (2004) highlights that the differences between theories come only from different views of the needs that people try to satisfy. Motivation is a quite complex field, as it has to do with human beings; as Adair (2007) illustrates, 50% of motivation come from the environment but the remaining 50% come from inside the individual. This is why there is no "universally established rules" to be followed by leaders willing to motivate their staff, different motivation theories and the advice they bring are based on different views of human beings.
