Public Administration- Motivation Theories

Table of Contents

Public Administration- Relevance ESIC Deputy Director Exam

PART-B of Recruitment Test (RT): Public Administration and Development Issues.

Defining Public Administration:
- Public administration is formed by two different terms, public and administration.
- Public: means government which is mainly focus on government activities and actions
- Administration: is derived from the Latin word “Administer” which means to serve, too direct, to control, to care for, or to look after people. The term “administration” means management of public or private affairs.
- Hence, simply public administration is known as the management of public affairs.
Public Administration is nothing but ‘government in action. Public Administration is the implementation arm of the executive.
- Public Administration is responsible for the implementation of government policies.
Public administration is a feature of all nations, whatever their system of government.
- Within nations, public administration is practiced at the central, intermediate, and local levels.
- The relationships between different levels of government within a single nation constitute a growing problem of public administration.
We have already covered the following topics of Public Administration-

In this article, we are going to discuss what is motivation and various types of Motivation theories in Public Administration.

Motivation is a state-of-mind, filled with energy and enthusiasm, which drives a person to work in a certain way to achieve desired goals.
Motivation is a force that persuades a person to work with enhanced commitment and focus even if things are against that person.
Sustained Motivation often translates into a certain kind of human behavior.
Various psychologists have studied and observed human behavior and propounded many motivation theories. We can classify these theories into two categories-

Content-based theories of Motivation: Content Theories deal with “what” motivates people and it is concerned with individual needs and goals.
- Proponents of Content-based theories- Maslow, Alderfer, Herzberg, and McCelland, etc. studied motivation from a “content” perspective.
Process-based theories of Motivation: The Process Theories deal with the “process” of motivation and are concerned with “how” motivation occurs.
- Proponents of Process-based theories- Vroom, Porter & Lawler, Adams, and Locke studied motivation from a “process” perspective.