MT302 Unit 4 Motivation Theory Application Paper Example

Fourteen Hours to Four: An MT302 Unit 4 Motivation Theory Application of Equity and Goal-Setting to One Title Office Job

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT302: Organizational Behavior

Unit 4 Motivation Theory Application

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The office, its people and figures are composite; the theories and studies cited are real.

The Case

The job. At the composite Fort Wayne title office from earlier units, closing coordinators assemble closing packages: they collect lender documents, check figures against the title commitment, prepare settlement statements for review, schedule signings and confirm wire instructions. The office has five coordinators and four escrow officers. Officers conduct closings and own the client relationship; coordinators prepare everything that reaches the closing table.

Month-end. The final three working days of a month carry about a third of all closings, because buyers time purchases to the end of a month to reduce prepaid interest. Coordinators have always stayed late voluntarily at month-end to get packages out. Office timesheets show about fourteen voluntary hours a month per coordinator from September through February.

The change. In March, the office introduced a bonus of $35 per closed file for escrow officers. Coordinators were not included. The announcement said the bonus recognized officers' role in winning and keeping lender relationships.

What followed. Voluntary month-end hours per coordinator: March 9, April 5, May 4. Packages reaching officers less than a day before closing rose from 6 percent of files in February to 15 percent in May.

Equity Theory

Core claim. Adams (1963) proposed that people weigh what they get from a job, money and recognition among them, against what they put in, such as effort and skill, and set that balance beside the balance they see for someone else. When the comparison is unfavorable, people experience tension and act to reduce it, including by reducing their inputs.

Applied. The coordinators' natural comparison others are the officers. Before March, the comparison was stable: officers earned more, but they also carried the client relationship and the liability of the closing. The bonus changed the outcome side for officers only, tied to files the coordinators had prepared. Two coordinators said in a team meeting that the bonus paid officers for packages coordinators had stayed late to finish. The input the coordinators controlled most easily was discretionary time, and that is what fell.

Prediction. If equity theory explains the change, voluntary hours should fall beginning in the month the bonus started, while required hours and work quality during regular hours should stay roughly the same.

Evidence. The timesheets show the drop beginning in March, the bonus month. Regular hours did not change, and the audited error rate on packages stayed at about 2 percent. The prediction holds.

The coordinators did not stop working; they stopped giving the hours nobody had ever asked them for.

Goal-Setting Theory

Core claim. Locke and Latham (2002), reviewing thirty-five years of studies, concluded that a hard target stated as a number tends to outperform an open-ended request to try one's hardest, as long as people accept the target and learn how they are doing. Without a clear target, effort tends to be lower and less steady.

Applied. The coordinators' only stated goal has always been to "keep files moving." It has no number, no deadline beyond the closing itself and no feedback except complaints when a package is late. The officers, by contrast, received a specific target with the bonus: files closed per month, reported weekly.

Prediction. If goal-setting theory applies, coordinator effort should have been uneven before March as well as after, and officers' effort should have become more focused once they had a specific target.

Evidence. Before March, the share of packages reaching officers less than a day before closing varied from 3 to 11 percent month to month, with no obvious pattern. After March, officers' files closed per month rose by about 8 percent. Both fit the prediction.

What Each Theory Explains and Misses

Equity theory explains the timing. It accounts for why the drop began in March and why it fell on discretionary hours. It does not explain why coordinator effort had been uneven for months before the bonus.

Goal-setting theory explains the pattern. It accounts for the long-running variability in coordinator preparation and for the officers' sharper focus. It does not explain why voluntary hours fell so quickly in the bonus month; a vague goal was nothing new.

Neither theory alone explains the whole case. Robbins and Judge (2019) note that motivation theories are often complementary rather than competing, and this case is an example: one theory tells us when, the other tells us why the baseline was weak.

An Alternative Explanation

Spring is also when the housing market picks up, so coordinators might have cut voluntary hours because regular hours were already full. The timesheets argue against this: regular hours stayed flat from February to May, and the drop in voluntary hours came before the spring rise in closings. A second alternative is fatigue after a busy winter, but the winter was not unusually busy.

What the Coordinators Said

I asked three coordinators, informally, why they stopped staying late. One said, "Why would I, when someone else gets paid for it?" Another said she had not decided to stop; she just noticed in April that she was leaving at five. The third said she still stayed late on files for one officer who thanked her, but not for the others. That third answer is small, but it suggests that part of the fix costs nothing at all. All three answers fit equity theory, and the third adds a detail the theory predicts: recognition is part of the outcome side, so an officer who acknowledged coordinators' work restored part of the balance for that coordinator.

Recommendation

A specific month-end target shared by coordinators and officers and rewarded as a team: all packages for the last three business days delivered to officers at least one business day before closing, with a team bonus for every month the target is met. The design addresses equity by including coordinators in the reward for files they prepare, and goal-setting by replacing "keep files moving" with a number, a deadline and weekly feedback.

Conclusion

Applied to one title office job, equity theory explains why coordinators' voluntary month-end hours fell from fourteen to four after a bonus that excluded them, and goal-setting theory explains why their effort had always been uneven under a vague goal. A shared, specific target rewarded as a team draws on both.

References

Adams, J. S. (1963). Toward an understanding of inequity. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), 422-436. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040968

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2019). Organizational behavior (18th ed.). Pearson.