The purpose of this blog is to learn about how management teams can find motivation to successfully carry out their days during a major crisis, such as Covid-19, when they have been moved out of their usual environment and into an online platform. This topic is important to us because this is something a lot of people are struggling with currently.
BUCHANAN, L. (2015). The Psychology of Productivity. Inc, 37(2), 50–103.
This article focuses on the psychology behind productivity and how both procrastination and perfectionism affect productivity in adverse ways. Relating to our topic, I think productivity loss is important to address in terms of management and this article is able to suggest ways in which motivation in the form of productivity is not always being met. There are suggestions on how to address procrastination and methods to avoid procrastination, which could be helpful to our blog post by offering the suggested methods as tools for managers themselves and for managers to implement with employees. These include check-lists, getting work done early in the day, and collaboration tools. In addition, the article specifically focuses on productivity in the workplace. This is specific to our topic which covers productivity in the workplace as well.
McGregor, L., & Doshi, N. (2020, April 9). How to Keep Your Team Motivated, Remotely. Retrieved January 20, 2021, from https://www.google.com/amp/s/hbr.org/amp/2020/04/how-to-keep-your-team-motivated-remotely
This article provides data supporting the claim that people are less motivated when working from home and gives managers effective ways to increase their team’s motivation and productivity. During these unprecedented times, the majority of people are working from home and managers are faced with the task of keeping their team motivated while in a very unmotivating circumstance. This article is targeted towards managers and how they can motivate their teams by redirecting the focus away from tactical work and focusing on making work more engaging. The article provides managers with a simple day-by-day rhythm they can implement into their week. There was a part of the article that stood out most to me and that was “What you measure is the single strongest signal to your people of what you care about.” If you care about your team’s motivation, then that is what you need to measure.
Verburg, M. Robert, Nienaber, Ann-Marie, and Searle, H. Rosalind. (2017, August 31) The Role of Organizational Control Systems in Employees’ Organizational Trust and Performance Outcomes. Sage Journals, 179-206. Retrieved January 21, 2020 from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059601117725191
This article is about how organizational and managerial control is related to employees’ trust and performance with the company. It focuses on how different forms of control relates to employees, which would then result in a positive work performance and consistent motivation from the worker. So many people have had to get used to working from home, and it is hard to find motivation working remotely by yourself for so long. Managers are faced with the difficult task to keep their employees motivated and continue to build that trust and bond with every worker. According to studies within the article, trust, control, and performance from managers will result in a positive and productive performance from employees. This article works well with all the other articles chosen for our blog, as two of them take a deeper look into Covid, and this one focuses on the importance of managers performance and trust for their workplace.
Strom, T. (2020). Authentic leadership and relational power increasing employee performance: A systematic review of “leadership and power” as a positive dyadic relationship. Journal of Small Business Strategy, 30(3), 86-101. Retrieved from https://libjournals.mtsu.edu/index.php/jsbs/article/view/1315
This article contains valuable information for people in managerial positions. It shows many ways in which managers can provide positive leadership within an organization and create beneficial results. It also looks into the positive perception created between an organization with employee engagement and how managers can promote this behavior. This article uses accurate and up to date statistics to evaluate common characteristics of a positive leader. They look into important topics for leaders such as emotional stability, core self-evaluation, etc. This article is relevant to the topic chosen for the blog because it provides the importance of certain traits managers can have to promote a positive workplace for associates and how managers can obtain positive power, which is an important trait to have during a crisis when associates could be lacking motivation.
Lalonde, C. (2004). In Search of Archetypes in Crisis Management. Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management, 12(2), 76–88. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1111/j.0966-0879.2004.00437.x
This journal talks about how crises are frequently defined as opportunities for managers to make strategic decisions. According to this article, research is conducted to discover new forms of management styles taken on by organizations during times of crisis. Results of this research demonstrate three archetypes of crisis management. These are collectivists, integrators and reactive types, each with the specific characteristics defined by Miller (1987). These consist of leadership, strategies, structures and environments. The research also looks at participants’ appreciation of the performance of their organization and of the managers dealt with the crisis. Finally, the journal discusses the importance of applying theories to the field of crisis management and several promising areas of research in this field. This source applies hand in hand with our topic of “Maintaining Motivation as management in an online setting during COVID-19 crisis”. Management can be successful in multiple ways and taking a deeper dive into what those qualities and strategies are is the focus of our main idea.
By Maddie Jensen, Madeline Holden, Breyana Gaffney, Makayla Gaffney, and Brett Burton