Midterm Case Senarios
Please Answer The 5 Scenarios
You are also welcome to give additional feedback from scholarly journals or articles. Do cite your sources and references.
1. The sales office of a large industrial products wholesale company has an increasing problem that salespeople are arriving late at the office each morning. Some sales reps go directly to visit clients rather than showing up at the office as required by company policy. Others arrive several minutes after their appointed start time. The vice-president of sales does not want to introduce time clocks, but this may be necessary if the lateness problem isn’t corrected. Using the MARS model of individual behavior, diagnose the possible reasons why salespeople may be engaging in this “lateness” behavior.
2. A supervisor receives regular information about a sales employee’s performance (e.g. sales volume, incomplete paperwork, etc.) and must complete a performance appraisal of the person’s work. The supervisor has a complete description of the employee’s job but has never worked in the field as a sales representative. Moreover, the supervisor is relatively new to this job and therefore has little experience observing or appraising the performance of salespeople. What attribution error is likely to occur under these conditions and what effect would it have on the performance appraisal results?
3. Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory was dismissed by experts more than three decades ago, yet Maslow’s writing has had a lasting and valuable effect by advocating a more holistic, humanistic, and positive approach to human motivation. Discuss these three approaches and point out how they were applied in Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory.
4. The four-drive theory is one of the few theories of motivation that recognizes the central role of human emotions in the motivation process. Fully describe the four-drive theory and explain how drives influence employee motivation.
5. Self-leadership provides a different way of thinking about motivating employees. Identify and fully describe three of the elements of the self-leadership model and explain how self-leadership differs from other applied motivation practices.