The Fremont plant of General Motors was founded in 1965. After 17 years of operation, the plant was closed due to experiencing labour-management conflict. Soon after the shutdown, GM and Toyota vehicles cooperated to reopen the plant called New United Manufacturing, Inc (NUMMI), which lately became one of the most successful plant in the car manufacturing industry. In order for NUMMI to be succeed, different management methods were applied, especially various strategies which motivated the employees. This essay will attempt to define motivation, analyse its theories, discuss the motivation lessons from the practices of NUMMI case study and then some recommendations will be given.
DEFINITION
Motivation is defined as a psychological …show more content…
Kwan C.W and Wan C. (2013) indicate that if the employees have more job security, they will be able to think of novel ideas for enhancing the competitiveness of the company. In case of NUMMI, it “buys the hearts of people” by providing job security for the employees with no-strike, no-layoff contract. Especially, by the late 1990s, despite experiencing its nadir with 400 more people were engaged than its needed, NUMMI still continued its no-layoff contract and hired employees in training and maintenance tasks. Consequently, such management method considerably enhanced the workers’ performance, resulting in various awards achieved by NUMMI, notably the J.D. Powers highest quality rating of any North American-produced …show more content…
et al, 2010). Equity is satisfied when the outcomes that the workers expect to be received is deserved with the inputs they contribute to the job. Employees also strive for equity by making comparisons to other colleagues who are similarly situated in the company. According to Wiley (2011), 25% of the employees say that fairness when paying the salaries in one of the most crucial thing they expected from the organisation. In order to motivate the employees, different types of job classifications in NUMMI plant were no longer used and replaced by the application of new management method. In particular, hourly- workers are classified into two categories, including skilled and non- skilled trade and they are paid based on their skills. For each classification, employees are paid the same hourly rate with a slightly difference is 60 cents per hour premium is paid to the leaders. All workers are also received bonuses based on the effort, productivity improvements and their contributions related to production targets. Moreover, equity theory looks beyond the salary and includes other elements in the working environment, including the concern about the thinking and felling about fairness of the employees (Greenberg J. and Cropanzano R, 2002). In NUMMI, equity is enhanced by letting the employees eat at the same cafeteria and