The psychology of development
S.H.Mahmud
Development is a continuous process of change from the existing level to the planned new level. It implies that the level aimed at is better than the past one. It is necessary, however, to limit the development goals in terms of what to achieve or in what direction a particular action must be taken. For example, one may think of development objectives as improving people's level of living by increasing production, increasing workers' productivity, fulfilling targets, improving educational and health standards etc.
Other development objectives are maintenance of group harmony and people's involvement in development processes in order to foster self-reliance. It is assumed that goal attainment through external intervention alone will not bring about development as people are not participants in the endeavour. While achieving objectives with people's involvement it is also necessary to see that these achievements do not result in disparity in terms of possessions and profits.
Motivation and work
Motivation is a process of arousing action, sustaining the activity in progress and regulating the pattern in activity. The term motivation points to the final strength of the action tendency, which is experienced by the person as in "I want to."
The question which arises here is whether there is one type of force which makes people work and another to maintain their job performance at a certain level. We can delineate two types of forces, viz. (i) pull forces which are manipulated by external sources in terms of incentives, goal or objective value which attract or repeal the individual, (ii) the internal urge, wish, feeling, emotion, drive, instinct, want, desire, demand, interest, aspiration, plan, need or motive which give rise to action.
The push forces are difficult to analyse as they may operate at a different level of one's consciousness. At level (1), the individual is consciously aware of the motivation; at (2), the individual is aware, but not willing to articulate; at (3), the individual is unaware and, hence, unable to articulate his feelings.
If one's push forces have their origin in the unconscious, they are not available for expression or examination, thus making their identification difficult.
Expression of behaviour (B) is a function (F) of the person (P) interacting with the situation or environment (E), i.e. B=f (P, E). Any behaviour may be conceived in terms of this model; the behaviour of development personnel can also be conceived. The environment then can be seen in terms of the expectations that emerge from the organisation or the authority figures or constantly changing socio-political system.
The person can be seen in three aspects, viz. the cognitive, in terms of knowledge and ability, affective in terms of the needs or goals, conative in terms of the effort action required for a particular hehaviour. Among these three factors -- knowing, feeling and action with respect to an individual -- being aware of the happenings in the environment, seeking information, and getting oriented to the demands of the situation are functions of the cognitive component.
One's feelings or emotions in terms of like or dislikes, needs, motivation, want desire etc. form the affective component. The conative component denotes the effort required to realise a goal or the drive that accompanies task performance.
A harmonious combination of these elements in a person may ensure his proper orientation in changing job demands. It may happen that some individuals may only have need or goals but not the required ability to translate these aspirations into action. These needs remain unfulfilled, resulting in dissatisfaction or discontentment.
Aspiration comes under the affective component in a person, and motivates the use of the intellect and the effort to interact with the environment. For development personnel, aspiration plays a very important role in realising one's potential in job performance to adjust to a specific environment.
Motivation of the people
One of the objectives of any development, for example, rural development is to raise the expectations of the rural masses on the assumption that this would lead to increased productive effort. But the basic factor that expectation in a vacuum would instead lead to increased dissatisfaction has not been taken into account.
Here, the people are still clamouring for satisfaction of their basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, and a piece of land for farming. In this context, the expectation raised by the rural development programmes could not be fulfilled as the people did not have basic resources to even alleviate their existing miseries.
Naturally, therefore, the gap between expectations and attainment had led, to some extent, to disquiet in rural areas. When we move around in the cities, especially in Dhaka, we meet these unfortunate rural people moving towards the unban areas to seek employment, or at least self-employment.
To attain the objectives of development mentioned earlier, the important contribution the authority can make is in ensuring competent and efficient officials. Development personnel must have missionary zeal, knowledge, skills and above all experience of working effectively with the people.
Thus, key officials are change agents who understand people's needs and important programs effectively. They must have the qualities of leadership and appropriate level of motivation to work hard and inspire others to participate.
Motivation development
To develop the motivation of development personnel we can use aspiration as a method of developing self-motivation, inculcating the need to achieve, improving the work environment (hygiene factor), making the job meaningful to the individual by enlarging its context (motivating factor), using the knowledge of results of his own performance, improving interpersonal relations in the organisation, providing periodic training as required for performing a job, improving the procedure for recruitment based on job specifications and, finally, by bringing about a change in the administrative culture from control and coercion to measures leading to understanding and cooperation.
It is thought that these measures, which have been tested in innumerable studies, could be suitably used to motivate officers and their subordinates. The utility of a particular method depends upon the goal to be achieved, the type of person involved, and the nature of the work situation.
Conclusion
The measures discussed so far for motivation development have potential for not only motivating key personnel in a bureaucracy but also for sustaining the improved level of motivation. The selection of any of these measures depends upon the nature of the personnel to the motivated, type of task to be achieved, and the extent of social interaction envisaged in the work process.
To motivate the development officials, apart from measures like improving the training and congenial work conditions, development of their aspirations and need for achievement as a self-motivating process also have great promise. The level of aspiration technique serves as an amplifier of the need satisfaction where the individual constantly becomes aware of what he is doing in relation to his own implicit norms and the explicit norms of the organisation and provides him the self-motivating force to be what he can be under a given situation.
S.H.Mahmud teaches Psychology at the University of Dhaka.
