BUSI 240 Week 1 Discussion Board Forum 1 Thread Example

Discussion Board Forum 1 Thread: The MARS Model of Individual Behavior

BUSI 240 Organizational Behavior and Management, Discussion Board Forum 1 Thread

Thread by [Student Name]

The workplace example is a composite; the textbook and study cited are real, and textbook locations are given by chapter because page numbers differ between printings.

The key term I chose is the MARS model of individual behavior, which McShane and Von Glinow (2015, ch. 2) use to explain why employees perform as they do. The model holds that an employee's voluntary behavior and results depend on four factors working together: motivation, ability, role perceptions and situational factors. If any one of them is weak, performance suffers, no matter how strong the others are.

Motivation refers to the forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity and persistence of effort. Ability includes both natural aptitudes and learned capabilities, the knowledge and skills needed to do the work. Role perceptions are the employee's understanding of which tasks are expected, how important each is and how to do them. Situational factors are conditions outside the employee's immediate control, such as time, budgets, equipment and the actions of coworkers (McShane & Von Glinow, 2015, ch. 2).

The model's value becomes clear in an example. Imagine a warehouse supervisor whose new order picker is filling far fewer orders than others on the same shift. The supervisor's first thought is that the new hire does not care. The MARS model suggests four questions instead. Is the picker motivated, or discouraged by something? Does the picker have the ability, for example knowing the warehouse layout and the scanner system? Does the picker understand the role, such as whether accuracy matters more than speed? Is something in the situation, perhaps a faulty scanner or an aisle that is always blocked, slowing the work? A supervisor who asks only about motivation will fix the wrong problem three times out of four. In my own experience in retail, the slow worker was usually the one who had never been shown where things were.

Research supports treating motivation and ability as separate influences. Van Iddekinge et al. (2018) combined studies that measured both and found that their effects on performance were mostly additive: each contributed on its own, and the much-cited idea that performance equals ability multiplied by motivation received little support. That finding matters for managers, because it means training can raise performance even when motivation is average, and better motivation can help even when skills are still developing.

The model also reminds managers that the four factors interact over time. A capable, motivated employee who is repeatedly blocked by broken equipment may eventually lose motivation, so a situational problem left unfixed can turn into a motivation problem. Likewise, an employee unsure of the role may waste effort on the wrong tasks and then appear to lack ability. Seeing these chains helps a supervisor trace a symptom back to its original cause.

For a supervisor, the practical lesson is to diagnose before reacting. A short conversation that asks what the employee understands the job to be, what gets in the way and what training has been received will often reveal a role or situation problem that no amount of encouragement or discipline would fix.

References

McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2015). Organizational behavior: Emerging knowledge, global reality (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Van Iddekinge, C. H., Aguinis, H., Mackey, J. D., & DeOrtentiis, P. S. (2018). A meta-analysis of the interactive, additive, and relative effects of cognitive ability and motivation on performance. Journal of Management, 44(1), 249-279. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206317702220