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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: talent management

At Orrin Consulting, a manager tells a consultant that if she wins three new clients this year she will receive a bonus. The consultant values the bonus highly and believes she has the skills to win clients, but she doubts the firm will actually pay the bonus because it withheld one last year. Using Vroom's expectancy theory, which element is weak and reduces her motivation?

The weak element is instrumentality. The consultant values the bonus and believes she can win the clients, but she does not trust that achieving the target will actually lead to payment, given last year's withheld bonus. Motivation falls because the performance-to-reward link is doubted.

  1. AValence, because she does not value the bonus
  2. BExpectancy, because she doubts her ability to win clients
  3. CInstrumentality, because she doubts that good performance will lead to the rewardCorrect
  4. DEquity, because she compares her bonus with colleagues' pay

Explanation

She values the reward (high valence) and believes effort leads to performance (high expectancy). Her doubt is that performance will produce the reward, which is instrumentality. Equity is Adams' theory and is not the concern described.

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