Please present your summaries, critiques and learning reflections in the template we use every week.(point form)

Creating top games at Up The Creek (fictional company)

Up the Creek is a major producer of computer games in Australia for use with a range of various machines and companies. Up the Creek has a knack for creating high-quality best-selling games and its games have sold millions of copies.

How does Up the Creek do it? Their success is partially due to the high motivation of its designers. Only creative game designers are hired, people who really enjoy their work for its own sake. Managers at Up the Creek take steps to make sure that designers really do have reason to enjoy the work they do. The office areas are spacious yet functional and are designed to encourage the sharing of information and ideas between game designers. In addition, designers are encouraged to take all the time they need to come up with revolutionary new ideas for games. Managers think nothing of designers taking time to visit museums or parks to try to come up with a spark of a new idea. With that idea in mind, designers and other co-workers then put forth high levels of effort throughout the design process to make sure that the idea produces a successful new game.

Designers receive rewards they value for their efforts. Once a game is completed and ready to be marketed and sold, its designers are rewarded with a 2-month holiday. Up the Creek's designers' pay is linked to the volume of the sales of the games they create, and they also receive paid overseas trips.

Recently Up the Creek expanded globally and established Up the Creek USA with offices in California. The US recruits, and has only, employees who are highly motivated by the kind of work they do and are at the top of their fields. Employees, in turn, benefit from being in a highly charged and motivating work environment, working alongside the best in the field to develop their skills. Up the Creek USA's employees are also granted considerable autonomy and freedom and are rewarded for their efforts. Overall, the company seems to be doing all the right things to ensure that its employees are highly motivated to create best-selling computer games.

Questions for discussion

1. Based on the expectancy model, how are employees motivated at Up the Creek?
2. Do you think other organisations could copy or imitate their approach to employee motivation? Why or why not?

WEEK 9 TASKS

Motivation in Real Life Situations

Read the following background of these people and decide which motivation models best apply to them and what you would do to motivate them.

Looking for something more

Joanne Harper is an office manager for Zepco, a medium-sized printing business. She is 41, unmarried and lives by herself. She has been office manager for the last five years and earns about $110,000. She started in the human resources administration section and has been with the company for 20 years. Lately, she has been feeling bored and that she hasn't really been doing much with her life. She has been thinking of asking you for a year's leave of absence to go on an around-the-world cruise.

Doing it my way

John Weston is a welder with a mining company in the Pilbara in Western Australia. He is 27, unmarried and has worked with the company for two years. He has been disciplined twice for not following instructions - he always sees a better way. His base wage is $75,400 but he usually averages $300 a week overtime. John sometimes thinks that if he had enough money he would start his own business making trailers for cars and boats. On the other and, he knows that he is a good welder and can just cruise along with this company making enough money to be content without working too hard. You are John's manager. How would you handle him?

Which way to go?

Carol Sinclair is a research chemist with a multinational chemical company in Christchurch, New Zealand. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree from university four years ago she joined her present company. She is 26, married and has no children. Her present salary is $100,500. She is thinking of returning to do master's degree in management because she feels she would be a good manager of the research section. She has been having some trouble in her relationship with her husband lately and so has some hesitancy in becoming involved in working for another degree. She has asked your advice about doing the master's program because you are her manager. She would need Tuesday afternoons off to do one course in the university program so she wouldn't be out too many nights.

Equal rights

Neville Santo is a 22-year old Aborigine who graduated last year from a special program in administrative skills at the university. Neville was a bright student and came to the company with several good recommendations from faculty members. Since he joined your business in the clerical section last June his work has been satisfactory. He isn't an outstanding employee but isn't performing poorly either. At times he lacks initiative and three times he came to work over two hours late without calling to let people know he was going to be late. He likes sports and is said to be a good athlete but doesn't participate in any of the company teams. You know he is interested in becoming a supervisor and have heard he feels the organisation should promote Aborigines to supervisory positions if it is really going to be an equal opportunity employer like it says it is.

The highflier

Tony Hamilton is a technical director in a major division of a major Australian financial investment organisation. He is 33 and has four children aged eleven, eight, five and four. He is currently earning $200,000 a year. He lives in a plush suburb of a large Australian city and has been with the company for eight years. Tony began as an engineer at a salary of $65,000. Within four years he was chief engineer in his division and was promoted last year to his present job. Tony feels he is a lot more capable, intelligent and willing to take risks than most of the people around him and he wants to be very successful and be a managing director of an organisation within the next seven years.

Questions

1. What incentives, conditions or actions would you use to motivate these people?

1. Joanne Harper ___________________________________

1. John Weston ___________________________________

1. Carol Sinclair ___________________________________

1. Neville Santo ___________________________________

1. Tony Hamilton ___________________________________

2. What motivation theories do you think are most applicable to each of these situations and why?

Motivation Theories/Why

1. Joanne Harper
2. John Weston
   3. __________________________________

1. Carol Sinclair

___________________________________

1. Neville Santo
   3. ___________________________________
2. Tony Hamilton
   3. ___________________________________