Application of Motivation Theories to Event Management Industry - III

The Equity Theory 

Equity theory explains that employees are concerned not only the amount of benefits they receive for their efforts, but also with connection of the amount of benefits to what other employee receive (Armstrong, 2010).  

This theory provides description, forecast and governor on how employees develop perceptions of equality on the sharing of resources in organization (Eketu, 2018). When two people exchange something, there is a possibility that one or both will feel that the exchange was inequitable. “This is the case frequently when an individual exchanges his services for pay” (Adams, 1965).

Human resource management plays a main part in employees’ perceived equity of results (Folger & Cropanzano, 1994). Therefore, equity theory will be supportive to organization in observing what motivates employees (Berkotiz, 1987). When we discuss about motivation of employee in event management industry, the Equity Theory can be proposed as one of the most relevant theory.

According to (Adams, 1965), The Equity Theory of Motivation deals with the way of employees compare their values to other employees in the same situation based on their inputs and outcomes.

Inputs - effort, experience, education, loyalty, commitment.

Outcome – Salary, bonuses, annual holiday allowance, stock options, promotions, recognitions, Performance appraisals.

Application of Adam’s Equity Theory  

The organizations should treat their employees equally and fairly in order to get them motivated. Inequity has created a big impact in my current company which is one of the leading event management organization in Sri Lanka but still the management has not been able to recognize or analyze this issue. In fact the company does not measure this inequity issue as a reason for the employee dissatisfaction or demotivation in their most important department.

This company has been organizing lot of main exhibitions in Sri Lanka since 2002. Each exhibitions are headed and managed by individual project managers as show in figure 1.

                                               Figure 1: The event management structure of the company

According to the figure 1 all the project managers are having same responsibilities and work scope as mentioned below;

-       Marketing sponsorships and stalls

-       Budgeting and preparing income forecasts

-      Collecting stalls and sponsors payments

-  Managing the respective employees of the other department ex. Project admin, design, promotion and site management

-       Finding and coordinating with supplier’s ex. Logistics providers, media and venue providers.

-       Preparing and executing promotion plan

-       Approving all the promotional materials

-       Coordination with government and other association

-       Overall management of the event

In the company, the management has failed to create equity within the project management team.

Even though each project managers are having the same responsibilities and workload, the management is treating them differently. Some project managers are getting high salaries and other allowance but others are not receiving at least the half of their benefits. The project managers who over rewarded do not concern on the development of their respective events as they are comfortable with their benefits and not making efforts for giving the equal inputs to their outcome.

Underpaid project managers gradually decrease their inputs since the company does not give them the equal benefits compared to their inputs. Some under rewarded project managers have more responsibilities and events than the overpaid project managers although they are not benefited equally. Furthermore, some project managers have started comparing their salaries and benefits with other similar organizations’ employees and they have figured out that their benefits are very low when compared with other competitive organizations. During the past few years, the project management team’s productivity and work engagement has significantly gone down as a result of the discrepancy between their inputs and outcome. Most of the times inequities can subject to a rise in absenteeism and even resignation of a company (Greenberg, 1999). Inequity has not only caused demotivation within the company but also the unity of the team.

The company should take necessary action to restore the equity in project management department. Team work is one of the key factors to make an event success. If the management is further failing to create equity in the company, they will be unable to secure their current position in the industry. Moreover, the company can lose their most experience employees due to the inequity. 

References

Adams, J. S., 1965. Inequality in social exchange. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, pp. 267-299.

Armstrong, M., 2010. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 10th ed. London: Kogan.

Berkotiz, 1987. Pay, equity, job gratification, and comparisons in pay satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Eketu, C. A., 2018. Workplace Equity: Critique for Epistemological Usefulness. American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR), 2(7), pp. 15-19.

Folger, R. & Cropanzano, R., 1994. Organizational justice and human resource management. s.l.:Thousands Oak: Sage Publications.

Greenberg, J., 1999. Managing Behavior in Organizations. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.