Human Resources and Organisational Design
Domain 8 covers why people perform, how they are led, how teams develop and how work is structured. Questions typically give a scenario - a demotivated team, a growing company, a conflict - and ask you to diagnose it with a named theory rather than with intuition.
Motivation
- Maslow's hierarchy (physiological → self-actualisation): intuitive but weakly supported empirically.
- Herzberg: hygiene factors (salary, conditions, policy) prevent dissatisfaction; motivators (achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth) create satisfaction. A pay rise removes dissatisfaction but does not motivate.
- McGregor: Theory X (control) vs Theory Y (self-direction). McClelland: achievement, affiliation, power.
- Adams: equity theory - people compare their input/outcome ratio with others'.
- Vroom: Force = Expectancy × Instrumentality × Valence. It is multiplicative, so any factor at zero kills motivation.
Leadership
- Trait, behavioural (Lewin: autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire; Blake & Mouton's grid) and contingency/situational approaches (Hersey–Blanchard: telling, selling, participating, delegating, matched to follower maturity).
- Transformational vs transactional leadership.
Teams and structure
- Tuckman: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Belbin's team roles.
- Structures: functional, divisional (product/geography), matrix (dual authority), network/flat. Dimensions: span of control, centralisation, formalisation, departmentalisation.
- Mintzberg: strategic apex, middle line, operating core, technostructure, support staff.
Worked example
A sales team misses targets despite a bonus. Expectancy = 0.3 (target seen as unrealistic), Instrumentality = 0.4 (bonus payment discretionary), Valence = 0.8, so Force = 0.096. Reasoning: raising the bonus amount barely helps because it acts on valence only. Making the target attainable (0.8) and publishing a fixed payment rule (0.9) gives Force = 0.8 × 0.9 × 0.8 = 0.576, a sixfold improvement with no extra cost.
Traps
- Calling salary a motivator under Herzberg.
- Claiming a matrix structure preserves unity of command.
- Treating Maslow as validated science.
- Assuming autocratic leadership is always wrong regardless of situation.