Sustaining Motivation in Times of Change due to Crisis (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, Cologne Business School Köln, language: English, abstract: "Organizational Behavior - It's all about people!" That is how the organizational behavior class is called at the Copenhagen Business School, where I spent the fifth semester of my studies in European Business Administration and which influenced the choice of topic for my Bachelor's Thesis.

Organizing people's daily cooperation is very important in order to ensure efficient and effective business operations. But coordination alone does not suffice: employee motivation is indispensable since a motivated staff with a high degree of commitment to the company is crucial for success. Especially the front-line people, who represent the company in the direct contact to the customer, should not only be well organized but also highly motivated in order to deliver an outstanding service, to put across the right image and to leave a good mark, so that the satisfied customer decides to return and to recommend the company to others.

In order to understand people's needs, expectations and driving forces, the complex studies of motivation have established various theories over the past decades. However, drawing the right conclusions from theories which seem to be suitable in particular work situations, and effectively applying the results is very challenging for the manager in charge. This job becomes even harder in times of organizational change, when uncertainties exist among employees, which might easily result in low employee motivation. Employees' fear of and resistance to change is one of the major problems when it comes to organizational change and motivation. Still, this difficult situation of organizational change can become even more challenging, namely in times of severe crisis when a company's survival is heavily threatened.