Themes in Puzzle of Motivation Movie and its Relations to Maslow's Hierarchy

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Movie Review – The Puzzle of Motivation
Dan Pink’s contribution to the persistent and often contradicting topics of extrinsic motivation, financial incentives, and the if-then rewards adopted in most business models can be very shocking yet applicable in the 21st century. Putting his expertise as a lawyer into practice, Pink went ahead to demystify the fact that rewards and particularly financial incentives are the only options to enhance cognitive performance. With evidence from prior researches in universities across the globe, Pink made the shocking revelations that rewards often narrow the focus, restrict the possibilities, thus limiting creativity and innovation (Pink). From one of the researches, the conclusion was that larger rewards for tasks that require even the most cognitive skills could lead to poor performances. Pink further demystifies the 20th-century management model with financial incentives and if-then reward systems at the epicentre as an idea whose time has come. Like any other invention, management will reach a point where it ceases to be efficient or become obsolete, and according to Pink, 21st century is that time where management needs to be revolutionized. The traditional management model works well where compliance is the main goal.
To counter the model where financial incentives and rewards take precedence, Pink demonstrates with science what he termed as the new operating system for business. A management model that is guided by autonomy, mastery, and purpose is necessary for the realization of maximum productivity, worker satisfaction, and worker engagement (Pink). Pink signs off by outlining some of the tradeoffs between what is scientifically correct and what business does, reiterating that extrinsic motivation does not always work and curtails creativity as opposed to intrinsic motivation. The key takeaway from the film is that intrinsic motivation supersedes extrinsic motivation, and is high time businesses adopt the concept of increased autonomy, mastery, and purpose in place of rewards and punishment.
Pink’s work gives the impression that intrinsic motivation is more superior to extrinsic motivation. The new operating system for a business proposed by Pink, that centres around autonomy, mastery and purpose can also be evaluated as an element of trust. Some elements of intrinsic motivation proposed by Pink such as autonomy and self-direction also double up as congruent elements of workplace trust (Okello and Gilson par.3). When the management gives the subordinates the autonomy to work on whatever they feel conformable working with, it is an obvious expression of trust towards the employee and consequently results in improved performance, and most importantly, impacts on the intrinsic motivation.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become an important psychological tool and a motivational theory that hierarchically depicts human needs, with those ne...