Table of Contents
Concept of Morale:
All administration, public or private, is run by human beings. Human behavior is a vital and essential input of administration. The quality of this factor is the most important determinant of Public Administration. However, it can be a valuable asset or a source of certain problems for the administration depending upon the way the members of the organization come forward to carry out their assigned tasks and responsibilities.
Several scholars regard the problem of human behavior as a fundamental and instinctive problem in any organizational setup. It is a complicated issue for the organization to make its member adjust themselves to the work and the needs of the organization. It has to be ensured that the human beings running the administration should feel a sense of pride and prestige in carrying out their work and their morale is kept high for achieving efficiently and effectively the goals of the administration as well as the happiness of its employees.
Personal Management devotes considerable time and effort in planning for and achieving a high level of morale among the employees. High morale is the only effective solution to several problems like the employee feeling of alienation and giving lukewarm attention to organizational goals, under-utilization of their potential skills and capabilities, and feeling of frustration while discharging their duties.
Effective management of organizational work largely depends upon the willingness of the employees to carry out the organizational tasks with zeal, enthusiasm, and efficiency. Conscious efforts have to be put in by the Personnel Management to secure healthy conditions of work for the employees. The successful functioning of an organization depends upon the techniques used for securing the full attention and willing cooperation of its employees in collective efforts for securing the organizational goals. The surest way to achieve this is to take steps for ensuring high morale among the employees. Each organization strives to achieve a high level of performance. This can be secured only when the morale of the employees is high. As such, securing high morale is an essential need of every organization.
Morale- Meaning and Definition:
In simple words, we can define morale as a psychological feeling and an attitude of the personnel which reflects a keen interest in the work and the level of enthusiasm in carrying out the tasks of the organization. High Morale means a high level of keenness and enthusiasm and Low Morale means a low level in this respect. The dictionary meaning of morale is a state of discipline and spirit in a person or a group and a state of mind as expressed in action. Because human performance is always determined by the level of morale, interaction, behavior, motivation, and ability. A positive and high level in respect of these variables always leads to an efficient and successful system of administration and conversely, a lower level of morale leads to administrative inefficiency and even to failure.
From the institutional point of view, the employees’ morale refers to the stimulating of a feeling of togetherness and a sense of indentification with the job. Morale is an attitude of satisfaction with the desire to continue in and willingness to strive for the goals of the organization to which the personnel belongs. There are two important elements of morale. First, the individual shares the purpose which gives him enthusiasm, energy, and self-discipline. Secondly, the responsibility of the authorities to infuse among the employees a feeling of togetherness, a sense of indentification, and consideration for other members of the institution.
Several scholars have tried to define Morale, and some of the popular definitions are as under:
According to L. D. White, “Morale is both an index of a sound employment situation and a positive means of building an efficient organization. It reflects a social psychological situation, a state of mind in which men and women voluntarily seek to develop and apply their full powers to the tasks upon which they are engaged, by the reasons of the intellectual or moral satisfaction which they drive from their own self-realization, their achievement in their chosen field and their pride in the service.”
In the words of F. M. Marx, “The highest morale has an intellectual as well as emotional quality. Its intellectual quality results from emphasis upon information, understanding, and inter-communications which rest in turn on genuine participation in institutional thinking, planning, deciding, and evaluating. These are the dynamics of morale.”
According to Alexander Leighton, morale can be defined as “the capacity of a group of people to put together persistently and consistently in pursuit of a common purpose.”
In other words, it can be said that morale is a psychological attitude, a state of mind of the persons carrying out the work of administration which determines their quality of work, efficiency, and success in carrying out the tasks of the organization.
An employee’s morale is said to be good or high when he does his work not merely for the sake of emoluments attached to it, but because he feels a sense of self-fulfilment and satisfaction in doing it. Low morale is reflected in the alienation of the employees from their organization and the work they are carrying out.
Types of Morale:
Morale is of two types:
(1) Individual Morale- Individual Morale refers to the attitude or state of mind of a member of the group which determines whether he finds it easy to accept the purpose and values of the group as his own and whether he has a sense of belonging to the group or identity with it or not.
(2) Group Morale- By Group Morale is meant the capacity of a group to pull together persistently and consistently in the pursuit of a common purpose. While analyzing morale, one has to take into account individual as well as group morale.
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