Motivation: The willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need. Three key elements can be seen in this definition; effort, goals and needs.
Effort element is a measure of intensity or drive. The quality of effort is equally important to the intensity of the effort.
Need: An internal state that makes certain outcomes appears attractive. An unsatisfied need creates tension that stimulates drives within an individual. These drives lead to a search behavior to find particular goals that, if attained, will satisfy the need and reduce the tension.
Performance and Motivation: Motivation alone does need lead to performance. The level of performance attained is determined by three independent factors; ability, motivation, and resources. For performance levels to be high, all three factors must be high. If any one is low or missing, the performance level will be adversely affected. For example, a very intelligent student who has the books, but because he/she does not care about grades, will not study (low motivation) and will not get an A grade.