What Motivates People?

Motivation is an important phenomenon in Administration and in  Humanistic Psychology. In administration, it helps in better job designing for employees leading to increase in production whereas in Psychology it helps in understanding human behaviour.

People tend to make larger-than-life decisions in their life. Some of these decisions fail miserably, others help people attain new heights. What motivates them to take the big step? Well. I am not the first one to ponder about it. Abraham Maslow has analysed it threadbare in his famous hierarchy of needs theory. There have been many refinements, most noticeably by Frederick Herzberg in his two-factor theory. Maslow said human needs follow a hierarchy from lower order needs to higher order needs; physical, security, social, esteem and self-actualisation needs, in that order. While Herzberg said, the motivating factors are different from demotivating (hygiene) factors. That is, he classified Maslow's lower order needs into Hygiene Factors and higher order needs into Motivators. While their theories are enticing, I find them incomplete and too simplistic.
I believe, they tremendously undermined the complex nature of motivation in human beings. I would propose my modification as the following:

1. We tend to take the bigger step when we are more-or-less assured of the possibility of the parity being restored in case of failure. That is, we tend to evaluate the possibility of rewards in case of success and possibility of damages in case of failure. If we find, it is not too difficult to go back to where we began from, we generally take the plunge. I call it the 'Principle of Retrospective Parity'.

2. There are exceptions to this phenomenon. Some extremely entrepreneurial people don't adhere to this principle. They simply take the plunge - come what may. Generally, they are driven by the possibility of much greater rewards outweighing the costs involved. I call it the Principle of Sanguinity.

So to restate Maslow in context of above two principles,

If human beings are reasonably satisfied with their current level of lower order needs, they will be ready to temporarily abandon them in pursuit of higher order needs, when they are almost sure that they can restore the lower needs to their previous level of existence.

Just a thought. How appealing is it?

Update:
I later found out it that it is somewhat similar to what Victor Vroom proposed in his Expectancy theory. In this theory, he proposed:

Valence = Expectancy x Instrumentality

Which basically means that people are motivated to perform a task when they believe it will lead to positive rewards. Possibility of such rewards coming their way is an important part of that consideration.
But as you might see, Vroom's theory doesn't compare itself with need based theory]ies of Maslow and Herzberg.