Introduction
Motivating staff may be a critical factor in ensuring that an organization thrives and succeeds in an increasingly competitive environment. The rationale is that, as employees become increasingly motivated to perform in their jobs, the likelihood of their becoming job involved increases significantly. Hence, the researchers postulate the existence of a direct relationship between motivation and job involvement. This suggests an important opportunity, that of using the valuable asset of human capital as a means of enhancing success in a turbulent and dynamic corporate environment.
A new employee has a set of needs as well as a set of expectations of the organization, which change and evolve over time. The extent to which these are satisfied determines the employee’s level of motivation to work. Muchinsky (1990) defines motivation as the individual’s desire to demonstrate a particular behavior and to willingly expend effort. Nelson and Quick (2002) propose that motivation may be defined as the process of arousing and sustaining goal directed behavior. Odendaal and Roodt (2003) define motivation as the process that accounts for the individual’s intensity, direction and persistence in the attainment of a particular goal. Similarly, Greenberg and Baron (2000) and Schultz, Bagraim, Potgieter, Viedge and Werner (2003) define motivation in terms of three things that are related to behavior. First, motivation arouses the energy that drivesthe individual’s behavior, then it directs theindividual to choose the correct behavior for goal attainment, and finally it sustains theindividual’s behavior until the goal has beenachieved and the need is met. Following thesevarious definitions of motivation, the questionarises as to precisely what drives employeesto willingly expend effort and arouses them tobehave in such a way that the goal is attained andthe need is met. Answers to these questions maybe found in several theories of motivation
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