What Motivates Employees According to over 40 Years of Motivation Surveys

What motivates employees according to over 40 years of motivation surveys
Carolyn Wiley
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Theoretical background The relationship between people and their work has long attracted psychologists and other behavioural scientists. Psychologists’ interests, dating back to the early years of the twentieth century, reflect the development of the industrial psychology and vocational guidance disciplines. Their work dealt with measurement of aptitudes and abilities to improve the job-person fit. The study of motivation now forms an integral part of both industrial and vocational psychology. However, in both fields, concepts like need, motive, goal, incentive and attitude are appearing with greater frequency than are the concepts of aptitude, ability and skill (Vroom, 1995, p. 4). Three assumptions guide contemporary research on human motivation: (1) Motivation is inferred from a systematic analysis of how personal, task and environmental characteristics influence behaviour and job performance. (2) Motivation is not a fixed trait. It refers to a dynamic internal state resulting from the influence of personal and situational factors. As such, motivation may change with changes in personal, social or other factors. (3) Motivation affects behaviour, rather than performance (Nicholson, 1995: p. 330-1). Initiatives designed to enhance job performance by increasing employee motivation may not be successful if there is a weak link between job performance and an employee’s efforts. Early management theories, such as Frederick W. Taylor’s Scientific Management Theory suggested using financial compensation to impel motivation and job performance. Personality and learning theories in psychology during the early 1900s led to the development of motivational programmes to enhance performance by creating organizational conditions that matched need satisfaction with on-task efforts. Research on the determinants of choice, from the

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