Employee Motivational Factors

1. Executive Summary

Employee motivation and job satisfaction are key components relating to performance. Managers are often tasked with the challenge of motivating their employees in order to increase satisfaction and performance within the workplace. Our study analyzes self-fulfillment and discrepancies among employees. We wanted to know which motivational factors are present in companies of our population and whether or not those factors are valued or expected from our population.

2. Introduction

Rationale

From an organizational behavior standpoint, it is important to consider factors of motivation when analyzing job satisfaction. In a healthcare industry study physician motivation was probed and the findings determined that non-financial factors such as responsibility and advancement are motivators for job satisfaction (S. Dalton). Our study pursued this area with some qualifying questions concerning peer respect and self-fulfillment. Another job satisfaction study showed an interesting finding that though job characteristics were positively related to autonomous motivation, the motivation didn't mediate many of the effects of job characteristics on outcomes (Motiv Emot (2008) 32:11–22). We therefore had a large focus on job characteristics in the questionnaire.

The respondents of the study are 57 graduate students at Tennessee State University. They were chosen because as Master’s students they are employed or treat their schooling as full time employment. The sample population will also increase validity with honest survey answers. Some graduate students understand the importance of validity in survey data and thus provided honest responses.

One objective was to determine the degree to which the employee is satisfied with the job. The structure was adapted from a prior study from Hackman and Oldham but our questions were different. Hackman and Oldham judged job satisfaction by survey respondents’ intent to quit the paid job. We asked...