The Research Title
The researcher will complete a research dissertation with the following title:
“An Evaluation of Effectiveness of employees’ Motivation in Enhancing Job Satisfaction and Increased Productivity of Clipsy Restaurant.
The Research Topic and Questions
The research topic for the dissertation entails employees’ motivation and job satisfaction and how motivated employee affects productivity. The researcher will address how motivation is related to productivity in doing so the researcher will be guided by Need-based theories and Reinforcement theories.
Research Rationale
This research will be important for Clipsy Restaurant in understanding impacts of its motivation strategy on productivity. In addition, the management at Clipsy Restaurant will learn on how it can improve its strategy.
Research Questions
While undertaking the study, the researcher will try to answer the following 5 questions.
- How has motivation of employees in Clipsy evolved since its foundation?
- Is employees’ motivation within Clipsy considered a significant area of business?
- Does the Current employees’ motivation strategy adopted by Clipsy in alignment with its business strategy?
- What are the business implications of Clipsy employees’ motivation strategy?
- How can the employee motivation strategy adopted by Clipsy be developed further so that it is most beneficial to the organization?
The researcher currently works as a human research manager at Clipsy Restaurant. Clipsy Restaurant is a small scale restaurant located in London and offers a small scale restaurant that offers fast food to people as well as is among one of the fast food to its highly valued clients. The restaurant has a workforce of 100 employees who work in various departments present at Clipsy Restaurant.
The researcher is a royal customer of Clipsy Restaurant since 2010. The researcher mainly takes his breakfast, lunch as well as supper at Clipsy Restaurant. The employees’ motivation strategy that is adopted by Clipsy has enabled it to attract, retain as well as build high competent employees in a wide range of specialization.
However, the strategy adopted has been associated with some failings and particularly noted from Clipsy high employees’ turn over.
The Research Aim and Objectives
The broad aim of this research is to explore the effectiveness of the current employees’ motivation strategy adopted by Clipsy with a view of making recommendations on how to make it more effective.
In order to achieve the main objective, the researcher will use the following specific objectives:
- To examine how Clipsy employees’ motivation strategy has evolved since its foundation
- To examine how Clipsy employees’ motivation strategy is perceived within the organization at all levels; from senior management through to more junior employees.
- To examine the current components of the reward strategy within Clipsy Restaurant.
- To examine the benefits that Clipsy Restaurant as well as its employees receives through adoption of the existing employees’ motivation strategy.
- As a result of the research, to make recommendations to Clipsy restaurant as to how its employees’ motivation strategy can be improved to be more effective
Literature Review
In this section, the researcher will review relevant literature pertaining to the subject matter. The researcher will do so by reviewing past studies conducted on the subject. Discussing appropriate theories associated with employees’ motivation and how they affect employees’ productivity.
History of Motivation Concept
The following section discusses the historical development of motivation concept. The section indicates how different scientific disciplines and school of thought have contributed to the evolvement of motivation concept over time as well as how it is understood today. The section terminates by highlighting some major motivational theories and how they have influenced the concept of motivation (Bard & Moore 2000).
Historical Development of the Concept of Employees’ Motivation
The traditional model of thought and motivation was dominant in 1900 to 1930. By then motivation was associated with Frederic Winslow Taylor and the scientific school of management that argued that workers generally do not enjoy working and require being motivated to work through financial rewards. The traditional model paved way to the relation model that was dominant between 1930 and 1960.
As time passed, traditional model failed to account some aspects associated with employees conducts. For instance in some circumstances some workers were noted to voluntarily motivate themselves without close monitoring and control. In addition, many workers started doubting managements because their remuneration failed to measure up with their productivity (Arnold & Feldman 1986; Gunter & Furnham 1996).
Dissatisfaction as a result of poor remuneration resulted to the establishment of trade and labor unions. The trade unions exerted a lot of pressure on employers which forced them to realize the importance of social relationships in workplace as well the need to motivate employees in their work (Beach 1980).
The realization of the importance of social relationship at work place resulted to development of human relationship model of motivation that changed employers’ perception of motivation. Employers started viewing motivation as a form of human potential (Huddleston & Frazier 2002).
The model was instrumental in ensuring that workers were motivated in their workplace, although it failed in explaining all work nuisances that were present work in workplace. Its failure to account for all the work nuisances lead to the emergence of the human potential model.
The theory explained that motivation is not limited only to rewards and social relationship, but also caters for a sense of achievement that is realized from performing a challenging and meaningful task. The theory pointed that people are ever motivated to work and do not consider work as unpleasant. This school of thought is instrumental in current motivation theories that are applicable to date (Haslam, Powell & Turner 2000).
Definition of Employee Motivation
Past studies have indicated very little relationship between job satisfaction and productivity. Studies show that some highly satisfied workers as poor performers, whereas some highly dissatisfied workers as good performers. There are several variables that affect the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity, although there are no direct causal factors that have been established.
Motivation is considered very effective in the enhancement of job satisfaction and productivity. People are considered to be motivated by social needs that cannot be realized from their works. Therefore, there is importance of establishing a favorable environment that is imperative in satisfying and maintaining social interrelationships at work.
From the model of self-actualization, people are considered as intrinsically motivated, take pride in their work and realize satisfaction from their achievements. Complex man view model considers people to be motivated by diverse variation of motives, experiences, abilities and emotions. These motives are considered to change over time as new motives are learned and new skills acquired make them to have new attitudes towards their job.
Scholars have different definitions for motivation: Schultz and Schultz (1998) consider motivation as personal or workplace characteristics that explain why people behave in certain manner. Beck (1983) had a similar view and regarded motivation as the concern of workers variation of behavior where some workers work harder than others.
Work characteristics refer to task variety, whereas personal characteristics are considered as the intrinsic need for accomplishment. Petri (1996) considers motivation as the drive that acts on or within a person to initiate and maintain desirable behavior.
Whereas Pinder (1998) regarded work motivation as the external and internal forces that trigger work related behaviors, and determine its intensity, form and duration (Hull 1943; Schneider & Snyder 1975).
Theories of Motivation
There are many theories of motivation that are grouped into three categories: cognitive theories, needs-based theories and drive and motivation theories. This research will be limited to two groups of theories which are need-based theories and drive motivation theory.
Need-based theories are often regarded as content theories because of their explanation of the content of motivation. Need-based theories propose that internal states within workers are responsible for energizing and directing behaviors. Internal states are considered as individuals’ needs, drives or motives.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory argues that people are motivated by the pursuit to satisfy needs that are grouped into five categories and occur in varied hierarchy. Maslow (1986) argued that lower needs have to be met before pursuing the satisfaction of those of higher order. Physiological needs are the basic needs and include hunger and thirst. Safety needs entail physical safety as well as job security.
Social needs entail social acceptance, friendship, love and support while the egotistic needs comprise an individual’s desire for respect. Self actualization occurs at the apex of the hierarchy and indicates the aspiration towards full development of one’s potential that is never fully attained.
According to Maslow people always pursue what they have not yet achieved and once they get it, it stops being a motivation for action (Pinder1998). Despite lack of a lot of empirical support on need-based theory, it is widely adopted in many organizations in ensuring that employees’ needs are met.
The self-actualization concept in need-based theory has been a great motivator for managers and executives (Becherer, Morgan & Richard 1982).
Herzberberg’s theory is another essential need-based motivational theory. It considers motivation to originate from work and not from external factors, but these factors result to job satisfaction. The theory constitute of hygiene factors and motivators. Hygiene factors involve those factors that do not bring job satisfactions and prevent dissatisfaction if maintained adequately.
Hygiene factors entail; level of supervision, remuneration, job status among others. Conversely, motivators are considered to be directly related with performers and lead to increased productivity. They include; increased responsibilities, pleasure of performance as well as opportunities for promotions and advancements.
Despite available of limited empirical support, the theory is widely applicable in many organizations mainly in re-design of many jobs in order to ensure greater employees’ participation in planning, performing as well as assessing their performance. This theory has been very effective in helping in providing employees with tasks that are meaningful to them (Cofer & Appley 1968: Cohen & Cairnes 1991).
Drive and Reinforcement theories are founded on behaviorist approaches that claim that positive reinforcement condition a behavior in a manner to be repeated in future endeavors, whereas behavior that has been punished will not likely to be repeated. The aforementioned theories have greatly assisted in shaping the current concept of employees’ motivation.
Job Satisfaction
The concept of job satisfaction has greatly gained more attention in many organizations nowadays. Most managers strive to ensure high level of job satisfaction among their employees mainly as a result of its great impact on productivity.
It is believed that having a satisfied staff contributes greatly towards organization effectiveness and ultimate survival. Employees’ job satisfaction is closely related to important employee and organization outputs that range from job performance to health and longevity (Beck 1983; Purcell 2006).
Definition of Job Satisfaction
Arnold and Feldman (1986) consider job satisfaction as one’s emotional response to her/his current job condition. On the other hand, Schneider and Snyder (1975) consider job satisfaction as an individual’s assessment of the conditions that exist in the workplace or outcomes that arise for having a job.
Determinates of Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction has diverse and distinct dimensions depending on an individual’s perception because satisfaction depends on one’s needs. It is these dimensions that are used to monitor employees’ attitudes and feelings towards job characteristics. Examples of certain variables that determine job satisfactions include; job objectives, work context, tasks activities and job content (Becherer, Morgan & Richard1982).
These variables directly affect the nature and extent of an employee’s effort and the employee may get satisfaction from his/her effort.
Although effort is essential in performance, a workers competence is also important in determining job satisfaction because an employee can derive job satisfaction from a sense of achievement that follows competent task execution (Hadebe 2001; Hoole & Vermeulen 2003; Porter & Hackman 1975,).
Job satisfaction or dissatisfaction can arise from external factors that are job-related such as job characteristics, job tasks. Spector (2003) pointed various significant environmental factors that determine job satisfaction. They include; age, race, role variable, work-family conflict, gender, job experience and occupational level (Bolman & Deal 1984; Gunter & Furnham 1996).
Research Philosophy
Phenomological paradigm and Positivism are the two main research philosophies that are suitable in identifying the research methods that are most suitable for the study. Positivism paradigm posits that social world thrive externally and its properties should be measured objectively rather than being deduced subjectively.
Conversely, phenomological research philosophy recognizes actions, artifacts as well as events from within human life, but not as observation of some external reality. Social-historical world is a symbolic world that is formed by human mind and should not be generally taken as a relationship material thing.
The researcher will use phenomological research philosophy. The researcher opted for phenomological research philosophy because the research data that can received through positivism research philosophy may not be as rich as that of positivism.
Research Approach
The approach for this research will be qualitative in nature. The research will entail inductive analysis of the collected data in order to build on a theory (Yin 1994).
Research Strategy
Saunders et al (2007) points the importance of selecting an appropriate research strategy. He argued that the choice of a research strategy is guided by objectives and research questions formulated.
Other factors that determine research strategy to be adopted are philosophical underpinnings, time available as well as the extent of available knowledge. The researcher will use a case study approach for this research (Bryman & Bell 2007; Easterby, Thorpe & Lowe 2001).
Data Collection
The researcher will collect data using a questionnaire as well as a focus group interview with appropriate stakeholders such as human resource managers of nearby restaurants. The questionnaires that will be used will comprise of close-ended questions that will require the respondents to select the answer from the options provided.
On the other hand, the questionnaire will have open-ended questions that will not limit the respondent to specific options. Open-ended questions will help to bring insight into the study which the researcher could have overlooked.
The study will also comprise of a secondary research that will be conducted from a review of relevant sources such Journals, books and internet articles. The study will entail a review of past studies conducted on the subject, theories of motivation and job satisfaction (Yin 1984).
Data Analysis
The questionnaires will be cleaned and then coded accordingly. The researcher will use Excel and SPSS software to analyze the data collected to get appropriate inference.
Data Presentation
After analyzing the data, the information generated will be presented in tabular form.
Consent and Ethical Considerations
In order to ensure ethical considerations, the researcher will explain to the respondents the purpose of the research and ensure that the data collected will be used solely for the purpose given.
The researcher will allow the respondents only to answer those questions that they feel comfortable answering. For the focus interview, the researcher should ensure that he/she agrees with the participants on the date, time and venue for the interview and stick to it.
Possible Limitations
Because of lack of enough time and financial constraints, the researcher will use a small sample size. This will limit the reliability of the results as bigger samples are highly recommended in order to increase the reliability of the study (Saunders et al 2009).
List of References
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Beach, D 1980, Personnel: The Management of People at Work, Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc, New York.
Becherer, R, Morgan, F & Richard, L 1982, ‘The job characteristics of industrial salespersons: Relationship to motivation and satisfaction,’ Journal of Marketing, Vol.46, no.4, pp.125 – 135.
Beck, R 1983, Motivation: Theories and Principles, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Bolman, L & Deal, T 1984, Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Bryman, A., and Bell, E 2007, Business Research Methods, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cofer, C & Appley, M 1968, Motivation, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York.
Cohen, E & Cairnes, L 1991, ‘Doing the Best Job,’ Journal for Quality and Participation,’ Vol.14, no.3, pp.48 – 53.
Easterby, M, Thorpe, R & Lowe A 2001, An Introduction to Management Research, Sage Publications, London
Gunter, B & Furnham, A 1996, Biographical and Climate Predictors of Job Satisfaction and Pride in Organizations. Journal of Psychology, 130(2), 193 – 208.
Hadebe, T 2001, Relationship Between Motivation and Job Satisfaction of Employees at Vista Information Services, Rand Afrikaans University Press, Johannesburg
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