Research Methodology

Discuss about the Organizational Behavior for Business and Management.

Motivating employees in workplace has become a major priority for work managers or leaders today if they want to retain competitive advantage in market today. Identifying techniques to motivate human resources has been associated with enhanced performance of employees. This promotes fulfilling organizational goals as well as challenging competing global economy. Leaders play the most important role in leading their employees to fulfill organizational goals and their process of enhancing the self-esteem of employees further facilitates the action of achieving action goals (Fiaz et al 2017). In the context of the importance of motivation for increasing employee performance, the essay critiques a research article based on the effect of motivation techniques used by managers to increase productivity of employees. It also gives a discussion regarding the key strength and weakness of the article with support from other research literature.

The article by Guclu and Guney (2017) clearly mentions the research question, which is to analyse the perception of employees about the effect of using motivation tools by manager in increasing their performance in workplace. The main thesis statement related to this research question is the impact of motivation techniques used by managers to increase productivity of workers. The significance of this research was reported by the researcher by the discussion regarding the need to evoke hidden talents and power of employees. From the review of literatures, it was pointed out that use of motivation techniques by the manager influenced disclosing skills and potential of employees. The importance of the research question is also realized from the discussion regarding the importance of motivation in maximizing the efficiency on the manpower in organizations and different motivation techniques to promote efficiency. The quality of literature review in this work is also high because the researcher started from a wider perspective and slowly narrowed down to the behavior needed by managers to motivate the employees. However, the main limitation of this research is that while framing the research questions, the researcher did not identified any gap in previous research, which made this study important and necessary. Despite this limitation, this research work will give insight about manager’s and employee’s relationship. According to Cherian and Jacob (2013), managers and employee’s relationship is also important for promoting role of managers in motivating employees. Successful performance is mediated through career motivation and the application of self-efficacy theory can also play a role in improving work related performance.

Results

Based on the thesis statement of Guclu and Guney (2017), it is critical that the research identifies the specific motivation techniques used by the managers and the impact of those on employee performance. To get answer to this question, survey questionnaire were prepared for employees working in textile industry. The first part of the questionnaire aimed to get demographic detail of respondents and the second section evaluated the opinion of employees about the motivation tools. The validity of the data collected was enhanced by the calculation of frequency variance and validity and safety analysis. This reflects the strength of the study because consideration of confounding variable is important to get clear results and eliminate any biasness in studies. To get appropriate data related to the research question, it is also necessary to chose appropriate sampling method. No such specification was given by Guclu and Guney (2017), the only consideration was that they did not take large sample size as it was not possible to survey large group of population. However, this consideration is seen in the research by Fiaz et al. (2017) who used stratified sampling technique to collect data and find out the impact of leadership style on motivation of employees. The advantage of using stratified sampling technique was that it ensured proportionate representation of all group of participants. Another advantage of using this sampling technique is that it help to select the best sample population that reperesents the entire population. It also reduces the likelihood of sample selection bias (Robinson, 2014).

The success of any research result is understood from the relevance of the outcome with the research statement. The main strength of the research by Guclu and Guney (2017) was that it gave clear statistical data regarding the use of economic, psychosocial and organizational and management tools used among all participants. This gives clear indication regarding the motivation techniques that has been used by managers to increase the efficacy of employees. Secondly, the study results also gave detail regarding the impact of motivation techniques on education, monthly salary, assignment status and term of office. Considering all these variables is important because all these factors has an impact on motivation of employees. For instance, these variables can give indication about the source of motivation. The results outcome of assignment status and term of office is the most critical data as it gives an insight into the impact of different motivation tools on employee retention, intention to leave and completing work assignment effectively. All these are critical factors related to employee performance and workplace productivity (Park and Shaw, 2013). This is consistent with the study by Bastons et al. (2017) which explains that motivation of employee is dependent on extrinsic factors of salary, intrinsic factor of job satisfaction and retention of employees and prosocial factors related to the needs of key stakeholders of the organization.

Strengths of the Research

After reviewing the research article, I can say that I agree with the research in many points and there are very few contradictory points. For instance, Guclu and Guney (2017) work emphasizes that efficiency is critical to productivity and the viewpoint of manager and employees on the impact of using motivational tools can give important insight regarding actions that can be adapted in organizational to promote productivity. The research gave valid explanation regarding the factors that affect employees perception of motivation. The researcher was in favor of thinking that education status can affect employee’s perception of motivation tools and the survey results also proved that employee with high educational status perceive the motivation process in a more conscious manner. Hence, I agree that reviewing educational status of participant was important in relation to the purpose of studies. The research study by Malik, Butt, and Choi, (2015) also considered education and work experience of participant as such variable also affect the performance of employees. This mean education and work experience is reflective of self-efficacy of employees and presence of such attributes in employees also have an impact on responding to extrinsic and intrinsic rewards in workplace.

 Secondly, in terms of impact of tools on different income group, the study gave significant results. It showed in case of psychosocial motivation tool, its influence was high in low income group that high and middle income group. This suggests that low income groups are motivated by getting psychosocial support in workplace. It raised their morale (Guclu and Guney (2017). One point that any reviewer can add in this point is that the personality traits of managers also plays a key role in motivating employees. However, the main limitation of this research is that no arguments were raised in this study regarding the personality traits of managers that would have an impact on employee’s perception of motivation process. This is a major gap in the study and just like the variable of age, income status, retention rate and assignment status, the survey questionnaire needed to have personality traits of managers too. This would have given idea regarding different personality trait presents in managers at the textile facility and the response of the employee would also have given the idea regarding the specific personality traits that they prefers in their leaders to motivate and guide them in workplace. This would also highlight the purposeful work behavior of managers (Barrick, Mount, and Li 2013).

Limitations of the Research

The importance of including manager’s personality traits in survey questionnaire is also  understood from the research by Lounsbury et al. (2016) investigating about distinctive personality profile needed for managers. In this study, the personality traits were evaluated by means of Big Five personality traits. The purpose was to identify personality predictors of managerial performance and the managers score higher on the traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, optimism and customer service orientation. While analyzing the study results in terms of influence of employee motivation, it was found that extraverts had the capability to develop social network and motivate and satisfy employees intrinsically. Hence, interaction between personality traits and manager’s role in motivating employee were observed. On this ground, it can be said that Guclu and Guney (2017) missed this important variable in his research and including this element in the survey questionnaire would have enhance the validity of the study results.

The essay critically analyzed the study of Guclu and Guney (2017) regarding impact of motivation tools on workplace productivity and employee performance. The research approach used by the researcher was useful in generating many important outcomes such as providing idea regarding the association between employee education and income status on perception of motivation process. However, considering the gap of not including manager’s personality trait in survey, it is recommended to conduct further research on how personality traits can motivate employees in workplace.

Reference

Barrick, M.R., Mount, M.K. and Li, N., 2013. The theory of purposeful work behavior: The role of personality, higher-order goals, and job characteristics. Academy of management review, 38(1), pp.132-153.

Bastons, M., Mas, M. & Rey, C. 2017, “Pro-stakeholders motivation: Uncovering a new source of motivation for business companies”, Journal of Management and Organization, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 621-632.

Cherian, J. and Jacob, J., 2013. Impact of self efficacy on motivation and performance of employees. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(14), p.80.

Fiaz, M., Su, Q., Ikram, A. & Saqib, A. 2017, “Leadership Styles And Employees’ Motivation: Perspective From An Emerging Economy”, The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 143-156.

Guclu, H. and Guney, S., 2017, The Effect of the Motivation Techniques Used by Managers to Increase the Productivity of their Workers and an Application.

Lounsbury, J.W., Sundstrom, E.D., Gibson, L.W., Loveland, J.M. & Drost, A.W. 2016, “Core personality traits of managers”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 434-450.

Malik, M.A.R., Butt, A.N. and Choi, J.N., 2015. Rewards and employee creative performance: Moderating effects of creative self?efficacy, reward importance, and locus of control. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(1), pp.59-74.

Park, T.Y. and Shaw, J.D., 2013. Turnover rates and organizational performance: a meta-analysis.

Robinson, O.C., 2014. Sampling in interview-based qualitative research: A theoretical and practical guide. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), pp.25-41.