EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND ORGANIZATION PRODUCTIVITY (A STUDY OF SELECTED OIL FIRMS IN RIVERS STATE)

CHAPTER ONE

1. 1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Managerially speaking, one of the problems faced by managers) of the 21 century is that which concerns motivating employees to inform assigned duties in other to meet set goals and objectives. Activation is the strengthen force that instigate or compel and sustains behaviour. Human behaviours are motivation directed and goal directed.

Motivating employees in any given organization for the success of that organization for affective productivity is not usually easy, but the success of any given motivational effort depends on the extend to which the motivator meets the needs of the individual employee for whom it intends to satisfy.

Paradoxically, motivation is an inherent psychological process whose presence or absence is inferred from observes performance. Motivation as the name implies is derived from the word to motivate which means to move, compel, impel or include to act, to satisfy a need or want. Okafor (2009).

Motivation is the internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job role or subject, or to make and effort to attain a goal. It is the needs, wants or motives within employee that will urge him or her to accomplish his objectives. Anything that is capable and designed to make the individual or group of individuals obtain or satisfy their needs is known as motivation.

Employees need motivation to be productive. Motivating employees is so basic to workers performance and general behaviour. For the purpose of this discussion terms such as needs, desire, drive and aspiration are used interchangeably since every employee has needs, he/she is capable of being motivated.

The task or duty of management is to determine what are the value needs that will make the employee react according to the organizational desired to increase in productivity.

Motivation is one of the panaceas of organizational success in any business environment. Motivating the employee is very important and pivotal to organizational productivity due to its positive effect on the organizational objective. Looking vividly at the current industrial trend, for organizations to get potentials out of their employee, it must structure a lucrative motivational package for its employees.

Effective productivity in this 21st Century will be met if organizations can motivate their employee and give proper attention to their needs and wants. The problem of motivation and expectations are paramount and vital to even the difficult manager. The issue of employee’s motivation and satisfaction are so basic to employee performance and general behaviour in the organization. Management pays great price for dissatisfactory work fiction on job, substandard output and low quality turnover, absenteeism and tardiness to give the only partial list.

However, it is gloomy that the history of Nigerian organization has been associated with crises and deprivation of the employees in the organization often, the reason advanced for such unrest are related to the perceived poor motivational packages for constructive change in organizations.

In the past the academic staff union of polytechnics has been on strike due to demand for various areas of enhancement in the working condition and just recently the academic staff union of universities went on strike due to motivational packages, motivational packages encourage or trigger employees to be effective. The essence of this research is to determine how employees motivation impacts on the productivity in the organizations.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The research in intended to show the effect of motivation in employee’s productivity. The problem is how does motivation affects employees productivity in any given organization and how does it affect the general performance of employee.

Motivating the employee has also affected the organization, so we will critically take a look at the employee’s recent deficiencies and imbalance like tension which will force an employee to act or regain his balance either by withholding a measure of his performance or output or unconscious withdrawal or commitment to work. All these often lead to poor productivity of the employees.

The mentioned elements have effect on the accomplishment and attainment of the organizational goal thereby resulting on low productivity, absenteeism, tardiness, inefficiency etc.

This study intends to ascertain whether employee’s motivation has a positive correlation with the level of productivity in organizations.

1.3     Objectives of the Study

The major objective of the study is:

a. To ascertain whether the level of motivation given to employees has corresponding effect on organizational productivity. Other objectives of the study include:

b.       To examine whether the profitability of the organization is due to the level of motivation of employees.

c.       To examine whether a demotivated employee will be counter productive.

d.       To determine whether the increased profitability in the organization have positive correlation with the level of motivation.

1.4     RESEARCH QUESTIONS

With the objectives of the study in perspective the study seeks to answer the following questions:

a.       Does the level of motivation given to employees have a corresponding effect on productivity?

b.       Are demotivated employees counterproductive?

c.       Does the increased profitability in the organization have positive correlation with the level of motivation?

d.       Does employee’s motivation affect organizational productivity?

e.       Are employees allowed to participate in decision making at work?

1.5     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This research work is carried out with the expectation that employee’s motivation would be formulated and implemented to enhance value in organizational productivity. As motivation is simply the desire to satisfy needs, management task and duty is to show employee how they can satisfy their needs by working jointly to achieve the organizational aims and objectives.

The findings and recommendation of this study will help to reduce the incidence of motivation and hence the adverse consequences to the organization and the Entire Society At Large.

1.6     STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESIS

With the research question in perspective the following hypothesis are proposed.

H1:    The level of motivation does not significantly related to organizational productivity.

H2:    Increase in profitability does not significantly relate to the level of motivation.

1.7     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study is limited or confined to companies in Rivers State. This is because of limitation in time and financial resources which make this regiment effort a reality.

1.8     LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

In carrying out this research work, some constraints encountered which affected both the quality and depth of the investigation. They include the following:

1.       Time Constraint: As a result of the time, within which this research project is to be submitted, was omitted in his research result in the topic studied.

2.       Inadequate Finance: Also impinging is on the result of this research of finance needed from the inception to the conclusion of this research work. Promises from relatives and acquaintances were not forth coming and just small amount of money was realized for this work.

3.       Respondent Attitude: Nonchalant attitude on that part of some respondents greatly affected the depth of this research work. Some of the respondents will request the research to come again or severally. The researcher does not have all the time to always come again as requested.

1.9     DEFINITION OF TERMS

In order to give clarity to the topic studied the following terms are clarified.

Motivation: Is the psychological feature that arouses an individual to act towards a desired goal and elicits colitrols, and sustains certain goal directed behaviours.

Productivity: The state or quality of producing something, the effectiveness of productive effort.

Organization: An organization is a group of people with a particular purpose, such as business organization, social groups etc.

Employee’s motivation: It is the psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behaviour in an organization.