One of themost relevant functions of Human Resource Management (HRM) is motivation. Indeed,a great amount of the global wealth comes in a form of human capital. Thereforemanaging human resources plays such a critical role in the process of boosting companies’effectiveness (Kirstein, 2010).
The relevance of motivating people at work isvisible at all levels in any organization. It begins from managers who need tobe aware of factors that motivate their subordinates to make them perform well,through employees who need to thoroughly consider what expectations they haveof work, winding up with HR experts who need to comprehend the subject of motivationto viably plan and actualize reward structure and systems(Kirstein, 2010).Undoubtedly,motivation is an important aspect of HRM and it is pretty much obvious thatorganizations need employees who are adequately motivated to achieve theirgoals. However, because of a complex nature of human behaviour, motivation isnot easy to understand and to use (Kirstein, 2010). In spite of manyinvestigations and studies on the theme of motivation, managers today are nonearer to understanding employees’ motivation than their counterpart managerswho existed prior to more than a half of century ago (Kovach, 1980).
Although,a significant number of researches suggest that money is not as motivating as hasalways thought to be, many organizations have tried to implement monetaryincentives as their principal tool to motivate their employees. Performancerelated pay turned out to be the new mantra that was undeniably utilized bymany organizations (Frey & Osterloch, 2002). Recent financial crises haveled to many large and small organizations to cut costs through occasionalreduction of employees’ salaries and bonuses. But the multi-million dollar questionthat comes to mind is whether there are other options of effectively motivatingemployees that would be cost efficient at the same time.
Availableliterature on the subject of motivation shows that there are several other waysto motivate employees (Oldham & Hackman, 2010; Lawyer, 1969; Roche , 1970; Allender & Allender, 1998; Lu, 1999; Tharenou, 1993;Mayfield, Mayfield, & Kopf, 1998). The most famous and usuallyquoted theories can be divided into two categories, namely content theories andprocess theories. The first group which focuses on what motivates people isrepresented by writers such as Maslow, McClelland and Herzberg; whilst thesecond category which seeks to find out how motivation occurs is mostlyattributed to writers such as Vroom, Adams, Locke and Latham. It is interestingto know that the points of view opined by the authors of both theories appearcomplementary to each other sometimes, but contradict at other times. Thisinspired other thinkers to conduct their own researches on motivation and, ultimatelyresulted in the creation of a number of suggestions about other factors that enhanceincrease in employees’ performance. Authors like (Oldham & Hackman, 2010;Lawyer, 1969) are of the view that job design plays relevant role in shapingemployees behaviour while others such as (Roche & MacKinnon, 1970; Allender& Allender, 1998; Lu, 1999; Tharenou, 1993; Mayfield, Mayfield, & Kopf,1998) opine that the style of leadership and freedom given to employees are criticalin motivating employees.
Other group of researchers including (Luthans &Stajkovic, 2000; Armstrong & Murlis, 2004) says that recognition can beused to motivate people to perform well. While there are several other examplesof possible motivators in the literature on a subject of motivation, (Frey& Osterloch, 2002) make us understand that some rewards are rather seen asfactors that negatively influence the performance of employees as much asothers can be really rewarding for them. Enough researchesindicate that, it is almost impossible to pick which factors really do motivatepeople; some people prefer monetary rewards, others non-monetary. Meaning, rewards,motivation and their accompanying influence on employees’ performance may beemployee-specific and environment dependent.It is therefore,imperative that this study investigates and unravels the situation of employeerewards and what motivates junior staff at the University of Ghana (UG), Legon.
