Effect of Motivation on Employee: Lecturers’ Performance

Introduction

Motivation is the most challenging and complex issue that researchers are attempting to answer and which is being faced by the people belonged in the working industry and part of it is the lecturers. The motivation is an interesting issue because it determines the extent of active, personal involvement and being centered in their everyday life (Menyhart, 2008). Motivation explains why people think and behave as they do, and motivation can be suitable as applied model for educating.

Background of the Study and Statement of the Problem

Most of the workforce in every type of industry is paid based on their performance. And in this scene, the leaders find some other techniques to increase the performance of their employees to give back the amount they paid for their personnel. Through the effort of motivation, the productivity is perceived to be enhanced (Ariely, et al., 2005).

Through the idea that most of the business organizations use the motivation as part of workforce control, many educational institutions adapted the motivation and applied several interventions to achieve the performance of the educators. In the view of the lecturer, what are the other effects of motivation aside from enhancing their performance? And this is the main question that will cover the whole study.

Purpose of the Study

The study fully addresses the area of motivation within the educational domain and mainly focuses on the effect of motivation on lecturer’s performance. The research was fueled by two purposes. First is to introduce, once again, to the lecturers the importance of their job. And second is to explore the different ways of motivating the lecturers to increase or maintain the level of their performance as educators.

Research Questions

The study was guided by the basic question that deals with the idea of motivation in the area of teaching.

1. Which factors do really affect the work and lecturer’s motivations?

2. Which interventions and environmental conditions may serve as levers to sustain and increase motivation that will result to positive outcome of lecturer’s performance?

3. How can institutions create a climate or culture that can motivate the lecturers to strive to excellence?

Literature Review

Lecturers are effectively motivated through the use of extrinsic motivators such as clear expectations, feedback, and rewards (Menyhart, 2008). But most of the lecturers, although achieved the greatest performance, are dramatically leaving their duties because of other factors (Aung, 2001). In this scenario, researchers are still on question on how effectively the motivation given to the lecturers. Work and employee motivation is not only meant for the people working inside an organization. For some, motivation is a solution while for others, it is a kind of technique to manipulate, but there are many books, guides, checklists and recommendations that focus in the area of motivation (Schultz-Gambard, Brodbeck, and Winkler, 2009).

Motivation, when applied to teaching, can be the reason why people want to teach. The personal drive or enthusiasm to teach is the main concept of lecturers. Determining the amount of knowledge they might apply and how much effort are another results of their motivation. During the delivery of a lecture, the lecturers are concentrated on the areas where they think is essential in the learning of their audience, and that is another factor of motivation. The lecturers are also bound to promote the communication and learning. There should be a balance atmosphere between his or her personal motive to teach and the audience’s motive to learn and it is very difficult to execute if the lecturer handles the big crowd of students (Menyhart, 2008). In all aspect, the motivation of a lecturer to teach came from his own perception and the other type of motivators only heightened the prowess.

Methodology

The method applied to the study is through the interview of the lecturers. Part of the interview is determining the different factors that may affect the motivation for the lecturers such as their age and gender, work experience, position in the educational institution, primarily responsibility, income, and their leadership styles. These factors will help the research to achieve the finest result because there is a measurement called job satisfaction and recognition that can be consider as an outcome of a good motivation.

Conclusion

For the past studies, it was already proven that eve in little ways, there is a relationship in the dimension of leadership styles, environmental factors, and motivation applied to work. The aspect of teaching is the highest motivator for the lecturers, salary is the second best. And for some reasons, the lecturers leave their jobs which are another problem for the institution. With this dilemma, the recommendation for a new program for their development and satisfaction of the lecturers in their work should be held and pursued.

References:

Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N., 2005. Large Stakes and Big Mistakes. Research Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision-Making, Vol. 11. [Online] Available at: http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp0511.pdf. [Accessed 25 Jan 2010].

Aung, C., 2001. The Relationship Between Work Motivation and Leadership Style: An Application of the Path-Goal Theory n Lecturers in the ABAC School of Management. [Online] Available at: www.riau.au.edu/abstracts/49.doc. [Accessed 25 Jan 2010].

Menyhart, A., 2008. Teachers or Lecturers? The Motivational Profile of University Teachers of English. Working Papers in Language Pedagogy (WoPaLP), Vol. 2. [Online] Available at: http://langped.elte.hu/W2Menyhart.pdf. [Accessed 25 Jan 2010].

Schultz-Gambard, J., Brodbeck, F., & Winkler, M., 2009. What You Can Learn From Psychology About Work and Employee Motivation! Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. [Online] Available at: http://www.psy.lmu.de/wirtschaftspsychologie/personen/wiss_ma/winkler_martin/motivation_venedig.pdf. [Accessed 25 Jan 2010].