CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
There is probably no concept more important than motivation, in the study of employee’s behavior in many organization. A manager may consider motivation as an inducement (financial or otherwise) given to the employees to ginger them to work more. By this measure, organization goals and objectives are achieved. On the other hand, employees usually associate motivation with some monetary values.
Motivation is a pervasive function that cuts across all aspect of employee’s development. It is often discussed by people in any organization. Management cannot operate in isolation of their employees because they are human beings and not machines or tools which are utilize recklessly or in a rough manner.
In today’s economy, employers have gone beyond being just employers because of their interest in the management of employee’s productivity. Most business personnel have realize more than ever before that their organizational set goals and objectivities cannot be achieved if their employee do not perform as much as expected. This is the reason for much concentration of effort on the concept of motivation which is concerned with encouraging workers or employees to attain to the best of their ability.
Human resources, both in private or public sector are the most assets essential in any given organization, hence must be handled with care. Motivation of the employee is the areas management should concern in other to ensure the realization of the planned goals and objective of their organization.
People go to work in organization not for the sake of work itself but with the aim of achieving their individual objective. It then follows that the key of motivation is the satisfaction of needs. A worker will be motivated if he feels his organization is helping him to satisfy needs to a reasonable extent. In view of the fact that needs are sophisticated in nature, there has been a growing importance to understand these needs by some behavioral scientists. Thus, we have a lot of motivational theories like those propounded by Abraham Maslow, Vroom, Fredrick Herzberg to mention but a few.
The needs of people are in a continuum; sometimes it could be intrinsic or extrinsic. An individual’s need, at any particular times depends on the value he places on it at that time and most times it goes hand in hand with societal values. So, different people would want and need different things in different situation and at different times. (Drucker 1974:120)
In Nigerian, a critical analysis of many enterprises would reveal that both the intrinsic and extrinsic reward for work is neglected. This problem rears its ugly head mostly in public institution like in Power Holding Company of Nigerian Enugu state.
In this age and time when every nation is striving to be on top of others technologically, politically and economically, the problem of motivation cannot be over emphasized and should not be trampled under the fact , as the will to do” is an essential ingredient of a labor force. 4
Management is best understood from a resource base perspective. All organization use four base kinds of inputs or resources from their environment, human, finance, materials and information resources. Management is responsible for cobbling and coordinating resources to achieve the organizational functions or activities, planning and decision making, organizing, leading and controlling.
There is a range of motivational techniques that can be used to improve productivity, reduce workforce stress and increase self confidence. Some managers believe that they can achieve result from teams by using coercing methods.
However these factors can indeed produce result, the effect will probably be much more short term and will mean that staffs are forces on achieving business objectives but rather on simply keeping their jobs.