LITERATURE REVIEW - Examining the Effect of Motivation, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Creation P

The primary objective(s) of establishing an organisation in business is mostly geared towards profit making. This could be obvious as articulated in organisation’s strategic goals and/or objectives which are profit-driven, capturing arrays of dimensions to measure growth and success. In respect of this, organisational performance has ever since been on the limelight in the business community both in the public and private sectors. However, measure of organisational performance has become critical and hard especially in the public sector. Brewer and Selden (2000, p.689) as cited by (Kim, 2005), proposed a measure of organizational performance based on the perceptions of the organization’s members, that members in an organisation have a central role to play if organisations yearn for growth and sustenance. As such it is becoming increasingly demanding and top priority for CEOs and managers to formulate tangible mechanisms that would propel organisational performance through employee uplifting schemes. Due to lack of employee inclusion and motivation, public organisations have been underperforming especially those in developing countries. This research would like to take through The Gambia Telecom and Cellular companies (Gamtel/Gamcel) renowned public companies in the domain of communication in The Gambia.

To explore the degree of performance and the level of employee motivation through several of the different indictors.

However, been cognisance of the diverse factors that may push or put an organisation in the spotlight of business, thus attract both employees and customers could vary significantly.

In this chapter, therefore, the researcher intends to provide literature reviews on the variables as indicative in the research framework and also illustrate the effect of the variables such as intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, knowledge creation process, knowledge sharing, innovation on organisational performance in an understandable and simplify manner.

Motivation Theory

Motivation has been a discussed phenomenon in the academia of elites for quite a long now, and many papers, articles, books and other materials have discussed its contributions to both the learning system and organisational development. Where students’ self-determination and enthusiasm to learn vindicates this statement and employee work engagement and support for attaining organisational goals/objectives transcends due to some factor effects of motivation.

Understanding what motivated employees and how they were motivated was the focus of many researchers following the publication of the Hawthorne Study Results (Terpstra, 1979). However, in this study the researcher is focused not only on individual theories of motivation instead the research seeks to focus on how employees maybe motivated intrinsically and extrinsically in order to reap overwhelming organisational fruitfulness. Thus, this would involve the interplay of knowledge sharing and creation, and innovation.

Hence, five major approaches that have led to our understanding of motivation are Maslow's need-hierarchy theory, Herzberg's two- factor theory, Vroom's expectancy theory, Adams' equity theory, and Skinner's reinforcement theory. These theories have significantly changed and shaped employee and manager behaviour and organisational overall understanding of the potential role motivation yields for company attractiveness and performance. This paper seeks not to elaborate on each individual theory but to give a synopsis of the theories for better understanding of the concept of motivation and its related dimensions.

Therefore, a brief illustration is provided below regarding the five approaches.

According to Maslow (1943), employees have five levels motivation that quench their state of satisfaction which includes, physiological, safety, social, ego, and self- actualizing. He went on to argue that motivation for another level is never obtained unless the lower level needs are fulfilled. Therefore, employees in organisation are nothing more humans and there exists no difference between them and others, hence a lower level needs must be attained before the higher-level needs could motivate employees.

Herzberg's work categorized motivation into two factors: motivators and hygienes (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959). In their proclamation, motivator or intrinsic factors, such as achievement and recognition, produce job satisfaction. Hygiene or extrinsic factors, such as pay and job security, produce job dissatisfaction. This indicates that individuals are motivated to doing an activity because of several reasons and purposes, which they classified as motivators and hygienes factors.

Vroom's theory on the other hand, implies that performance is realised through employee effort while performance would lead to rewards (Vroom, 1964). Based on this idea, rewards may be either positive or negative. It therefore, assumes that the more positive the reward the more likely the employee would be highly motivated. Opposite to that, the more negative the reward the less likely the employee would be motivated.

Adams' theory states that employees anticipate for equity between themselves and other workers. Equity is achieved when the ratio of employee outcomes over inputs is equal to other employee outcomes over inputs (Adams, 1965).

Skinner's theory simply states those employees' behaviours that lead to positive outcomes will be repeated and behaviours that lead to negative outcomes will not be repeated (Skinner, 1953). Therefore, it is the duty of managers to positively reinforce employee behaviours that would lead to positive outcome and also negatively reinforce employee behaviour that could lead to negative outcomes.

In this regard, many contemporary authors have also defined the concept of motivation in an effort to contribute their quarter to the already existing resources. As mentioned in his work, (Kreitner, 1995), defined motivation as the psychological process that gives behaviour purpose and direction. A tendency to behave in a purposive manner to achieve a specific and unmet needs (Buford, Bedeian, & Lindner, 1995) as described. In connection to these definitions, therefore, motivation could be seen as an integral part of organisation’s mandate in fulfilling its goals/objectives. Thus, motivation may be triggered by different factors which could either be intrinsic or extrinsic. However, in this paper, the researcher limits on to two main kinds as illustrated in the research framework. Therefore, focus would be on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors.

The company (Gamtel/Gamcel) being a public enterprise, to identify the effect between the two motivating factors would be of immense contributions to the company in their quest to maximise profit. Not losing sight of the potential influence of other competitors, the organisation would endeavour to strategize and formulate better motivating systems that would keep employees progressive and striving to be creative in terms of knowledge processing, innovation and willingness to share knowledge for organisation’s overall performance.

Intrinsic Motivation

It is a fundamental value for organisations and companies to realise the exceptional role intrinsic motivation in igniting employee ambition to become a productive asset of the organisation or company. Therefore, without any reservation intrinsic motivation must be trigger and encouraged by CEOs and managers, this to propel organisational performance and competitiveness through active engagement in knowledge sharing. Intrinsic motivation (IM) according to Deci (1975) refers to engaging in an activity purely for the pleasure and satisfaction derived from doing the activity. He further explained the concept that when an individual is intrinsically motivated he or she will display a desired behaviour voluntarily, in the absence of any material reward.

In their study, Vallerand (2000) found that athletes who voluntarily go to practice because they find it interesting and satisfying to learn more about their sport ability, or athletes

who practice their sport for the pleasure of constantly trying to excel themselves are considered intrinsically motivated toward their sport.

In this explanation, it could be realised that individuals are pushed to doing an activity volition to accomplish a certain inner feeling, satisfaction or desire. Hence in trying to satisfy that inner feeling/satisfaction or desire they protract on the activity regardless of the process or pain endured. In an organisational context, therefore, employees who are intrinsically motivated may be fascinated to engage in whichever way and could be passionate for innovation or render expertise to organisation’s members without expecting any external reward or compensation. Therefore, according to Vallerand (1997) he described intrinsic motivation as the pleasure and inherent satisfaction a person derives from doing a specific activity. These activities in an organisational setup could include; innovation, knowledge sharing, and so on. And could bring about a display of individual tacit knowledge into moonlight which if properly disseminated could further catapult organisational growth and success as speculated.

Intrinsic Motivation towards Enjoyment in Helping Others

Intrinsic motivation towards the enjoyment in helping others is indeed dramatic and a significant form of generosity and willingness that employees within an organisation could offer. It is a process that may be cumbersome at some point but its importance cannot be overemphasised. The enjoyment in helping others is a phenomenon which stems from the altruism theory. As such, Organ (1988) defined it as an act of discretionary behaviours that help specific others with organizational relevant tasks or problems. In the same vein, Constant et al. (1994 & 1996; Davenport & Prusak, 1998), all acknowledged that knowledge workers may be motivated by relative altruism owing to their desire to help others. Previous research also indicates that employees are intrinsically motivated to contribute their knowledge because engaging in intellectual pursuits and solving problems is either challenging or pleasurable, and because they enjoy helping others gives the show a completely different meaning and dimension, (Wasko & Faraj, 2000 & 2005) in their piece.

Intrinsic Motivation regarding Knowledge Self-Efficacy

In today’s changing business environment, the trend of business focuses much on employee participation and collaboration in areas of knowledge nurturing such that employee knowledge self-efficacy is increasing becoming vital and instrumental. It could be of relevant importance if employee tacit knowledge could be tapped through sound interactive and teamwork spirit for ingenuity.

However, employee intrinsic motivation with regards knowledge self-efficacy is significantly important for organisational performance and success. Considering the role of intrinsic motivation on employee behaviour to render expertise (Deci, 1975) described from an intrinsic motivational perspective, that behaviour is evoked by the need of employees to feel competence and self-determined in dealing with their environment. Therefore, self-efficacy is defined as the judgments of individuals with regards to their capabilities to organize and carry out courses of action required to achieving specific levels of performance (Bandura, 1986).

Knowledge self-efficacy is typically the manifestation in people believing that their knowledge can help to solve job-related problems and improve work efficacy, Constant et al.

(1996). In addition, several researchers have also found that employees with high self-efficacy in their ability to provide valuable knowledge in their areas of expertise are more likely to accomplish specific tasks than their counterparts, Constant et al. (1994) and Bock & Kim, (2002).

Intrinsic Motivation to Autonomy

Eby et al. (1999) found that autonomy was positively related to organizational commitment. In this paper, though organisational commitment isn’t the researcher’s aim of measure instead organisational performance yet the piece could be vital in determining employee readiness and willingness to behaviour proactively in promoting and engaging activities that could enhance organisations performance.

Autonomy may be critical and essential for employees of organisations especially (Gamtel/Gamcel) employees, why, because it provides employees the freedom to independently carry out their work, reduce their frustrations from seeking permission or approval from their managers on tasks they may perform exceptional good.

As mentioned by (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), autonomy describes the degree to which the work employee do provides them with substantial freedom, independence and the ability to plan their work and determine how they will carry out their duties without control.

Autonomy can be seen as a real structural feature of work, either in the form of strengthening a person or in the form of subjective feeling that reflects the desire of the employee to have less supervision and more control of each case he or she may be engaged as the domain specifics (Kiggundu, 1983).

Autonomy is considered to encourage the agility and self-reliance of employees, allowing them to be creative and able to take risks by undertaken and initiating their own ideas or plans (Landfred, 2000). According to Chelladurai et al. (1999) for the employee to feel personally

responsible to work, if considerable amount of freedom of decision on the execution of various tasks should be given. This way employee manipulation and sense of purpose to deliver proficient services would turn positive and thus improved employee-manager relationship for the overall organisational performance.

Intrinsic motivation of Competence

As the name implies, competence could relate to employee’s knowledge, abilities and skills to carry out a specific task(s). The concept of competence especially employee competence at work is most frequently used in organisational setups. As frequent as it may be used there still exist no widely accepted definitions of the concept of “competence”. However, significant efforts have been made to help facilitate the understanding of this important concept. Table 2.1. illustrates few of the definitions of competence by (Stoof et al., 2002).

Table 2.1.

Definitions of Competence

Definition Year Author

Competency is knowledge, skill, ability, or characteristic associated with high performance on a job, that relates to problem solving, analytical thinking, or leadership. Other definitions of competency include motives, beliefs and values

1997 Mirabile,

A competency is: a cluster of related knowledge, skills and attitudes that affects a major part of one’s job (a role or responsibility), that correlates with performance on the job, that can be measured against well-accepted standards, and that can be improved via training and development

1996 Parry

A competency is an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to criterion-referenced effective and/or superior performance in a job or situation.

Underlying characteristic means the competency is a fairly deep and enduring part of a person’s personality and can predict behaviour in a wide variety of situations and job tasks. Causally related means that a competency actually causes or predicts behaviour and performance. Criterion referenced means that the competency actually predicts who

1993 Spencer

& Spencer

(continued)

does something well or poorly, as measured on a specific criterion or standard

Competence is the ability to handle a situation (even unforeseen). Competence is a compound, made up of different parts just like the fingers of a hand [i.e., skills, knowledge, experience, contacts, values, and additionally coordination which is located in the palm, and supervision, symbolized by the nervous system]

1992 Keen

Human competence is displayed behaviour within a specialized domain in the form of consistently demonstrated actions of an individual that are both minimally efficient in their execution and effective in their results

2000 Herling

Note: Adapted from “The boundary approach of competence: A constructivist Aid for Understanding and Using the Concept of Competence,” by Stoof, A., Martens, R. L., Van Merrienboer, J. J., & Bastiaens, T. J. 2002, Human resource development review, 1(3), 345-365.

Intrinsic Motivation and Knowledge Sharing

The imperative role of knowledge sharing in an organization is core. The practice is key in the generation of new ideas and exchange of expertise in an organization. It avails employees the opportunity to interact and discuss both the tacit and explicit knowledge each possess. This according to Lin (2007), knowledge sharing could be defined as a social interaction culture, involving the exchange of employee knowledge, experiences, and skills through the whole department or organization. Lin further commented that employee willingness to communicate actively with colleagues’ displays their desire to donate knowledge, and actively consulting with colleagues to learn from them demonstrates their love to receive or collect knowledge.

Bartol and Srivastava (2002) define knowledge sharing as individuals sharing organizationally relevant information, ideas, suggestions, and expertise with one another.

Intrinsically motivated employees affirming the values and benefits of knowledge sharing would not hesitate to engaging in the practice. Through knowledge sharing, employees can be satisfied by enhancing their knowledge self-efficacy or confidence in their ability to provide knowledge that is useful to the organization, (Lin, 2007). This would strengthen employee tacit knowledge capacity and increase their desire to participate more meaningfully towards personal growth but moreover to organizational growth. And it would also boost (continued)

employee morale to engage in the practice, because they would recognize the impact of their contributions on colleagues and the organization as a whole. Bock and Kim (2002) also indicate that making a significant contribution to organizational performance, regardless of the presence of tangible or intangible rewards, can contribute to the increased degree of competence of employees, and are thus positively related to the employees’ knowledge sharing intentions.

Moreover, employees who are able to obtain feedback on previous instances of knowledge sharing behaviours are more likely to understand how such behaviours may positively influence the works of others or the overall organizational performance, and they tend to develop a sense of self-worth (Bock et al., 2005; Kamhawi, 2010). This understanding may then encourage them to continue to share their knowledge with others in the future as they explained. According to Stenmark (2001), people are not likely to share knowledge without strong personal motivation

H1: Intrinsic motivation has no effect on knowledge sharing

Extrinsic Motivation

The role of extrinsic motivation on employee behavioural dispositions has ideal relationship and impact on employee expectations. While many employees in organisations are determinant in accomplishing tasks intrinsically yet many others yearn or expects for rewards or benefits in carrying out given tasks. This is because as we grow older and assume responsibilities our desire to work without external factor influence in the form of rewards either tangible or intangible demises our volitional behaviour to engage in that task. And even if we are engaged we may not find meaning and pleasure in the process, which of course has negative consequences on our individual performance and that of the organisation. Therefore, the game of motivating employees extrinsically should be purposive.

Deci and Ryan (1985), discussed extrinsic motivation as the tendency to engage in tasks because of its unrelated factors such as promise of rewards and punishment, dictates from superiors, surveillances, and competition. Extrinsic motivation, therefore, focuses on the goal-driven outcomes, e.g. rewards or benefits earned when an individual performs an activity, the duo further explained.

However, been insightful about extrinsic motivational schemes in perspective, human behaviour is driven by its perceived values and the benefits of the action. In this regard, the fundamental goals of extrinsically motivated behaviours are to receive organisational rewards and other incentives that may equivalent to task executed Vallerand (2000) and (Kowal &

Fortier, 1999). According to Lawler and Porter (1967), extrinsic motivation could be referred

to as the performance of an activity because it is perceived to be significant in achieving valued outcomes that are detached from the activity itself, such as improved job performance, pay or promotions.

Undoubtedly, therefore, a profound system of employee extrinsic motivated behaviour for performing tasks must be carefully calculated if organisations intends to promote effectiveness and productivity. This is because counter productivity may result from poor placement of inappropriate extrinsic motiving factors which could create some deficient in employee output. And as a result, affect the ultimate goal for achieving high profit that could boost organisational performance.

Extrinsic Motivation in Relationship with Co-workers

Extrinsic motivation with regards co-worker relationship is one external drive that could promote employee well-being and improve collaboration. The provision of amicable atmosphere where co-worker interpersonal relationship is encouraged could serve as a catalyst in the accomplishment of both individual goals and organisation’s goals as well. It is fundamental to note that for effective and efficient performance through the interplay of

在文檔中 Examining the Effect of Motivation, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Creation Process, and Innovation on The Gambia Telecom and Cellular Company’s Performance (頁 18-42)