A Descriptive Study on the Motivation of Bosnian Workers

At one point, motivation is what drives us forward, towards achieving the goals. In every business environment, every employee has its own goal. The managers need to know what drives their employees to perform better, since if the individual performance is raised, the organizational performance increases too. The employer needs to know if his employees reward is money-related, or maybe it is self-satisfaction, feel of empowerment or recognition of his colleagues. What matter is having workers have something to strive for, some force that drives them towards his goal. In this paper we try to explain step by step motivational theories, introduce motivation as concept, and find out antecedents (attitudes towards employees, reward system, supportive organizational culture and employee self-efficacy) and consequences (job satisfaction, involvement, work commitment, loyalty, organizational and individual performance) of employee motivation. We are going to focus mainly on voluntary environment where the circumstances and decision making factors are flexible. The research method conducted was based on survey questionnaire where 300 respondents workers gave their answer to the research question. The findings mainly provided a neutral agreement level of respondents for the research questions expect the negative amount of attitudes towards employees and positive amount of individual performance in these circumstances. The findings suggested that the respondents of the questionnaire are not motivated both extrinsically and intrinsically.


Introduction
Motivation as a psychological concept has great potential to help and initiate development of work performance, workers' overall output and firm's profit maximization.Motivation is an inner force in each of us that drives us towards the determined goal.
The purpose of the study is to find out the factors influencing the motivation in a voluntary environment at the Company of Argeta d.o.o. in Sarajevo.This research aims to descriptively identify the degree of impacts of antecedents and consequences of employee motivation in the selected company.We are going to try discovering methods which will be incentive to motivate workers, so they themselves can find innovative ways to do repetitive and routine-based works, discuss how these elements increase the incentive for future studies on the motivation theories, and how the concepts presented can improve and initiate the future research presented in the article.
The study employs conducting a questionnaire on all available employees working at the Argeta Company in Blazuj -Sarajevo.The employees that participated were both full-time and parttime.They were from different departments, and have been working at the company for at least half a year.The questionnaire consisted of inquiries about personal information, work satisfaction, the degree of satisfaction, and factors of motivation.Data derived from the questionnaire was analyzed and presented in the last part of the paper.The collected data is analyzed descriptively and the results are reported accordingly.Finally, the paper is ended with the conclusion.
2 Literature review Innovation Azoulay, Graff and Manso (2011) provided evidence that long-term rewards are much more influential on workers' innovation and motivation rather than short term ones.Petronio and Colacino (2008) suggest the methods for motivating employees in industries.Apart from financial reward system, the authors discuss some of the unconventional additional factors affecting employee motivation.Petronio and Colacino (2008) state that there are three main categories of motivational tools to motivate technical employees: 1. formal structures (written rules and policy conducted in the industry); 2. incentives, rewards and recognition; and 3. informal management techniques They aim to systematically analyze problematic factors about the motivation of 376 engineers in a work environment, and determine the level and relationship between employees' satisfaction and contribution to innovation.They identified the influencing factors on satisfaction including inadequate reward system; inadequate understanding of engineers' expectations; failure to differentiate between professionals and other workers; lack of taskintrinsic motivation; Inadequate managerial competence and knowledge.Furnham, Eracleous and Chamorro-Premuzic (2009) investigated to what extent the employees' personality influences motivation and satisfaction in the workplace by conducting three questionnaires completed by 202 fulltime workers which assessed their work motivation, personality and job satisfaction.They identified that person's job status is the major influence on job satisfaction.They also found that personality and other demographic variables have a lesser degree impact on job satisfaction.Orpen (1979) explores the effects of job enrichment on employee satisfaction by conducting a field experiment in a federal agency among its clerical employees.They grouped the employees into two randomly assigned them to either an enriched or unenriched conditions.They aim to identify to what extent employees have qualities such as autonomy, skill and performance.After 6 months, they found that the enriched group members were motivated with their job and wanted to learn and be innovative.Their motivation influenced their satisfaction and involvement; while the other group could not progress and become satisfied about their workplace.He suggests that enrichment can cause improvements in behavior and enhance the employees' satisfaction levels.

Organizational culture
According to Brown (1995), organizational culture is a set of norms, beliefs, principles and ways of behaving and develops the organization's distinctive character.Sadri and Lees (2001) proposes that an effective culture aligned with employees positively influences the firm's performance.They suggest establishing a positive culture for improvement.They also suggest developing communication between managers and workers, if the change of corporate culture is necessary.

Reward System
Many researchers suggest rewards and recognition in order to increase work motivation and job satisfaction which are directly related to organizational effectiveness (Alhaji & Fauziah, 2012).

Organizational performance
Organizational performance/effectiveness is the degree of effectiveness of an organization while achieving the organizational objectives (Malik, Ghafoor & Naseer, 2011).It is also defined as the fulfilling degrees of organizational objectives by using certain resources without harming its resources and its members and/or society (Thibodeaux & Favilla, 1996).
Organizations in the past tended to be unchanging, however, today's businesses need to continuously adjust themselves since technology is constantly changing.Therefore, organizations must employ proper motivational tools in order to improve their performance (Latt, 2008).
According to Allen and Kilmann (2001), the Total Quality Management is a management philosophy in effectively organizing firm's resources in order to meet the demands of the customers.They examined the reward system and its impact on organizational strategy and firm performance and found that higher levels of firm performance were significantly correlated with greater use of TQM practices.Manzoor (2012) examined the relationship between employees' motivation and organizational effectiveness.He identified that the empowerment and recognition of the employees' effort is the main factor in increasing organizational effectiveness.

Individual performance
Employee performance is a joint function of ability and motivation, and one of the primary tasks of a manager is motivating employees to perform their best (Moorhead & Griffin, 1998).Actually, motivation is one of the key issues of modern organizational research (Baron, 1991).
According to Marchant (1999), individual performance is moderated by the personality, values, attitudes and ability of the individual.They also as a group affect their perceptions and motivation, and finally influence individual performance.Furthermore, Marchant (1999) suggested performance appraisal for the employer in order to identify their skills and capabilities and enhance them through training and education.Chowdhury's (2007), after conducting survey on 105 sales employees in two retail organizations, identified that supervisors who have direct contacts with their subordinates increase the motivation of their subordinates.They also suggested that supervisors with positive motivational behaviors, salespersons' intrinsic motivations and therefore their performance were increased.

Research Model
Figure 1 presents the assumed relationships of this study's research model.The model is developed by considering the reviewed literature.Moreover, in Table 1, the complete list of model components and their definitions are provided.

Data
The survey is conducted on the employees in Argeta d.o.o.This company is adequate and appropriate for the research in that it involves its workers in continual and repetitive tasks.This kind of tasks gives a huge range of innovation.Terpstra (1979) argues that the innovation is influenced by motivation.The employees of the company are both full-time and part-time employed, chosen from various departments, and are currently working at the company.Seven point Likert scale is preferred in order to detect the agreements of the respondents on twelve sections through fifty-eight questions.The collected data then inserted into an excel spreadsheet and analyzed descriptively.

Demographic profile
The findings on education level suggest that company consists of approximately 64% of high school graduates working in the company.The administration and office jobs are filled with employees who earned a Master and PhD degree, 12.7% and 0.7% respectively.The company consists of 70 undergraduates holding a Bachelor degree with a 23.3% of the company.
The respondents of the questionnaire were 70% male and 30% female.The company has a very young workforce, with 70% of the sample respondents being 30 years of age or younger.The most populous workforce in the company is made up of machinists, handlers, general laborers and managers.

Questionnaire Results
As observed from Table 2, the results slightly suggest that the company has an established financial reward system.There is almost no non-financial reward system observed.The existing weak reward system is observed to be weakly suitable with the characteristics of the employees (Table 2).The findings suggest that the company slightly provide financial reward in order to motivate their employees.However, employees consider themselves slightly negatively motivated when their promotions, salaries, job security and job experience are considered (Table 4).The results reveal that the respondents are motivated by their colleagues' respect.They do not feel that their needs and wants are evaluated by their company.However, they are not happy with the recognition of their efforts and given values for their work by their company.They are slightly negatively agreed that their company shares the profit with them (Table 4).The respondents report themselves that they have necessary skills to complete their work.They are slightly agreed that they have wishes to develop new ways of doing their job.However, they are neutral that they can easily finish their tasks, are trustworthy related to their work and are not influenced by their personal problems while completing their work (Table 5).The responses for this category of questions slightly identified that the respondents do not feel the company care, the relationship between the managers and the employees, the fair and equitable behavior and the consideration of their needs (Table 6).It is observed that the company provides workers a free environment that is also suitable for all types of cultures.However, the findings suggest slight negative results that there are flexible schedules of the employees, easy communication and a variety of support tools and systems for employee tasks (Table 7).The employees are supported with a variety of tools and systems in their tasks 3.9 0.866 The respondents are observed to be slightly satisfied with their company, their duties, offered conditions and incentives of their management.But, they are neutral with their satisfaction of work environment (Table 8).The employees fairly feel themselves as part of the company and as part of a successful team.They furthermore are slightly agreed that the company will fail, if they don't finish their work (Table 9).The employees seem to be slightly agreed that their loss is dependent upon the company loss.However, they slightly do not always seem to consider company benefits and the ways of company success.Furthermore, they have slightly negative on that they do not go home without finishing their work.Finally, they are negative on that it is not matter if their company pays less (Table 10).According to the results, it is observed that Loyalty related questions are slightly disagreed by the respondents.The findings suggest that employees can quit their company and work for another company in the future.They furthermore do not consider that their existing company deserves the loyalty of its employees (Table 11).The findings reveal that individual performance is rated well by the employees except their contribution to work.They believe that they improved their creativity and innovativeness and the relationships with their boss and managers and they can easily complete their tasks (Table 12).The findings suggest a neutral stance of respondents when it comes to organizational performance.They slightly agree that organizational environment has become more motivating (Table 13).

Discussion
This research aims to descriptively identify the degree of impacts of antecedents and consequences of employee motivation in the selected company.It has become successful in that it could reach its objective.According to the results, it can be concluded that the results of descriptive analysis could not provide a high agreement level of respondents for the questions asked.The responses are accumulated generally around neutral except with high negative agreement on the attitudes towards employees and positive agreement on the individual performance.According to the results, there is a poorly established reward system and organizational culture in the company.Furthermore, attitudes towards the employees are negative.Therefore, there seems almost no support from the individual's external environment within the company in order to increase his/her motivation.On the other hand, the individuals are rated themselves as slightly self-efficient and effective.So, in general there exist very weak from both external and internal environment for an individual to increase the motivation.Accordingly, it is observed that both types of motivation do not exist.They moreover seem to be slightly satisfied and involved with their company.However, they are observed to be not committed and loyal to their work.Finally, they seem to gain positive benefits while their company does not progress.Khan et al. (2010) found that extrinsic rewards such as recognition of the others and work motivation have a statistical significant relationship.They found out that recognition was a major non-financial factor in enhancing workers' motivation.Our findings suggest the same observation but beside the non-financial rewards, the respondents were not keen on working for the lower pay which suggests that the respondents were primarily influenced by the salary they receive for their efforts.Petronio and Colacino (2008) suggest that lack of task-intrinsic motivation can lower the motivation of the employees.It is observed that employees have adequate skills for their job positions, but lack a challenging task that would enhance their motivation.They need to be encouraged and not occupied with boring routines.However the problem is that communication in the company between the manager and employees is not established accordingly, and the encouragement may lack for this reason.Cropanzano, Bowen and Gililand (2007) suggest that different employees have different needs and different motivators.The findings of this study suggest that while most people find financial bonuses as the primary determinants of motivation, others prefer non-financial rewards such as recognition from manager, respect from colleagues and empowerment from organization.
According to Moser (1997), when there is a lack of job satisfaction the person wants to quit that job similar to the results of this study.Moser (1997) also suggests the importance of job satisfaction on organizational commitment.The reasonable satisfaction level in the results of this study may be the reason of poor level of the employees' involvement.Organizational performance and commitment unlike individual performance were very low rated.The reason for this could be in the demographics of the company.The company may have too few competent managers, or the manager's leadership style may be inappropriate for the employees.It may be suggested that the company should employ competent managers to lead the company and increase organizational effectiveness.

Conclusion
This research identifies the degree of impacts of antecedents and consequences of employee motivation in a selected Bosnian company.The results identified that the responses are not highly positive for the questions being asked.Beside the negative influence of attitudes towards employees, the influencing factors of employee motivation are found to be poor.Therefore, the employees have no motivation and therefore their satisfaction, involvement, loyalty levels are very low.Furthermore, it is believed by the respondents that the company cannot reach a desired level of benefits.However, employees are found to have gained some individual benefits.
Based on the study results, this study recommends improving manager-employees relations and conducting contingent theory's test of favorability.Companies should especially change the attitudes towards their employees and arrange their reward system, enhance their organizational culture support and increase the self-efficacy of their employees.Therefore, it can be expected that their motivation levels could be increased.If their motivation is increased, their satisfaction and accordingly involvement, commitment, loyalty, organizational and individual benefits are also enhanced.
This research is limited in that it only discovers the employees of a specific company.Future research can involve more companies and different types of companies.

Corresponding Author
Muhammed Kürşad Özlen Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ishik University/Erbil, Iraq E-mail: kursadozlen@yahoo.com

Table 1 .
Explanation of variables Variable name Explanation 1Reward System Reward system is a policy of the company through which it rewards its employees for their individual performance

Table 2
Descriptive Results for Reward System

Table 3
Descriptive Results for Extrinsic Motivation

Table 4
Descriptive Results for Intrinsic Motivation

Table 5
Descriptive Results for Employee Self-Efficacy

Table 6
Descriptive Results for Attitudes towards the Employees

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences July
2013, Vol. 3, No. 7  ISSN: 2222-6990

Table 7
Descriptive Results for Supportive Organizational Culture

Table 8
Descriptive Results for Satisfaction

Table 9
Descriptive Results for Involvement

Table 10
Descriptive Results for Work Commitment

Table 11
Descriptive Results for Loyalty

Table 12
Descriptive Results for Individual Performance

Table 13
Descriptive Results for Organizational Performance

Table 14
Descriptive Results for Overall Evaluation