Damij, Nadja, Levnajic, Zoran, Rejec Skrt, Vesna and Suklan, Jana (2015) What Motivates Us for Work? Intricate Web of Factors beyond Money and Prestige. PLoS ONE, 10 (7). e0132641. ISSN 1932-6203
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Abstract
Efficiency at doing a certain task, at the workplace or otherwise, is strongly influenced by how motivated individuals are. Exploring new ways to motivate employees is often at the top of a company’s agenda. Traditionally identified motivators in Western economies primarily include salary and prestige, often complemented by meaning, creation, challenge, ownership, identity, etc. We report the results of a survey conducted in Slovenia, involving an ensemble of highly educated employees from various public and private organizations. Employing new methodologies such as network analysis, we find that Slovenians are stimulated by an intricate web of interdependent factors, largely in contrast to the traditional understanding that mainly emphasizes money and prestige. In fact, these key motivators only weakly correlate with the demographic parameters. Unexpectedly, we found the evidence of a general optimism in Slovenian professional life - a tendency of the employees to look at the “bright side of things”, thus seeing more clearly the benefits of having something than the drawbacks of not having it. We attribute these particularities to Slovenian recent history, which revolves around gradually embracing the Western (economic) values.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Funding information: This work was supported by Creative Core FISNM-3330-13-500033 'Simulations' funded by the European Union, The European Regional Development Fund. The operation was carried out within the framework of the Operational Programme for Strengthening Regional Development Potentials for the period 2007-2013, Development Priority 1: Competitiveness and research excellence, Priority Guideline 1.1: Improving the competitive skills and research excellence. This work was also supported by the H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015 project COSMOS 642563 and by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) via program P1-0383 and project J1-5454. The company Varsi d.o.o. provided support in the form of salaries for author VRS, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of this author are articulated in the 'author contributions' section. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | network analysis, salaries, motivation, Slovenia, teachers, labour studies |
| Subjects: | N100 Business studies N600 Human Resource Management |
| Department: | Faculties > Business and Law > Newcastle Business School |
| Depositing User: | Dr Nadja Damij |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jan 2017 13:32 |
| Last Modified: | 31 Jul 2021 16:16 |
| URI: | http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/29273 |
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