Magister Commercii - MCom / Motivation is considered to be the desired positive willingness that prompts a person to action. The factors that influence or lead to this positive willingness, are considered to be motivation factors, and include specific needs, wants, drives or impulses (Hersey & Blanchard, 1988). People are motivated by different things, both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. For some, it is power and money that motivate them while for others, it is flexibility or a social workplace. According to Herzberg’s theory, intrinsic factors are motivators or satisfiers and can be described as a person's relationship with what she or he does, many related to the tasks being performed (Buitendach & De Witte, 2005; Mehta, Anderson & Dubinsky, 2000). Extrinsic factors, also known as hygiene factors or dissatisfiers, have to do with a person's relationship to the context or environment in which she or he performs a job (Buitendach & De Witte, 2005; Mehta et al., 2000). Some individuals are highly motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. This is supported in a study amongst medical students (Beswick, 2002). In another study by Shim, Gehrt and Goldsberry (1999), it was found that students entering a career in retail viewed intrinsic aspects as the most important predictor of a retail career, followed by lifestyle flexibility aspects and then extrinsic aspects. Furthermore, research within a service organisation has indicated that various biographical factors have an influence on work motivation (Bezuidenhout, 2001). However, limited research has been conducted to determine whether biographical factors have an influence on work motivation within the retail industry.The aim of the study was to investigate the motivation of retail managers in a retail organisation in the Western Cape. Furthermore, it investigates whether the motivation levels of retail managers are influenced by their biographical variables. The Work Satisfaction and Motivation Questionnaire developed by De Beer (1987) and a self-developed biographical questionnaire was administered to elicit work content, promotion, supervision, reward and recognition in relation to work motivation. The questionnaires were distributed to the target population (n=236) of retail managers which were inclusive of store managers, store assistant managers and department managers. Convenience sampling was used to draw a sample (n=109) of male and female retail managers. Statistical analyses involved both descriptive and inferential statistics (ANOVA, Multiple Regression Analysis, Pearson’s Correlation Co-efficient and Scheffe’s test). The results revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between the investigated dimensions of work motivation and satisfaction. It was found that the investigated dimensions of motivation only account for 49.5% of the variance in total motivation experienced by retail managers. Furthermore, significant differences were found between the biographical variables and responses to the questionnaire. It is suggested, for future research that a proportionate stratified random sample be drawn which will allow the findings of the study to be reliably generalised to the population. Furthermore, it is also recommended that future research consider dimensions of motivation, such as, achievement, responsibility, security, autonomy, feedback and morale, which are not investigated in this study. / South Africa

After careful review of all the relevant literature pertaining to motivation, performance management and compensation in the form of incentives, this thesis focuses primarily on determining whether a statistically significant relationship exists between individual needs and the choice of an incentive scheme option. The secondary aims of the research are to determine whether: A relationship exists between the job grade of an individual and the choice of an incentive scheme. A particular incentive scheme option is preferred by the employees in The South African Breweries (SAB). A particular preference exists, and if so, to make recommendations to SAB for consideration as alternatives to their existing incentive scheme options. After collation of the survey data from the respondents in the sample, the analysis and discussion of the results determined that no significant relationship exists between individual needs and the choice of an incentive scheme option. It was, however, determined that a significant relationship exists between the grade of the employees in SAB and their choice of an incentive scheme. 81% of all respondents indicated a desire for shares as an option in their Short Term Incentives (STI) which indicates a desire for shares in some form or another and may well indicate a level of confidence and commitment by the employees to the organisation. Although the research hypothesis was not proven, significant insights into remuneration within SAB was obtained, which has resulted in recommendations being made for further research into the option of shares in some form or another in the organisation. A further recommendation for SAB is to consider some form of share options for all employees in the organisation. As many other organisations that are performing at remarkable levels attest this performance to share ownership and the behaviour that emanates from it, it would be in the interests of SAB to further investigate the issue as it may improve performance, ownership and retention within the company.

Intrinsic rewards, organisational commitment (OC) and organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) are all considered to be positive constructs in today's world of work, which could have a practically beneficial impact on the employee's career, development and success as well as the organisation's bottom line and overall effectiveness. The meaning and purpose provided by one's job combined with commitment to one's organisation as well as the display of positive, helping behaviours have all become constructs of considerable importance whilst at work. The primary objective of this research study was to investigate the relationship between the three constructs of intrinsic rewards, OC and OCBs amongst permanent employees of an automotive manufacturer in South Africa. An additional aim was to establish whether significant differences existed between the three constructs under study across various demographic variables. The researcher made use of a quantitative research method in order to conduct this study using a cross-sectional design. A composite questionnaire was used to gather the necessary data for the study, inclusive of the Intrinsic Work Rewards Scale (IWRS) which is a 25 item scale measuring the dimensions of meaningful work, varied work, flexible work, challenging work and enjoyable work; the Organisational Commitment Scale (OCS) which is an 18 item scale measuring the desire, need and obligation to remain employed by an organisation; the Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Scale (OCBS) which is consistent of 20 items measuring the behaviours of altruism, courtesy, conscientiousness, civic virtue and sportsmanship; as well as a short demographic section. The questionnaire was electronically administered to 700 employees; however, it was only completed by a sample of 250 employees with a response rate of 35.7 percent. The data was analysed by means of both descriptive and inferential statistics consistent of frequency tables, central tendency and dispersion, Cronbach's alpha testing, Pearson's Product Moment Correlations and analysis of variance. The quantitative findings indicated that all three of the measurement scales were reliably used, due to Cronbach's alpha coefficients exceeding the acceptable 0.60. Significant differences existed in terms of the demographic variables included in the study for OC and to a lesser degree for OCBs and intrinsic rewards. The most significant differences were related to job level. The results identified that strong statistically and practically significant and positive correlations are existent between the constructs of intrinsic rewards, OC and OCBs. The strongest correlations were existent between the dimensions of intrinsic rewards and OC in terms of the desire (affective commitment) and obligation (normative commitment) to remain employed by the organisation as well as the organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) dimensions of civic virtue and conscientiousness. The strongest correlations in terms of OCBs and OC were between the OCB dimensions of civic virtue and altruism with affective commitment. The findings of this research study contribute to the literature available in terms of the constructs of intrinsic rewards, OC and OCBs and also provide statistical and practical evidence of the positive correlations between the three constructs. Consequently, the results from this study provided the management of this automotive manufacturer with important information into the intrinsic nature of their employees' jobs, the levels of OC as well as the propensity of their employees to display OCBs at work.

The automotive industry in South Africa exists in its current state due to the developmental programmes created by the South African government. During the next three years the government’s main development policy for the automotive industry will change from the Motor Industry Development Programme (MIDP) to the Automotive Production and Development Programme (APDP). As a result of this change there were feelings of uncertainty experienced across the domestic automotive industry during the APDP’s design and the period leading up to its launch, more or less years 2008 to 2010. Also present is the fear that the industry would collapse when faced with global competition should this change not fully comprehend all aspects of South Africa’s automotive industry. The research problem addressed in this study was to determine the effect on the sector’s competiveness in light of the impending change in governmental development programmes. This was accurately explained and expressed clearly while sub problems were identified from areas in the main problem that required further analysis due to their criticality or lack of clarity. A comprehensive literature review was executed to understand the nature and extent of the South African automotive industry, the Motor Industry Development Programme and the Automotive Production and Development Programme. A primary research instrument was constructed, in the form of a questionnaire, to test specific themes exposed during the literature review which can influence the sector’s competitive advantage. This questionnaire was distributed with the assistance of industry representative bodies NAAMSA (National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa, the domestic de facto representative body) and NAACAM (National Association of Automotive Component and Allied Manufacturers, a component manufacturers’ representative body), to an even spread of respondents representative of the senior management and executives of automotive companies in South Africa. From the results obtained from the sample group, it seemed that there was consensus on many issues regarding the current structure of the South African automotive industry. Specifically, the profitability of vehicle assemblers and component manufacturers is heavily iii influenced by the incentives offered under the MIDP and the industry is not viable without them. The respondents were virtually unanimous in indicating that there is a need for some form of incentive programme and were positive about the effect the MIDP has had thus far on the automotive industry of South Africa, particularly the effect on the structure, focus and encouraging a reduction in complexity. The research found that it is common practice for OEMs to include the import duty on vehicles imported for domestic consumption even though this duty will be paid with the use of import-duty rebate credit certificates (IRCCs), which are provided to those vehicle assemblers who are net exporters of vehicles. Looking to the future, it emerged that the APDP will have a similar, positive effect on the domestic automotive industry when compared to the MIDP, but the effect will be experienced in a more aggressive manner. Companies will be encouraged by the new development programme to more aggressively improve aspects such as restructuring, rationalising, reducing model proliferation and improving low scale economies for example. Also the APDP will encourage OEMs to increase plant production volumes and ensure that reasonable scale economies are present to develop a domestic component supply industry to a degree. However, the volumes will be insufficient to create a world-class supplier industry. As a result automotive companies will have to be more aggressive in their adoption of more automated production processes and through Automotive Investment Scheme capital investment will increase in both vehicle assemblers and component manufacturers. Component manufacturers indicated that they would invest more in the coming years under the APDP than previously while vehicle assemblers indicated that their investment levels will remain as before. While this is good for the industry, labour is somewhat left out of this: considering the APDP’s focus on increased volumes and capital investments automotive companies are not incentivised to make use of labour-absorbing production processes. The study also found that there is still a need for tariff protection and that the domestic industry would collapse in the face of global competition. The research found that the APDP was compliant with South Africa’s commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Finally, the Department of Trade and Industry’s goal of producing 1.2 million vehicles per annum by 2020 was revealed to be unrealistic and unreachable.

This study focuses on the development of a Performance Management model. However, the concepts of world-class and globalisation is discussed at length as a frame of reference for a best practice studded performance management system. The study further elaborates on the theoretical model of the world-class organisation as well as on the important milestones that organisations may have to go through in their pursuit for world-class status. Training, quality, reward and recognition, and the standardisation of operational procedures are highlighted as issues that inter alia should not be ignored when developing a performance management model. Furthermore, a world-class organisation, which the new institution strives to be associated with, should be strategically led, competitively focused, market orientated, employee driven and operationally sound. It should do what it is good at and adapt quickly to the changes in the market place. It has to benchmark against competition and operate in terms of the team based approach to surpass its competitors. A well thought out performance management model could therefore be an ideal instrument to use to realise the above objectives and for it to be successfully implemented world-class principles and milestones discussed in this study should not be ignored. To move closer to realising the objective of developing a world-class performance management model within the context of a world-class organisation, the study provides a detailed discussion of performance management and its key components, namely the traditional appraisal processes; the 360 „a feedback; the management by objectives and its emphasis on performance outputs. It also outlines the relationship between the required competencies and performance output. Emphasis is also laid on the need to shift from a pure output based appraisal tools to an integrated performance model that incorporates competencies, performance output and continued progress reviews. The need to incorporate grievances and appeal processes in a performance management model is also identified as a very important factor not to be lost sight of when crafting a performance management model. This aspect is useful to consider because it could indicate the extent to which the model will be efficient, fair and legally compliant to the existing labour legislation. The empirical aspect of this study further tested the perception of staff of the former technikons on performance management. Although the response rate was not what one would have expected, it was however encouraging to note that the organisational climate and culture at the technikons that did not have any instrument to measure performance were quite receptive to the introduction of a performance management system. It is assumed that the envisaged model will assist in improving the supervisor employee communication, clarify on a continued basis the organisation's expectations from each employee and assist the organisation to deliver to its expected mandate. / Prof. JA Slabbert

This study is intended to analyze employee acceptance of an alternative reward system that reinforces continuous learning, teamwork, major expansion of individual capabilities, business knowledge application, and business unit (team) performance. This system is in contrast with traditional pay systems that reward seniority and individual performance determined by the subjective ratings of a direct supervisor, with pay increases based mainly on current job grade (and the availability of higher job grades within the company) and comparison with market value of the job. Individuals from three areas of a major electronics manufacturing company in the southwestern part of the United States served as subjects.

With the growing use of teams in organizations and schools there is a need to better understand the individual differences of employees that might potentially increase performance and improve attitudes. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of locus of control, which was the individual difference of interest in this study, and incentives on team performance and job satisfaction.

The first chapter of this thesis is motivated by a puzzle in consumer finance. In high-stakes financial decisions, people leave a substantial amount of money on the table, even when financial education is available. The ubiquity of financial choices makes understanding the effects of incentives and education on mistakes crucial. This chapter experimentally examines the impact of changes in incentives and educational availability on incentivized but hypothetical healthcare choices using Amazon Mechanical Turk. We find that increasing incentives are ineffective in increasing decision-making effort, even when these changes are made clear and salient to the subjects. Yet, surprisingly, despite this lack of effort response, subjects' choices improve when incentives are high. This result highlights an under-appreciated channel of incentives: when stakes become larger, often, the problems become simpler too. We next investigate the effect of available education. Overall, education leads to an increase in decision-making effort and an improvement in choice quality. However, this average effect masks significant heterogeneity across incentive treatments. Subjects are willing to put in the educational effort when either the problems are hard or mistakes are highly costly, but the return of the educational effort is zero for hard problems and positive for easy ones. Thus, only when stakes are high and the problem is easy does education have an effect. These findings suggest that people can be encouraged to get education for high-stakes decisions, and policy-makers have a role in simplifying problems to translate the extra effort into better choices. The second chapter dives deeper into the "easiness" channel of incentives. This chapter uses an experiment to disentangle "easiness" from the standard incentives on savings account choices, again using Amazon Mechanical Turk. We show that increasing the variance of the accounts improves choices without increasing time spent. This is true in both between-subject and within-subject analyses. Besides, we re-investigate the effects of incentives and education. We recover the usual effects of incentives, where paying subjects a higher rate motivates them to spend more time and do better. We also find that easiness and incentives complement education. Consistent with the literature, we show that the effectiveness of education diminishes with time, suggesting that education should be provided as and when people make decisions. In the third chapter finds experimental evidence for preference for flexibility (PFF). Although PFF is very intuitive, documenting PFF experimentally faces challenges from stochastic choices. Because there are random noises in decision-making, experimental data may over-estimate PFF due to such randomness. This chapter tackles stochastic choices by first deriving theoretical upper bounds for PFF. We then measure PFF against these upper bounds using menu choices presented in the Multiple Price Lists (MPLs) in a lab experiment. We find that subjects exhibit more PFF than what can be explained by random noises. Specifically, there are more PFF than two countervailing behaviors, indifference and preference for commitment. We then present two alternative models for PFF, which have different predictions for the effect of the probability of payment on PFF. We suggest a modified experiment to tell these two models apart for future research.

This study investigated the effects of group and individual incentive structures as well as collaborative and competitive conflict management strategies on consensus and perceived decision quality. Results showed group incentives encouraged collaborative conflict management while group incentives and collaborative conflict management both encouraged the perception of consensus and decision quality. At the same time individual incentives encouraged competitive conflict management while individual incentives and competitive conflict management each reduced the perception of consensus and decision quality. I used questionnaires to measure the perception of conflict management strategies, consensus, and decision quality with a sample size of 120. I wasn't able to substantiate the same hypotheses relating to actual consensus, which I measured mathematically on the group level through a rank procedure. The sample size for actual consensus was 30 groups. In an exploratory effort to understand a behavioral aspect of decision making groups, I found that individuals I verbal behaviors concerning how often they had spoken during the group process correlated significantly with individuals' perception of how influential individuals were on the final group ranking. In the experiment, I used 120 students from an introductory psychology class at Virginia Tech. The sample consisted of 63 males and 57 females. All subjects watched the movie called "12 Angry Menll and were asked to decide by themselves on the order in which the 12 jurors would change their vote from guilty to not guilty. I formed groups of four, and exposed them to either group incentives or individual incentives before they were asked to make a group decision on the same ranking. I intended group and individual incentive structures to cause collaborative and competitive conflict management strategies, respectively. / Master of Science

Recent research on attempts to motivate large-scale safety belt use has documented a number of shortcoming, including limited long-term evaluation data, excessive costs, short-lived intervention effects, and program delivery by outside agencies rather than indigenous personnel. The present study attempted to overcome these disadvantages. Specifically, the "Buckle-up for Bucks" safety belt promotion campaign conducted at a community hospital incorporated the following: a) indigenous hospital staff as program sponsors, delivery agents, and co-coordinators; b) a year-long program evaluation; and c) a combination incentive and commitment-based intervention program. Directed and coordinated through the Office of Community Relations, the hospital-based intervention included awareness sessions, randomly determined five-dollar a week cash incentives, and a commitment-based pledge card strategy. To be eligible to win the incentives, the staff members met the following contingencies: a) wore a safety belt; b) signed a pledge card; c) displayed the signed pledge card on their dashboard; and d) pledged for a duration that ensured eligibility. The evaluation data were collected for four phases: baseline, intervention, withdrawal, and a long-term, follow-up. For the overall sample, usage increased from a baseline mean of 15.6% to 34.7% during the intervention, decreased to 25.6 at withdrawal, and increased to a long-term follow-up mean of 28.6%. For the Pledge card signers and the Non-singers, usage increased from baseline means of 29.4% and 11.8% to intervention usage rates of 75.1% and 17.7%, respectively, demonstrating that the intervention had a differential effect on the signers and non-signers. Withdrawal and Follow-up usage rates were 56.0% and 44.9% for the Pledge group, and 17.2% and 22.1% for the Non-pledge group. A chi-square test for white noise indicated the data were autocorrelated. A time-series analysis was conducted to remove the serial dependency. Statistical significance of the intervention was examined from the time-series perspective and traditional analysis of variance procedures. Differences between approaches are addressed and theoretical explanations for the intervention effects are considered. Finally, suggestions for future research are offered. / M.S.