CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The survival of any organization in a period of plenty, scarcity and turbulence depends on multifarious factors of which employee motivation is paramount (Muo, 1999:16).
An organization can be seen as an entity and also a process of co-ordinating individual effort to accomplish a common objective. It is a group of people bound together to provide unity of action for one achievement of a predetermined objective. According to Koontz (1988:40), to form an organization and make it accomplish its goal, two broad components have to interact for goal accomplishment. Of this two elements, human is no doubt the most important, most difficult to handle and most special. Employees represent the life-wire of the organization, which mobilize the life-less material components that would have other wise been inert or hidden.
Human beings are complex, rational and unpredictable and hence deserve special attention while materials are inanimate. Humans are characteristically unique, they posse’s personal aspirations and goals which most times are antithetical with those of the organization he works. The various complexities that could be either socio-biological or emotional tend to transform human being into attitudes and behaviours that are generally cumbersome erratic and unpredictable. These elements turn human being difficult to manage. Man is however, considered as an organizations greatest assets because with out him virtually nothing can take place. His importance ranges right from factory setting up to the top management level where actual strategic planning, organizing, directing and co-ordinating really takes place. The manager in an organization has to create in a man the appropriate state of mind, emotional stability and positive work attitude required for and favourable to the accomplishment of organizational goals. He must strive to adequately motivate the staff to elicit positive work attitude and perform it in compliance with pre-established standards of the organization. To do this, he must recognize the need and importance of effective motivation. It is only by so doing that productivity coupled with financial benefits will be enhanced and returns on investment worth while. This research examines the nature of the Nigeria employee with special interest in the staff of Nigerian soft drink industry in Enugu. It tries to examine how and with what they can be effectively motivated to work optimally in the industry.
According to Muo (1999:26), modern behaviour scientists are currently investigating a myriad of organizational problems ranging from the impact of equity on motivation to ways of enriching low-level assemblies of line work. The quest to determine and investigate the reasons behind various work attitudes such as increased labour turnover has made a lot of researchers delve into its related impact on productivity. Motivation has been severally and variously defined:
Swift (1981:30), views motivation as a drive to perform. It involves the effort, willingness persistence and a person’s desires to perform. The effect of motivation in any organization causes employees to be with or generally satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs. He went ahead to define motivation as a label for determining choice to initiate effort, the choice to expand certain amount of effort and the choice to persist in expanding efforts over a period of time to achieve a given performance objective.
In a broader form (Muo, 1999:30) was of the view that fringe benefit must have an objective in an organization whether legally imposed by state or federal legislation or included in the contract of employment or constituted by management wish.
He write that one of the major problems confronting management is that of motivating workers to perform tasks to meet or surpass predetermine standards. He also said that motivation could be seen as an energizing force that induces or compels and maintain behaviour.
Swift (1981:63) opines that it is not easy to motivate an individual and that the success of any motivational efforts depends on the need of the individual employee for whom it is intended.
Motivation is an internal psychological process whose presence or absence is inferred from observed performance (Nwachukwu 1988:18). He says that a motivated behaviour is characterized by sustenance, goal directed and result from felt needs.