Examining Factors that Influence Employee Motivation in a Southern West Virginia University

Employees are often not motivated to perform at their highest potential, costing organizations millions of dollars each year. Therefore, employee motivation is an important issue to all organizations constituting much research concerning the various aspects of motivation. However, a review of the literature identified a gap in research in the area of higher education institutions, specifically private institutions that rely on tuition and donations to pay expenses. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the relationship of factors that reflect the measure of employee satisfaction of motivational incentives to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of employees in a private university in southern West Virginia. The goal was to determine which factors have the greatest relationship to employee motivation creating the most effective motivational tool. A power analysis revealed a priori sample size of 114 was needed; thus, all 343 full-time employees at a southern West Virginia university were invited to participate in this study and 142 responses were obtained. Preliminary statistical analyses consisted of descriptive statistics of all study variables. Pearson correlation coefficients were utilized for testing bivariate hypotheses (H1 through H18). Skewness and kurtosis were examined and Spearman rank correlations were used to supplement the Pearson correlations to test the robustness of the parametric conclusions. The remaining hypotheses (H19 and H20) were tested using multiple regression analyses. The results indicated that nature of the work was the only satisfaction scale correlated with intrinsic motivation with a positive Pearson correlation of r = .25 (p = .002) and a positive Spearman correlation of rs = .31 (p < .001). Supplemental analyses revealed variations between participants in different pay groups as well as participants with varying length of service. The qualitative research questions were used to verify quantitative data and provide insights that were difficult to gain from closed-ended questions. The qualitative data verified that most participants are intrinsically motivated but revealed that greater recognition and better communication are desired. A recommendation for further study is to replicate this study after implementing a more open communication system and establishing recognition programs.