An Alternative Model for Motivation in the Academe: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

What works best to motivate employee and engage them toward commitment have been an unending inquiry in the workplace. The interest in the quest for „appropriate‟ motivation models is strengthened by widespread assumptions that a motivated workforce is a critical antecedent to the organization‟s productivity. This study verified Haefner‟s Fourth Theory of Motivation further after having used it as a program theory in redesigning the faculty evaluation scheme project of the University five years back where it saw that when team members are engaged, they contributed to the substantial outcome of the project. The first stage of this study has been completed after having classified the qualitative responses of 100 professionals in the academe. Using the guidelines of Heppner and Heppner (2004), the responses were analyzed into core ideas and were categorized as general, typical, and variant. Core ideas were fitted into the constructs within each of the three- motivation queues: leadership, work environment and individual psychology. Results of the qualitative responses confirmed most of the constructs in the motivational queues.   The second stage of this study developed scales for each motivational queue. The scales were floated to 300 academics of three HEIs to test the validity and reliability of the constructs in the subsystems using exploratory factor analysis. Factors were clustered and confirmed most of the constructs in Haefner‟s motivational queues. To further validate the theoretical assumptions of the scales, confirmatory factor analysis is recommended.

Keywords: Motivation, leadership, work environment, individual psychology