Topic 6 - Motivation

@yusha abidi - I'm sorry but I cannot advise you on Q1 as this is a matter of ethics. Q2 - this depends on what meetings if any you have had with a new mentor. I suggest you use the key words 'self-reflection' and 'SLS' to search on our search facility and our FAQs as I have given advice previously on how to address weaknesses in the SLS and to strengthen answers. It is up to you whether or not you mention it's a resubmission - your marker will have seen your resubmission statement, previous Mark sheet etc. so will know anyway. If it adds to the self-reflection include it...

Thanks @trephena.. I was not asking for some unethical advice..maybe I came across as such. I am sorry for that. Regarding Q1. I just wanted to know whether it is okay to ask more questions and later while writing part 3 of RAP use whatever seems appropriate . Will the marker have some issues with it? or in other words is it mandatory to write all the questions in Appendix. Regards

@yusha abidi - maybe this is a misunderstanding but I cannot condone writing / inventing things as you go along as that runs contrary both to the principles of good research in general and with regard to the RAP the ACCA code of ethics in particular. You must include a copy of the questionnaire and a summary of the responses as an appendix as whoever reads your work must be able to follow the procedures you carried out and your lines of argument. Without this you are likely to fail on Application if not E & A too. There is no problem in going back and re-doing a questionnaire but there is a serious issue in fabricating responses (for the reasons mentioned above). The markers have commented in the past that they are not interested in general questions about age, gender, educational & marital status as these essentially have nothing to do with motivation - so if you are stuck on the word count trim this lot out and focus on questions that do concentrate on motivational aspects. A summary of any interviews conducted should also be one of your appendices and it is fine when referring to it (them) to say (see Appendix 1 etc). You should give some background details in the relevant appendix of the person you have interviewed - name, their position in the organisation and date of interview (this is a research protocol)

Thank you for your response @Trephena Yes, this was an misunderstanding. Maybe I was not able to put my point across. In the actual questionnaire I asked more questions than I actually used in my project. The reason for this was at the time of the questionnaire I was not sure which questions I would use. Now after your advice I want to use one of those left out questions. Now in resubmission statement should I mention anything about this question? Regards

@yushi abidi - Yes mention it in the statement and also in the copy of your questionnaire and summary show all the answers even to questions you may not have analysed further. I did an article on the Resubmission statement which I suggest you read if you haven't already done so - you will find it on our home page www.opentuition.com/obu You may even find when you read this and examine the feedback there are some other relevant questions and answers you need to include...

Dear All Please help me understand the new requirement to have an accredited and approved mentor for the OBU project. Is it possible to get a mentor online and if so may you please give me contacts or any recommendations. Thank you.

@angelamupaso - Please consult the latest OBU information pack (there is a link on our homepage) as there is a whole section there on mentoring and a link to the OBU mentoring website. Please also take a look at our Forum about Mentoring as several comments have been posted there about and/or by different mentors. Essentially you can only now use a mentor that is on the OBU registered list. Our approved mentoring provider is the Learning Luminarium who though based in Singapore do skype worldwide and offer different packages, the basic being about Singapore $400 which represents very good value as most UK mentors charge between GBP 350 -500. (That is not to say that the UK mentors are not worth this amount but overseas mentors tend to be cheaper and if your resources are stretched this might be a solution for you)

Hi all, I did not pass my project at the first attempt and below is one of the comments made by the examiner on information gathering and referencing. Please is there any advice as regards this. Thanks 'There is scope for greater analysis and evaluation of findings and therefore for cross-referencing to the theories earlier in the report. Internal cross-referencing is as important an academic skill as referencing to external sources. This is a practice which also applies to the use of appendices.'

Dear Blizz, Please refer to my earlier article above on referencing.i want to emphasis that there is significant link between information gathering and referencing.if the information is not relevant and reliable you are likely to have problems in referencing.please ensure you reference all your work,being internal cross referencing and external referencing.The Quality of the Literature review gathered will also have a greater impact on the manner in which you analysis your secondary data as well as referencing.please refer to infor pack on referencing. Joseph

Dear Blizz, With regardsto evaluation of your findings,you need to triangulate your research findings to other data sources and then draw conclusions based on the findings,again ensure that your are consistent in referencing your work as it is a key graduate skill. i hope this advise will be usefull

Thanks Joseph.

@blizz - Essentially what the marker was trying to tell you was to link your findings back to the relevant theories. You should do a summary of the main theories in Part 2 and design your questionnaire around those. When doing your analysis you need to relate your findings back to those theories. Produce good graphs that show the results and use your words to discuss the link between what you have found and whether it supports or disagrees with the relevant theories. It is important to ensure you do your questionnaire and sample correctly. Quite a few students do crass questionnaires that are thrown together (badly worded, ambiguous etc) and say they have done a sample of x amount of people without giving any details of the sample and how the survey was conducted. They then draw conclusions that just do not stack up. Others try to do sophisticated statistics in their analysis (presumably to try to impress the reader they are knowledgeable) but if the basic questionnaire does not make a lot of sense - asking people for their general opinion about others and then saying this 'proves' something - (no it doesn't it just reflects the respondents' peerception of a situation) then it is obvious that they do not understand the basics of good research. You do not need to do correlation and t-tests etc - just a good well conducted questionnaire (and a summary of the tabulated results in the appendices), that is reliable, properly analysed, tied back to Herzberg, Vroom etc and clearly presented will impress the markers much more than copious pages of dubious mathematical figures As Joseph say you must reference fully. What the marker was also telling you was to show how your graphs or tables related back to the questionnaire data to make things easier for them to link your comments back to the research you undertook. Remember someone MUST be able to follow your work - you must provide clear workings and it must make sense. If you do not supply good workings and details of what you did and why you are saying something then you will frustrate a marker - and frustrated markers have one solution to that problem - they fail the work!

Thanks Trephena.

Patiently for results March 25!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello all, can someone help me please with the name of books or links to journals i can use especially on sources of information because i am not sure if i should take anything i get on google please help.

@angelampuso - google is fine to search for things. It is wikipedia you should avoid as the markers do not like too many citations from it as it is considered an unreliable source. If you use Google Scholar as your search engine you should find plenty of relevant materials but especially look for those that indicate on the right of the listing that they have a pdf document available (these can normally be downloaded free of charge, whereas most direct links to journals will require you to pay to download the full article)

@trephena thank you so much for this.

Hi Angela, Make use of Google Scholar just like trephena has advised.Try to also look for industry commentaries regarding the same Topic Rgds

Good day All, Please I have a question. In my information gathering process i have a questionnaire and an interview. Is this OK! This is because both are meant for different levels of Staffs (those that make and implement the factors and those that apply and practice it). Thanks in advance for all response.

@bishicumber - It's fine to have different questionnaires provided you can justify why you need two different surveys. A principle of research is that you should not pre-judge the results so it may not be obvious to the marker why you have decided on two questionnaires. Therefore you will need to explain your approach adequately. The most important thing with any questionnaire for T6 is that it must be related to the motivation theories. T6 is "A critical review of key factors or indicators in the motivation of employees in an organisation" so that is precisely what your research needs to focus on (not the age and demographics of the respondents). In your findings you need to show questionnaire results and then refer back to what these demonstrate in terms of the appropriate theories. Ensure your questions are relevant, unambiguous and clear so that respondents are able to answer them truthfully and easily. You must also set out your methodology and ensure that you have adhered to the principles and protocols of good research so please read Phil Clarke's article on p.36 of the Information Pack. (I keep citing this like a chorus on this forum because poorly written and conducted questionnaires, inadequately explained methodology and findings that try to imply that something is proved but where the evidence for such statements is flimsy - even possibly totally fabricated - are all commonly cited by markers in their feedback to failed students)

@trephena , thanks alot. i have ensured that already, but will just review for confirmation. Thanks

No question just waiting for results!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi, I am doing topic 6 and was advised by my mentor to focus on one theorist only, I based my questionnaire on Herzberg's motivators and hygiene factors which I stated in simple language and the questions covered all the factors, so I think that I am okay there, but now I am reading posts that suggest, that I should include more than one theorist, should I be worried that I am not comparing theorists or should I focus on creating a really solid RAP on the one that I am doing?

Hi Jenique, My advise is that you need to include more than one theorist atleast three(3).This will help you in part in your analysis stage.Its very important.One theory might not address all the issues needed in your report.i used atleast 3 theorists and the MARKER never flaged it, so its fine All the best Joseph

Thanks much for your advise Joseph, I can't figure out why my mentor would not suggest that....I will reconstruct accordingly and hope that I do a good job of it.

@jenique - I concur with Joseph - you need to use more than one theory as no one theory alone explains all motivational aspects. I think if you use just one theory a marker is more likely to think that you have not really considered and researched the subject adequately and could fail on Information Gathering and possibly Evaluation & Analysis. Again I agree with Joseph - research about 3 different theories (or possibly 4) - but no more and maybe choose from Maslow/Herzberg/Alderfer and Vroom/McClelland/Adams. I really like Adams (if you don't know it then https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_96.htm breifly outlines it). The important thing though is to APPLY them to your findings. This is easier if you design your questions around the various aspects of the theories and make the questions CLEAR. Then the conclusions you draw from your results should be valid rather than tenuous.

I hope everyone here is in good shape. Dear All, thank you for the information you have been of great help. I have just started to work on this topic and a question that popped up into my mind is that can we compare two companies and analyse how the extrinsic and intrinsic factors have motivated them and compare the results of questionnaire. In case, we compare two companies; can they be from two different industries (like taking a telecommunication marketing department and comparing it with a softdrink company marketing department) or have to be from similar industry? For questionnaire, we can further drill down into say Maslow motivation theory, physiological needs? i.e. the working hours are adequate to keep employees motivated like a recent case study showed that the reduced number of hours result in greater motivation then stretched working hours. Then in case of Security needs? The pay scale, security (insurances, health etc). Do you believe the combination of these motivational theories would be adequate: Maslow, Herzberg, Vroom & Adams? There were some other questions that I had been brainstorming recently, like the work environment, lockouts, payscales, employee-employer relationship, hierarchy adequately defined - promotions prospects, training? In addition, while devising the questionnaire? should we follow a particular pattern like starting with the gender percentages etc or come to the core points directly? Thanking you in advance.

@Fahad - It is not necessary to have a comparator company as the topic title of T6 is about motivation of employees in AN organisation not a comparison. You are best off focusing well on the motivation theories and drawing up questions on these. Demographic Questions (gender, age etc) do not normally have anything to do with the theories themselves so are of little use. However the aspects in your penultimate paragraph would be worth exploring and as the theories you mention are all appropriate it would be beneficial to explore your ideas on working hours and expand on this (maybe workplace stress for example?). I know from marker comments they like work that 'goes the extra mile' and shows a bit of innovation and good all round approach and is what they look for in giving higher grades

Hi all i got some concerns i wish to clear out on Topic 6. 1. I have included the organizational structure of the company in the appendix, my issue is that it carries names on it. Just the first names on the various positions. Is this an issue?Note; actually i intentionally did not take it out because there was am aspect of multitasking in the case study which i intend to use the organigramme to better highlight. Am i doing it OK? 2. i have been told i have to include a financial statement and talk about financial aspects to complete some objectives. But in my opinion i have not done that and don't intend to. Reasons being that i dont really see it imperative because none of my objectives or even questions are financially related. Is my opinion ok? please will be waiting to hear from you all. Thanks in advance

HI bishicumber, i think with regards to Q1, i do not think that can be a problem but from my understanding it appears that you are likely to complicate your questionnaire and the Analysis and Evaluation aspect.This is because you will need to analyze information for example directors motivational issues as well as a General workers motivational issues.Otherwise ,my advise is that ,if this is your initial preps better have a second look at it.if it is a markers/moderator post it as it is then i will advise you better. Finstats are not necessary ,but an analysis of them and out they affect the motivation issues that you have raised is key Good luck Joseph