Topic 6 – Motivation

Overall Approach for Topic 6:

This topic solely focuses on motivation in employees. Employees motivation describes an employee’s basic enthusiasm about work and incentives given to accomplish work. Motivating employees about work is the blend of satisfying the employee’s requirements and prospect from work and workplace factors that facilitate employee motivation.

Organisation can boost employees’ morale by rewarding and acknowledging their work. There are various ways for motivating employees such as giving them support, monetary rewards, and good working conditions among others.

Employees are organisation’s livelihood. How they feel about the work they are doing and the results received from that work directly impact an organization’s performance and, ultimately, its stability. For instance, if an organization’s employees are highly motivated and proactive, they will do whatever is necessary to achieve the goals of the organization as well as keep track of industry performance to address any potential challenges.

An important aspect that student should consider under this topic is that he/she should have broader level understanding (indirectly) of various factors that motivates students to perform specific tasks within an organisation but student must understand that they need to apply their overall understanding with respect to motivation of employees through proper usage of particular theories (e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s two-factor theory, Vroom’s expectancy theory, Locke’s goal theory etc.) and describe all aspect of selected theories in context of selected organisation. Keeping on rite track without providing irreverent information during application of particular theory in the RAP is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Key features / requirements:
Assessment of key factors that actually motivate employee.
Application of various employees’ motivational theories on selected organisation.
Assessment of performance of selected organisation in the light of employees’ motivational theories.
Provide some quantitative and qualitative analysis (wherever applicable) to substantiate above mentioned aspects in proper manner.
Maintain proper balance in explanation / analysis of different aspects that required under this topic.
*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Key Success Factors:
Proper application of key aspects of various employees’ motivational theories.
Avoidance to provide irrelevant information other than required in selected theories.
Proper linkage of various aspect of employees’ motivational theories on selected organisation.
Proper application of all selected aims and objectives (that decided in inception of RAP) in appropriate sections of RAP.
Proper answering of all research questions (that decided in inception of RAP) in appropriate sections of RAP.
Usage of proper research methodology to achieve good result against all selected aims and objectives (that decided in inception of RAP).
Maintain proper sequence of all discussion in logical manner by keeping all requirements of the topic.
Logically conclude all performed work at the end of Research Report by keeping in consideration of all requirements of the topic.
*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Major benefits for choosing this topic:
Student will practically apply his/her bookish knowledge into real life.
Student will aware off various employees’ motivational theories.
Student will learn about different factors that motivate employees.
Various techniques learned under this topic will substantially help student in his/her professional life.
Major possible limitations faced by student under this topic:
Students may not entertain well by the management of selected organisation in provision of required information due to various issues (e.g. confidentiality aspects, non availability of authorized person to disseminate information to student for research work, etc.)
Student may not find good stuff from internet or other sources (due to weak research approach) to bring ideas for improvement in the project.
Student may be confused due to variation in actual information (verbal or documented) provided from primary sources with the result that he/she actually derive from his/her research work as per requirement of the topic.
*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Suitable organisation under this topic:
The most suitable organisation under this topic is that for which student have access to management of the company and moreover management of the company is willingly provide all required information to student as required under the topic. Selection of most appropriate organisation is very essential as student must have better understanding of overall operations of the organisation and moreover he/she also have enough knowledge of the sector in which his/her selected organisation actually operates. Based on better knowledge of the organisation and respective sector , student will be able to interlink various aspect of overall operations of the selected organisation with all requirements of the topic that ultimately help him/her in getting good grades.

In short student need to assess following aspects in selection of organisation for RAP.

Student’s own interest related to overall business of the organisation;
Accessibility of information from primary sources (extremely important in topic 6);
Accessibility of information from secondary sources;
Knowledge of overall operations of the organisation (extremely important in topic 6);
Knowledge of overall associated sector of the organisation;
Availability of time from concerned officials of selected organisation (extremely important in topic 6);
Basic idea of requirements of selected topic and their applications on proposed organisation in inception of RAP.
*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Suggested approach for this topic:
Under this topic, student must plan properly from inception so that he/she can complete all tasks effectively in proper manners. First of all, student must gain excellent understanding of major requirements of this topic and he/she need to critically assess all aspects of requirement by defining detailed strategy. Student need to assess that what process that he/she actually follow to meet all requirements that only possible through detailed planning in inception of RAP.

Student need to prepare overall content of RAP under topic 6 that describes logical sequence of all tasks that need to adhere by the student. This content will also help student to keep on right track from inception and at the same time student can also assess time factor against planned vs. actual tasks through considering his allocated time for complete preparation of RAP.

After finalization of overall content of RAP under topic 6, student need to start working logically from gathering of information as per requirement of topic. Student need to assess all gathered information very critically through consultation from mentor. Mentor feedback on key areas of RAP is very essential so student should share his/her thoughts with project mentor regularly to get efficient guidance in time accordingly.

In short, there is no 100% suggested approach for topic 6 as keeping broader level approach (described above) , detailed approach under topic 6 varies due to student’s perception that he conceived from requirements of the topic along with available information of selected organisation. Whatever, the approach you will follow , keep getting guidance from project mentor at every step so that you can meet all requirements of topic and get good grades.

*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Availability of Information:
Student have to complete his/her RAP based on provision of information directly from management of the organisation (i.e. primary sources of information) along with vast information available through different mediums (internet, newspaper, books, etc.) under secondary sources of information. Availability of information from primary sources under topic number 6 is very essential as this topic cannot complete at all without getting specific information of the selected organisation. Student need to ensure that he has access of vast information from management of the selected organisation and there is no confidentiality concerns by them as well.

In short, student need to assess very critically before opting this topic for RAP as all requirements of this topic only meet if student have enough information about selected organisation. If there is any doubt on provision of required information during perpetration of RAP then student should not select this topic for RAP as it impact on overall evaluation of information and overall grades of RAP.

*Feedback from project mentor is essential to get good grades in RAP.

Q1.
As per the advice given on this thread, I slightly changed my questionnaire and added one question on Hertz berg’s theory. Now I am writing my re-submission statement. Should I mention that I went to employees again and asked them one more question or I already asked them a bunch of questions and while writing my RAP I eliminated a few keeping in mind the word count. Now I am digging back in that questions bank and selecting one which I feel is appropriate.
Later one is the truth.

Q2.
While correcting my SLS ( the marker said that Q1 and Q3 were too descriptive) should I mention that I have changed my mentor and had a meeting with him? and should I write about that meeting? Somewhere in SLS do I have mention that it is a resubmission?

Regards

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

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

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.

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,

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

@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!

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

@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)

Hi Angela,

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

Rgds