This research proposal is for the independent study based on motivation, the research is looking at the motivation of employees that are involved in the manufacturing lines for electrical goods. Large electrical goods manufacturers such as Sony, Panasonic and JVC today, use mass production technology to produce large amounts of electrical goods, like televisions and stereos more efficiently and to a higher standard in order to meet customer demand and increase customer satisfaction.
The individuals employed by these companies to work on the production lines of their goods by controlling the machines that are actually carrying out the work, are constantly repeating the same monotonous tasks.
This can clearly become boring for the individuals involved, and also de-moralising and de-motivating for the employees as they have no intrinsic motivation, which means they have no sense of challenge or achievement within their job, and they also feel that they are not valued or appreciated by the company as the machinery is carrying out all of the tasks and they do not as individuals get the opportunity to use their own ability and skills (Mullins 2002). This independent study will be focused on how to achieve the motivation of employees in these types of situations.
It is going to address what motivational styles if any electrical goods companies provide for their employees and to what extent these are successful in improving individual motivation as well as achieving better performance within their job. This study will provide a good understanding of the aspects of motivation in today’s companies, and also employee behaviour within the workplace. The study will look at the theories of motivation, and to specify the research it will look at Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory.
These two factors are identified as hygiene and motivation. This theory will be used to link the literature on motivation and the investigation into electrical goods manufacturing. Frederick Herzberg’s hygiene-motivation theory will be applied to the manufacturing in these electrical companies, so it will be tested in practical and predict the behaviours of employees. This particular theory is about working motivation, and will be able to identify which are the most suitable motivational factors for the employees working in the electrical goods production lines.
This means that the research will have a deductive approach, because using the data tests the theoretical framework. There is a huge range of research available on the topic of motivation, and it will be shown that these varieties of sources have an influence on the research proposal for the independent study. This proposal will analyse the contribution of four relevant publications on the understanding of the topic of motivation. These publications include two peer reviewed journals, which indicates that the information within them is reliable.
The other two sources are books, one of which (Mullins) is Europe’s best selling organisational behaviour textbook and the other (Hannagan) is written by an author who has ten years as Principal and Chief Executive of a further education corporation and has also worked for businesses in the United Kingdom and abroad in general management. All of these publications have put forward new ideas of ways to tackle the research for motivating the employees working on the production lines for electrical goods companies.
The concept of motivation discussed by the authors of the four publications, each suggests certain ways in which employee motivation can be achieved. Herzberg’s theory was initially the basic framework of the research, but these sources have pointed out the relevance of other theories and ideas of motivation that could be useful towards the research in order to make the findings of the independent study more accurate and reliable.