Abstract
Problems of motivation and job satisfaction have continued to plague developing countries like Malaysia. The driving factors to motivate employees have frequently been studied, but no correlation between motivation and job satisfaction has been found. The study described here focuses on work motivation and satisfaction together with their relationships with learning behaviours. The main research consisted of an industrial study of 356 employees from manufacturing industries in Malaysia. The study revealed that unskilled employees preferred group working on complex tasks whereas skilled employees preferred to work individually, in both cases increasing motivation and satisfaction. Task complexity was found to be an important factor in job design and learning. Learning in groups was a significant factor in workplace learning for both unskilled and skilled employees. Knowledge of the relationships between motivation and learning is expected to be useful for employers and policy makers in organisations especially in manufacturing industries in Malaysia.
Highlights
This paper is aimed at discovering how employees’ motivation and satisfaction relate to their learning behaviours while doing certain tasks
The results showed that unskilled employees preferred learning by doing simple tasks and this increased work motivation and satisfaction
This study suggests that new employees with limited skills, could be assigned to perform simple tasks rather than complex tasks
Summary
This paper is aimed at discovering how employees’ motivation and satisfaction relate to their learning behaviours while doing certain tasks. The results of both the laboratory and industrial studies were analysed in relation to work motivation, work satisfaction and learning as expressed in the research questions. The key contributions of this study are (in the context of manufacturing industries in developing countries like Malaysia): (1) improved knowledge and understanding of motivation and satisfaction theories (2) it is one of the few studies that relates motivation and satisfaction as well as learning behaviours in job design (3) useful input to employers and policy makers (4) a recognition of the need for task design, especially task identity and skill variety
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