DEVELOPMENT OF A MOTIVATIONAL MODEL OF REGRESSION FOR IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY OF SELECTED BUILDING TRADESMEN IN THE SOUTH EASTER STATES OF NIGERIA

1.1Background to the Study

Every organization is concerned with what should be done to achieve sustained high levels of performance through its workforce. This means giving close attention to how individuals can best be motivated through such means as incentives, rewards, leadership, and the organizational context within which they carry out the work (Amstrong, 2006). With positive motivation philosophy and practice in place, productivity, quality and service should improve because motivation helps people towards achieving goals, gaining positive perspective, creating the power for change, building self-esteem and capability, and managing their development and helping others (Adjei, 2009).

The role of management is to apply organizational resources which include human resources to achieve organizational objectives (Parkin, Tutesigensi and Buyukalf, 2009). For increased productivity which is one of the organizational goals, work force motivation is an influencing factor (Parkin et al., 2009). In order to ensure that people employed in the organization perform optimally towards the realization of organizational goals, they need to be motivated to work. An employee must be motivated towards his role and work in an

organization, if no moWLYDWLRQ  LV  SUHVHQW  LQ  DQ  HP quality of work or overall work performance will deteriorate (Agarwal and

Agarwal, 2013) Kirstein (2010), believes that motivation seems to be one of the most important tools of human resource management. Organizations design motivation systems to encourage employees to perform in the most effective way and also to attract potential candidates. Despite many studies on motivation, managers today are

QR FORVHU WR  XQGHUVWDQGe tLhaQn tJhe ir cHouPntSerpOarRts \HH¶V half a century ago (Kirstein, 2010). Some studies on motivation were of the

views that such extrinsic factors like money, praise and quality of supervision

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on intrinsic factors like advancement, quality of the job done by a person, recognition and growth as a way of motivating workers. In a study by Mojaheed (2005), it was established that involvement in decision making, recognition through financial rewards and job security are important motivational factors for workers to work harder to give out their best. However, in the study of impact

of non-ILQDQFLDO LQFHQWLYHV RQ bEy UFaLgbFenNle,OD\HU Adeyemi and Adesanya (2004), job security was assigned the least importance

by both management and bricklayers.

Conceptually, motivation is that force which makes an individual abandon his own interests to pursue the interests of an organization. It is concerned with why people do what they do. It answers such questions as why do managers or workers got on job and do a good job. The motivation of employees depends on the strength of their motives. Motives are needs, wants, drives or impulses within the individual, and these determine human behaviour. Motivation is the process of arousing behaviour, sustaining behaviour in progress, and channelling behaviour into a specific course of action.

The traditional approach to motivation assumes that workers will work harder if they are paid enough. The human relations approach to motivation emphasizes that workers need to feel important and socially accepted, thus encouraging the view that these views are more important than money, on the other hand, the

KXPDQ   UHVRXUFH¶V   DSSURDmFanKag ersHtoQcFreRateXaUn DJHV environment where workers contribute to, and participate in the running and

success of the business (Griffin, 1993).

According to Olomolaiye (1988), several incentives scheme which were introduced to motivate operatives were not effective, or best worked only when

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motivation concepts has remained largely the same, new schemes are being devised in seemingly endless continuum (Olomolaiye, 1988).

The construction industry is Labour intensive in nature. People often work long hours in relatively unpleasant environments far from their families (Mmphati, 2008). Even if workers are not happy to be working in a particular environment, they find themselves obliged to work. Fearing reprimands from their supervisors, they often find it difficult to express their ideas (Mmphati, 2008). According to him, supervisors generally do not involve the workers in the decision process as they feel it to be unnecessary and believe that their function is to instruct and direct their working teams.

It has been difficult for management to identify the factors of production that DIIHFW   WKHLU  ZRUNHU¶V   SURGhXe nFeeWd LforYthLisW\   LQ

type of study. Labour productivity has a significant impact on time, cost and quality of a construction project (Kaza, Ulubeyli, Acikara and Bayram 2016). In the field of construction, a successful project is not that which was started and completed, but that which met the expectations of the client in terms of cost, time and quality. Especially, the competitive environment of the construction industry forces construction companies to increase their labour productivity values in order to keep their positions in the industry (Kazaz, et. al. 2016). Time, Cost and quality targets are recognised to be the major criteria used to measure project delivery level of success (Dissanya and Kumaraswamy, 1999). Abdulateef and Abdulganiyu (2015) assert that the clients of building projects are primarily interested in their projects being delivered within a short time for an effective lower cost, and at a higher quality.

But unfortunately, projects delivery in Nigeria is yet to be delivered effectively to meet these requirements. This fact was supported by Riverlamlan and Hall (1995), who argued that there exists little evidence of projects where these three factors have been successfully balanced. Newcombe (1990) stated that construction industry is being criticised globally for failure to deliver projects on time. Managers need to motivate operatives to obtain the desirable results for their construction project. Pike (2001), opined that if people are highly motivated to work, they produce more results and business flourishes, if people are less motivated, a downward spiral in the performance and quality of business develops, because there is a direct relationship between poor company management of people and the behaviour of workers. According to Brent WKH ILUVW  TXmHanVagWersLnReeQd to WmKotiDvaWte  DULV HPSOR\HHV´"  $QG  WKH  DQVZHU LV  EHFDXVH

argued that it is important that managers and organizational leaders learn to XQGHUVWDQG   HIIHFWLYHO\   DQG   GHDO   ZLWK

motivated employees are necessary to let the organization being successful in the next century. He also argued that unmotivated employees are likely to expend little effort in their jobs, avoid the work place as much as possible, exit the organization and produce low quality of work. In cases that employees are motivated, they help the 0rganizations survive in rapidly changing workplaces. Ugwudioha (2004), believes that employees in an organization are employed to expend their time, effort, energies and expertise in order to contribute to the attainment of organizational goals and that these employees expect adequate compensation and rewards for their contributions. He also argued that the

compensation and reward system will therefore enable the employees to satisfy their personal needs, which include economic needs, psychological needs, social needs and growth needs.

Tizazu (2015), stated that employees play an important role in the success or failure of any organization and that the importance of motivation in retaining core employees cannot be over emphasized. Tizazu (2015) believes that keeping the best employees has continued to be challenge for most managers. If employees are committed to an organization, they are less likely to leave or be absent and may also display other behaviours which are valuable to the organization (Maurer and Lippstrue, 2008). Even a single demotivated core employee in an organization can lead to low productivity in the organization (Ghandi, 2010). To be effective, managers need to understand what motivates employees within the context of the role they perform (Lindner, 1998). Kaye and Jordan (2005) indicates that managers must stop guessing what it is that keeps their stars home and happy- managers must not assume employees want the same thing, such as pay or promotion. A variety of factors motivate people at work, some are motivated with tangibles, such as money, and others are motivated with intangible, such as sense of achievement, recognition (Spector, 2003). Tizazu (2015), believes that some of the reasons for employee turnover include lack of promotion, insufficient pay, work overload, and some other motivation related issues such as opportunities for training and development. Dess and Shaw (2001), argue that turnover incurs significant cost, both direct and indirect, in terms of direct costs (replacement, recruitment and selection, temporary staff, management time) and indirect costs (morale, pressure on remaining employees, cost of learning, product/ service quality, organizational memory and loss of social capital).

The motivation, especially monetary rather than moral, has proven its influence on the productivity of workers, and the methods of motivating personnel to promote productivity have been demonstrated by Khan (1993) through applications of different human relations theories of motivation. Olomolaiye and Ogunlana (1988), asserted that earnings related factors were predominant for motivating construction operatives Nigeria, thus, not only are financial incentives necessary to enhance motivation at personal and organizational levels, but also to promote unified motivation across highly interdependent and contractually fragmented project teams. McKenzie and Harris (1984) claimed

that money was the only motivator for construction workers. Colvin (1998), agreed that financial incentives will get people to do more of what they are doing.

Most contracting organizations have tried using financial incentives like bonus system, allowances parks, and salaries to motivate their workforce, but all these have proved abortive. The complexity of the construction project delivery is one of the major challenges in applying financial incentives. Construction projects emerge in fragments (Mitropoulous and Tatum, 2000). Disjointed relationship between contracting parties, misalignment of objectives, and risk adverse behaviours characterized construction projects (Rahman and Kumaraswamy, 2004). Similarly, adversarial business environments in the construction industry are a major barrier to continued growth and diffusion of new innovation (Anderson, Cook, and Marceau, 2004). The difficulty in assessing performance in highly interdependent teams compounds the challenge as individual output may be almost indistinguishable from group output (Howard, Turban, and Hurley, 2002).

The study of the motivation of construction workers is still limited to a relatively small body of knowledge. Although there is considerable research available regarding motivation and productivity, few researchers have provided a comprehensive analysis on the motivation of construction workers (Borcherding and Garner, 1981). There is still need for further investigation into motivation of construction workers in the construction project delivery. There is need to undertake a survey that reveals exactly what motivates the operatives into performing within or above standard and then come up with a solution that yields maximum result. This research responds to that need and tries to examine how motivation can be used to improve tradesmen¶performance and productivity in the building construction industry.