Impact of demographic, economic and organizational factors on employee motivation in plastic industry: an empirical study in Kurunegala district

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Within the organizational context, human resource is the most valuable and indispensable factor essential to carry out the organizational functions smoothly, effectively and efficiently (Serasinghe et al., 2016). Employee motivation is one of the important dimensions that managers need to increase effective job management amongst the employees within the organization (Ali and Ahamed, 2009). Motivation as stated by Ran (2009) is the “process that accounts for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal”. Literature indicates employees motivation is affected by age, marital status, sex, education as demographic variables (Thomas and Martin, 1979); pay and incentive as economic variables; upward mobility, integration, formal and instrumental communication as organizational variables (Porter and Steers, 1973).

Successful manufacturing industry is the key for a sustainable development of a country (Rajala et al., 2016). The Sri Lanka Export Development Board states that plastic processing is a flourishing industry in Sri Lanka for over 45 years. Plastic industry provides direct and indirect employment for thousands of skilled and non-skilled labour (Kahangamage and Mangala, 2005). The country is still at a preliminary production stage, and it is only beginning to seek out new opportunities and explore new markets (Sri Lanka Export Development Board, 2017). For the better survival within the market while attaining competitive advantage, each manufacturer in this industry should have highly motivated employees who strive to attain high quality production (Patrick, 2012). Herzberg (1959) found that there are two different sets of factors that affect motivation. One set of factors are hygiene factors, those which, if absent, cause dissatisfaction. The other set of factors are motivators, which produce the feelings of satisfaction and if present, serve to

motivate the individual to superior effort and performance. Followed by interviews with HR mangers in set of selected plastic manufacturing factories, the research was able to recognize a gap between the actual and expected levels of performance among the operative employees. This created a need of providing recommendations to increase the performance of operative employees in plastic industry in Kurunegala district.