Effect of financial and non-financial incentives, organisational culture and leadership styles on employee motivation and how the impact influences the performance of employees: Empirical evidence from the Nigerian public sector

 

The Nigerian government have applied several reforms to develop the performance of its

workforce; in particular, how best to motivate the public sector employees to achieve this end.

This research examines employees' judgement with regards to the financial and non-financial

incentives, organisational culture and leadership styles impact on the motivation of employees

and how their motivation becomes an attitude and reason for not performing well. A subsidiary

commitment of the research is to study the relevance of Western theories of motivation for

employee motivation in the Nigerian public sector. Several studies were developed from the

Western countries where the theories of motivation originated from, whereas reduced study

have been carried out in underdeveloped African nations like Nigeria. The foregoing shows that

the Nigerian public sector lacks any strategy to harness the motivation of its staff, whether

through financial or non-financial incentives, leadership styles, organisational culture as

expressed by the theories of motivation. A hypothetical model of the relationships between

these factors provided a conceptual framework that guided the research. A mixed research

approach using both questionnaires (quantitative) and interviews (qualitative) was employed to

enable the researcher's understanding of the processes by which the factors considered

impinged on public sector employees' motivation. The study findings justify and establish the

relevance of the Western motivation theories to the Nigerian public sector, and besides skills

and technological expertise, this study proves that leadership styles, financial and non-financial

incentives as well as organisational culture are drivers of employee motivation while motivation

is a major driver of employee performance. This study key contribution is that organisational

culture significantly impacts on employees' motivation negatively based on its bureaucratic

nature in the way it envelopes the policies, rules and regulations, structures and processes that

determines both financial and non-financial incentives, leadership approach and job variables.

Therefore, it is imperative that the Nigerian public sector give keen attention to the

development of a robust and flexible culture that will strategically develop and support the

implementation of a performance driven employees' motivation that takes into account the

finding from this study. Future research recommendation revealed through this study

emphasises further investigation into the significance of organisational culture in the

management of organisational policies, rules, regulations, structures and processes that

determines key motivation factors so as to enhance both organisational and employee

performance.