Work Motivation and Entrepreneurial Intentions

Employee motivation is fundamental to business performance, and thus underlies business profitability and global competitiveness. (Mowday & Shapiro (2004). Economists would say that it is the task of managers and leaders to personally motivate and create working conditions that serve to properly motivate their employees, such that the productivity and profitability of the firm is maximized for the benefit of shareholders and ultimately also society (Liebenstein, 1966). But asymmetry of information leads to the principal-agent problem (Ross, 1973) whereby managers cannot fully monitor the work effort levels of employees. The economist's solution is to align the incentives of the employee with the firm by sharing profit, risk and decision-making authority (Jensen & Meckling, 1976). The organisational behaviourist's approach is to understand what underlies job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour (Organ, 1988) and to motivate employees to supply discretionary work effort by adjusting the working conditions associated with the work environment (see for example Vroom, 1964; Igalens & Roussel, 1999; Locke and Latham, 2004). The studies of work motivation generally acknowledge that work effort is the product of two main dimensions, viz: hours of work and intensity of work, but they pay little or no attention to the intensity aspect (see for example, Brown & Leigh, 1996, Locke & Latham, 2004).