Motivasjon av kunnskapsmedarbeidere: Et ledelsesperspektiv på motivasjon

Abstract

There has been a paradigm shift in the European work community the last decades, and more and more people now take higher educations. This has led to a development of a new type of employees, who has a reputation for being difficult to manage, emotional and act like primadonna’s. It is proposed that these employees need to be motivated differently. Although lessons may be learned from traditional industries, methods for motivating creative employees must be custom made for this particular group. To nuance the methods, leaders need to better understand what motivation is, and what characterizes the creative industries. How to motivate a highly educated creative employee? In recognition of this challenge I find it interesting to illuminate a knowledge company’s awareness on this radical change, analyze their way to handle it, and show how they manage and motivate their highly educated employees. What do they know about motivation, and how do they actually motivate their employees? This thesis therefor examines a management perespective on todays motivation of knowledge employees, in a norwegian engineer company. The objective is to illustrate a typical motivation pratice in a company consisting of highly educated employees, to declare, and also interpret the case examples motivation awareness according to relevant theory on the subject. Using management, communication and motivation theory. Traditionally there are a few well-known methods, which make people go to work: Give people a salary to ensure their survival and they will work. Tell them that they are doing well and they will feel that what they do matter. Conduct appraisal sessions in order for them to be evaluated and allow them input on their work-related future. Provide them with development opportunities and they are better equipped for promotions and new tasks. This case study is therefore also an attempt to define the typical motivation factors among highly specialized creative employees, based on different leader perspectives in the case company. Using qualitative depth interviews. The empirical findings is also validated with a smaller group of employees perspective. The stydy in this thesis result, gives an impression of that the motivation practive employed in the case company is functional and updated on todays konowledge employees. The management has å broad focus on how to motivate, and the employees seem to agree. The findings that seems like most prominent in my study is summarized in six main catagories or factors. Theese are: Jobdesign, The social environment, Rewards – recognition- feedback and communication, Freedom and Management. All of them has an influence on the employees motivation and well-being. The results of the thesis are generated through a management perspective. Of course motivation is not just a top-down process and future research could combine the knowledge of this thesis with a wider employee perspective to bring us closer to generalities about how to motivate high educated creative employees in creative businesses.