CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In recent times, managers and management researchers have long believed that organizational goals are unattainable without the enduring commitment of members of the organisation. It has been said that the workforce remains the most critical productive asset of any Organization. It is the human element that gives direction and dynamism to the organisation.

In fact, any organisation can only grow to the extent made possible by the Voluntary and creative application of the skills and expertise of its workforce. It is for this reason that the search ways and means of motivating the workforce for optimal organisational performance has more or less remained a cardinal concern of management since the birth of industrial civilization.

Today, as in the early days of organizational history, managers often ask some fundamental questions: what can we do to motivate our workforce? What is the purpose of motivation? No one yet has discovered a single Technique or gimmick that answers this question.

As many still ignore that fact that no organization can survive without its workers, and the workers themselves cannot be productive if their needs are not met.

Also, managers and management researchers have long believed that Organizational goals are unattainable without the enduring commitment of members of the organization.

Freeman (1998: 38-39) noted that organizations, emphasized increase in productivity without necessarily considering the needs of the workers. They are however, ignorant of the fact that organization cannot survive without its workers and the workers themselves cannot be productive if their needs may not be met.

Aluko, M.A. (2000: 32) asserted that workers should not be made to work as machines and tools whose presence in the organization is just to perform while emphasis is placed on productivity alone without thinking of what will drive the employee to put on his optimum best.

Stoner (1998:463) stated that motivation is a human psychological characteristics, it includes the factors that cause channel and sustain human behaviours, motivation deals with “what make people think”.

Aluko (2000:32) noted that the major motivational factor is money, although we have seen that in Nigeria, money alone do not guarantee productivit