Motivational and De-motivational Factors for Software Engineers: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

This paper is based on an industrial survey conducted on software engineer motivation as previous research shows that motivation is amongst the most frequently highlighted causes of software projects failure. Motivation greatly impacts practitioner's productivity. Yet motivation is mostly ignored in software engineering literature and practice. Researchers have conducted studies on motivation in software engineering mostly in western culture. There have been very few studies on motivation of software engineers from Asia. We have not been able to find any empirical study conducted on this subject in South Asia, which is an important region in information technology industry worldwide. We therefore decided to conduct an empirical study in Pakistan to identify factors that motivate or de-motivate software engineers. Given the nature of the research we used an online questionnaire based on Job Characteristic Theory to identify (de)motivational factors that affect software engineers at work place. Results are based on 306 responses. Results are relatively different from previous studies as most of the previous work is done in western countries. These differences are analyzed in the light of Hofstede's Cultural Dimension 5 Dimensional Model. National culture impacts factors that (de)motivate software engineers in a country. Software companies should follow culture sensitive steps to deal with (de)motivational factors affecting their software engineers.