CHANGING PRIORITIES IN STAFF MOTIVATION DURING THE CRISIS AND POST-CRISIS PERIOD

Abstract

The article examines the problems of changing priorities in staff motivation during the crisis and post-crisis period, as a complex socio-psychological phenomenon that can be explained with the help of behavioral economics. On the basis of a theoretical analysis, the main “side” effect, the transformation of motivational priorities, was investigated, which consists in a decrease in the level of job satisfaction with an increase in the level of remuneration, as noted in empirical studies conducted over a very long period of time. PANAS-C was chosen as the tools for empirical study of this phenomenon – a test of an active life position, a survey regarding the degree of satisfaction and significance of the WAMI work, as well as a test to identify the motivational type of Gerchikov. On a representative sample of employees of enterprises belonging to various fields of activity, having different sizes and forms of ownership, we tested and verified the proposed approach to explain the main effect of the transformation of motivational priorities, which consists in the fact that a decrease in the level of employee satisfaction with the growth of material incentives can be compensate with a positive attitude. A hypothesis has been formulated and confirmed regarding the desire of the staff to hide the true, purely material motivation, trying to give “socially justified” answers to questions regarding the motives of activity. The identified feature of behavior manifests itself almost regardless of the form of ownership, size and scope of the company. The authors proposed a phenomenological model that describes the dynamics of the process of changing priorities between external and internal motivation, which manifests itself through a significant decrease in the rate of growth in the efficiency of personnel activities while a significant increase in the level of material incentives continues. A simple approach is proposed to determine the moment of changing priorities between external and internal motivation, which can significantly increase the efficiency of the use of material resources when paying for labor. A kind of “conservation law” for material and non-material incentives (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) was formulated in the following form: the cumulative result of the influence of material and non-material incentives on the efficiency of the enterprise is a constant value that is preserved for this enterprise or its individual division while ensuring a negligible staff turnover. Using the mathematical interpretation of the most probable law describing the relationship between job satisfaction and efficiency, it was possible to explain many empirical effects that had been identified over a fairly long period. At the same time, the assumption about the existence of a stratification of respondents’ reactions according to different hierarchical levels of the organization did not find adequate confirmation.