Employee Motivation in Contemporary Academic Literature: A Narrative Literature Review

Using the correct type of motivation is pivotal in triggering employees’ affirmative work attitudes, such as work performance, job satisfaction, or voluntary retention, ultimately leading to increasing the organization’s overall efficiency. Despite the ongoing academic debate, academics provide practitioners with mixed results on which motivation factors are relevant for targeted employee groups whose needs are under the economic and socio-psychological pressure of the rapidly evolving environment. Elton Mayo was the first to acknowledge these socio-psychological factors as significant motivation drivers almost a century ago. Therefore, the purpose of this paper, using the narrative literature review method (supported by a systematic search strategy) on 83 articles, is to evaluate the research findings on employees’ motivation (related to their affirmative work attitudes) and to unfold the motivation theory’s advancement. Key motivation drivers were identified and unified into five motivation sets applicable to different employee groups. The findings also suggest that most academic works, theoretically grounded in classical motivational concepts, are quantitative analysis-based. To increase the efficiency of employees’ performance, internal motivation or internalization of external motivation seems to be the best solution. Employees’ “floating” needs call for practitioners to be trained in techniques from psychology.