Chinese Management Studies

Emerald Article: Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo Fang Yang

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To cite this document: Fang Yang, (2011),"Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 5 Iss: 3 pp. 272 - 297 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506141111163363 Downloaded on: 08-01-2013 References: This document contains references to 45 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 2619 times since 2011. *

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Fang Yang, (2011),"Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 5 Iss: 3 pp. 272 - 297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506141111163363 Fang Yang, (2011),"Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 5 Iss: 3 pp. 272 - 297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506141111163363 Fang Yang, (2011),"Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 5 Iss: 3 pp. 272 - 297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506141111163363

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Work, motivation and personal characteristics: an in-depth study of six organizations in Ningbo
Fang Yang
Ningbo Institute of Education, Ningbo, Peoples Republic of China
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate employees work motivation in China. It aims to give answers to two questions: what motivates employees in China? What are the effects of personal characteristics on work motivation for employees in China? Design/methodology/approach The study used convenience sampling to select the sample and the respondents were randomly selected from employees of six organizations, from people in the personnel market and also from people walking around in shopping centres in a very representative city of China Ningbo. Then, descriptive statistics, t-test (one sample t-test, independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA), regression analysis and scatter plots were used to analyze the data. Findings The ndings of the study are: all the 15 motivation factors listed in the questionnaire, including good pay, promotion, desirable work environment, good welfare package, good bonus system, good company policy, good interpersonal relationships, good supervisors, job security, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job, do motivate employees in China; good pay is the most important motivator for employees in China; employees work motivation is affected by their personal characteristics. Originality/value It is believed that these ndings can assist organizations in China, those located in Ningbo in particular, in effectively motivating their employees. It may also be applied to organizations located in other parts of the world which have Chinese employees. Keywords Work motivation, China, Employees, Personal characteristics, Motivation factors, Good pay, National cultures, Employees behaviour Paper type Research paper

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1. Introduction Wood et al. (1994) dene organizations as collections of people who are working together and cooperating based on a division of labour in order to achieve a common purpose. Generally, it is impossible for the owners of an organization to achieve their organizational objective on their own. This indicates that employees represent a kind of valuable asset for an organization. Moreover, it is generally agreed that employees individual performance has a signicant impact on the organizational performance. Therefore, managers of organizations always try to nd ways to stimulate their employees work motivation, which refers to the forces within an individual which are reected by the level, direction and persistence of effort put into his work (Wood et al., 1994) to improve their work efciency. On the other hand, people are different and have different work values and needs. Employees are different in demographic characteristics, for example, gender, age,
Chinese Management Studies Vol. 5 No. 3, 2011 pp. 272-297 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1750-614X DOI 10.1108/17506141111163363

This paper could not have been possible without the help from Dr Saileshsingh Gunessee, who is thanked for his valuable advice, and the author would also like to thank her husband, Zhang chuyang, for his unconditional support and encouragement.

educational level, working experience and cultural background. This leads to differences in employees work values and needs. Buelens et al. (2006) report that researchers have compared the work values and needs of young workers with the values of their parents and grandparents and found that those of previous generations want just a high salary and good career prospects whereas young people are more motivated by autonomy, creativity, challenges and growth in their jobs. Then, according to Hofstede (2001), people from different cultural backgrounds have diverse work values. For instance, people in the USA pay high attention to work and give emphasis to competition, success and performance; however, people in Taiwan do not emphasize work so much and focus on the quality of life and interpersonal relationships (Su, 2006). Thus, managers face challenges to motivate diverse employees. In order to help managers to effectively motivate their employees, a large amount of research has been conducted to identify the factors which can motivate employees; therefore, several versions of a motivation theory were generated in the nineteenth century, such as the Hierarchy of Needs Theory, McClellands Theory of Needs, Herzbergs two-factor Theory, ERG Theory and Job Design Theory (Ross, 1998). However, all the motivation theories were developed in the west and may not apply to Chinese employees (Geren, 2002; Humphreys, 2007). Inuenced by Confucianism, Chinese people should have diverse work values compared with westerners. Even though some research about Chinese employees work motivation has been carried out, almost all these studies, for example, the researches conducted by Geren (2002), Jackson (1998), Taormina and Lao (2007) and Wang (2001), were conducted in the greatest cities of China, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Of course, these big international cities are not representative of China as a whole. The present research concentrated on studying employees work motivation in a very representative city of China Ningbo where to our knowledge no studies of work motivation have been conducted. This research aims to give answers to the two questions: RQ1. What motivates employees in China? RQ2. What are the effects of personal characteristics on work motivation for employees in China? Except for the introduction and conclusion, the main body of the report consists of three parts: the literature review, methodology, results and discussion. The literature review is mainly concerned with a theoretical background of work motivation and the relevant research. The methodology will explain the methods used for sampling, data collection and data analysis in detail. The results and discussion will rst show the research results and then evaluate the ndings. It will also point out the practical implications and limitations of the current study and nally give suggestions for future research. 2. Literature review 2.1 Motivation theories Hierarchy of Needs Theory was proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 (Mullins, 2006; Wilson, 2004). This theory states that every human being has a hierarchy of ve kinds of needs which are physiological needs, safety, social needs, esteem and self-actualization; physiological needs refer to needs for survival, such as needs to get rid of hunger and thirst; safety means security and protection from physical and emotional harm; social needs mainly include affection, belonging, acceptance and friendship; esteem consists

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of human beings internal esteem factors, for example, self-respect, autonomy and achievement, and external esteem factors, such as status, recognition and attention; self-actualization refers to growth and self-fullment (Robbins and Judge, 2007). Maslow believes that a lower level need must be satised before a higher one is expected (Robbins and Judge, 2007). That is the reason why it is called a hierarchy of needs. Maslow also states that the needs are all the same for all human beings (Robbins and Judge, 2007). McClellands Theory of Needs was developed by David McClelland and published in The Achieving Society in 1961 (Ramlall, 2004, p. 54). It suggests that individuals are motivated based on three needs which are achievement, power and afliation (Robbins and Judge, 2007). The need for achievement refers to the need to excel and succeed; the need for power means the need to control and coach other people and make them behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise; the need for afliation refers to the desire to spend time in establishing and maintaining close interpersonal relationships with others (Buelens et al., 2006; Wood et al., 1994). Herzbergs two-factor Theory was put forward by Frederik Herzberg in 1966 (Wang, 2001; Wilson, 2004; Wood et al., 1994). This theory divides the factors which are related to work motivation into two clusters; motivator factors and hygiene factors; Herzberg claims that motivator factors are the factors which are intrinsic to the job including achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility and growth or advancement; these factors can contribute to job satisfaction but will not result in job dissatisfaction; oppositely, hygiene factors, which are extrinsic to work, mainly cause job dissatisfaction and cannot lead to the feeling of job satisfaction; these extrinsic factors consist of company policy, administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, status and security (Graham and Messner, 1998; Tietjen and Myers, 1998; Wilson, 2004). ERG Theory was proposed by Clayton Alderfer in 1969 and it is a revised version of Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs (Robbins, 2005). It divides Maslows ve need categories into three groups and they are existence, relatedness and growth (Buelens et al., 2006). Existence needs refer to physiological and material needs which include Maslows physiological and safety needs; relatedness needs are desires for close interpersonal relationships and they refer to Maslows social and external esteem needs; growth needs are concerned with personal growth and development which are similar to Maslows self-esteem and self-actualization needs (Buelens et al., 2006; Wood et al., 1994). Job Design Theory was proposed by Hackman and Oldham in 1980 (Champoux, 1991). This theory presumes that the task itself, which refers to internal factors, is key to employees work motivation (Ramlall, 2004). It reports that employees can be motivated through ve core job dimensions; skill variety, task identity, task signicance, autonomy and feedback; skill variety refers to the extent to which a job requires a variety of different activities; task identity means the degree to which the completion of a whole and identiable piece of work is required; task signicance refers to the extent to which a job has signicant impact on other people lives or work; autonomy means the degree to which employees have freedom and independence; feedback is the degree to which employees can get clear information about the effectiveness of their performance when a task is completed; this theory believes that to what extent employees are motivated depends on the degree to which the rst three dimensions are satised (Champoux, 1991; Robbins, 2005).

Congruent Temperament Model of Work Motivation was proposed by Humphreys and Einstein in 2004; they state that the traditional motivation theories are incomplete and they propose that a comprehensive model of work motivation must include elements of individual personality and aspects of effort, individual abilities, expectancy, instrumentality, valence, goal-directed behaviour, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, satisfaction with work, leadership and perceived equity; they believe that people with different personalities have different needs and desires and exhibit varied preferences in the order of needs too (Humphreys, 2007). Even though all six theories cover the individual needs which motivate employees, they propose varied motivation factors and have different indications about the relationship between work motivation and pay and the connection between work motivation and personal characteristics, as shown in Table I. Wood et al. (1994) claim that all content theories agree that individual needs have an impact on their working behaviours; however, they disagree somewhat with regard to the exact nature of individual needs. Therefore, these theories focus on different needs. For instance, the Hierarchy of Needs Theory, ERG Theory and the Congruent Temperament Model of Work Motivation suggest that good pay can motivate employees work hard; nevertheless, pay is not included as a motivator in McClellands Theory of Needs, Herzbergs two-factor Theory and Job Design Theory. Furthermore, all these theories neglect that employees with varied personal characteristics might have varied needs and desires, except that the Congruent Temperament Model of Work Motivation points out that work motivation is affected by individual personality. Scholars debate the merits of these motivation theories and a large amount of research has been carried out to test these theories. Even though the Hierarchy of Needs

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Name of theories Hierarchy of Needs Theory McClellands Theory of Needs Herzbergs two-factor Theory

Motivation factors proposed

Indication about pay and personal characteristics

Physiological needs, safety, social needs, Pay as a physiological need is a esteem and self-actualization lower level need Achievement, power and afliation Pay is not included as motivation factors Motivators: achievement, recognition for Pay is not a motivator achievement, the work itself, responsibility and growth or advancement Hygiene factors: company policy, administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, status and security ERG Theory Three groups of core needs: existence, Pay as an existence need is a relatedness and growth lower level motivator Job Design Theory Skill variety, task identity, task Pay is not included as signicance, autonomy and feedback motivation factors Congruent Temperament Individual personality, effort, individual People with different abilities, expectancy, instrumentality, personality have different Model of Work Motivation valence, goal-directed behaviour, intrinsic needs and desires and extrinsic rewards, satisfaction with work, leadership and perceived equity

Table I. Comparison of work motivation theories

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Theory is an extremely famous motivation theory, little research supports this theory and many scholars question whether these needs must be met in order and argue that different people have different needs (Geren, 2002). For example, Buchanan and Huczynski (1977) point out that for some people esteem is more important than social needs, such as love. However, Maslows theory does provide important implications for organizations on how to satisfy these ve types of needs which their employees might experience (Buelens et al., 2006). ERG Theory, as a modied version of Maslows theory, has more supporting evidence than Maslows theory, but additional ndings on need differences between employees with different personal characteristics have been constantly reported (Wood et al., 1994). As far as Herzbergs two-factor Theory is concerned, it mistakenly presumes hygiene factors, such as good pay and good welfare package, can only result in job dissatisfaction but will not motivate employees ( Jones and Lloyd, 2005; Oshagbemi, 1997). Oshagbemi (1997) makes clear that any given factor can generate either job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Katsva and Condrey (2005) nd out that salary and monetary rewards are important motivators in the Russian nuclear industry after conducting their research. With regard to McClellands Theory of Needs, given the fact that McClelland puts more focus on higher level needs but ignores lower level needs, such as the need for existence. This theory is particularly useful for managerial applications (Wood et al., 1994). As for the Job Design Theory, many positive results which are supportive to this theory have been found (Buelens et al., 2006). Nonetheless, this theory can be criticized in that it focuses on internal motivation only and neglects the motivation caused by external factors. In regard to the recently proposed Congruent Temperament Model of Work Motivation, besides including varied aspects of work motivation, it reports that different people with different personalities have different needs and desires, which has not mentioned by any other previous motivation theories. Robbins and Judge (2007) also recognize this, pointing out that people with a negative personality usually feel dissatised with their jobs. This seems that this model is relatively comprehensive and eclectic, but it neglects the inuences of other personal characteristics, except personality, on work motivation (Humphreys, 2007). 2.2 Work motivation and personal characteristics Even though nearly all motivation theories do not mention personal factors, such as gender, age, educational level, working experience, occupation and marital status, it is believed that work motivation is affected by personal factors. Eskildsen et al. (2004) report that men tend to be less satised with their work than women. Although Ebrahimis (1999) research shows that both male and female business students are equally motivated to manage, Kamdron (2005) nds out that female higher ofcials are more likely to be motivated by recognition and good relationships with supervisors whereas male higher ofcials are more motivated by responsibility. These ndings provide evidence that gender difference leads to variables in work motivation. As for an educational level, Eskildsen et al. (2004) maintain that highly educated employees will be comparatively less satised towards their jobs than those who do not have a high education. Concerning working experience, Graham and Messner (1998) announce that principals with more working experience are likely to be dissatised with their promotion opportunities and those with less experience are less satised with their salaries. In respect of occupation, marital status and age, Hong et al. (1995) write that

there is an obvious difference in the attitude towards benet between management and worker; single employees emphasize more of a benet effect on job performance than married ones; different employees with varied ages perceive diverse benet impacts. All these clearly show that individual differences have an inuence on work motivation. Moody and Pesut (2006) further support this, coming to the conclusion that nurses work motivation is impacted by their personal differences. 2.3 Work motivation in China Notwithstanding the fact that all the motivation theories proposed play an extremely important role in work motivation literature, all of them were developed in the west; thus, they may not necessarily apply to the rest to the world, especially China which has vast differences with the west in terms of economic systems and culture (Geren, 2002; Humphreys, 2007). China is not as well developed as Western industrialized countries as far as economy is concerned. Jaw et al. (2007) claim that there is an association between differences in levels of economic development and value differences including work values. That is, work values between highly industrialized and less developed societies will not be the same. With regard to culture differences, according to Hofstede (2001), China can be described as a high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance and collectivist culture whereas the culture shared by Western countries belongs to a low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance and individualist culture. Of course in certain cases, culture is changing and many researchers argue that Chinese culture is increasingly impacted by Western cultures, but Chinese culture is still very different from Western culture. Given the fact that cultural values have a profound effect on peoples work values and work values are also a part of cultural values, it is unlikely that the work motivation theories which were developed in the Western countries can apply to China. Jackson (1998) agrees, pointing out that Western concepts of work motivation are not relevant in China, which is characterized as a collectivist culture and Chinese people may be more likely motivated by things which are best for their country rather than their individual benets. Therefore, some research has been conducted to investigate work motivation in China. Because of the differences in work values, Chinese employees show dissimilar preferences towards varied motivation factors compared with Western people (Jaw et al., 2007). Geren (2002) indicates that Chinese employees are more motivated by group goals because of a collective nature of their work values, but Western people tend to be motivated by individual goals. As has been mentioned previously, Jackson (1998) claims evidence shows that money represents an important motivation factor in China. Tjosvold and Moy (1998) nd out that cooperative goals can motivate Chinese employees to a large extent. In addition, survey from corporate employees in Hong Kong and Beijing shows that positive leadership motivates Chinese employees (Lingnan University, 2007). 2.4 Research gap and this research However, nearly all studies about work motivation in China, for instance, the researches carried out by Geren (2002), Jackson (1998), Taormina and Lao (2007) and Wang (2001), were conducted in the big international cities of China, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and it is believed that these areas are not representative of China as a whole. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai,

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Beijing and Guangzhou are much more developed than other places in China in terms of economy. Ebrahimi (1999) writes that Hong Kong is very different from mainland China in important factors, such as culture and economic development. Furthermore, peoples social values, including work values, in these areas are inuenced by Western culture to a large extent, especially Taiwan and Hong Kong. Having been exposed to Western thought since a long time ago, Taiwan shows obvious differences in work motivation from mainland China; the opportunity to use ones ability and a sense of challenge are perceived as most important motivators by Taiwan managers whereas good pay is the most important one for mainland Chinese managers (Wang, 2001). Also, because of differences in economic and cultural conditions, employees in Hong Kong and mainland China show different preferences with regard to compensation; it has been found that base salary, merit pay, year-end bonus, annual leave, mortgage loan and prot sharing are the most important motivators in Hong Kong; however, employees in mainland China consider housing provision, cash allowance, overtime allowance and individual bonus more important besides base salary, merit pay and year-end bonus (Chiu et al., 2002). Geren (2002) further reports that invasion of Western culture is quite obvious in Shanghai. Therefore, most researches about work motivation in China are limited since non-representative samples were used in those studies. This research also aims to study employees work motivation in China and it is carried out in a very representative city of China, Ningbo, where to our knowledge no studies of work motivation have been conducted. Based on the discussion above, the research questions and hypotheses of this research are: RQ1. What motivates employees in China? RQ2. What are the effects of personal characteristics on work motivation for employees in China? H1. Good pay is the most important motivation factor for employees in China. H2. Work motivation is affected by personal characteristics, including gender, age, educational level, working experience, marital status, personality and monthly income, in China. It is believed that the research ndings will assist organizations in China, those located in Ningbo in particular, in effectively motivating their staff. 3. Methodology 3.1 Sample selection 3.1.1 Why choose Ningbo? There are three reasons why this study was conducted in Ningbo. First, in terms of both economy and culture, which are the two main important elements which affect work values in a society, Ningbo can be representative of China. Ningbo is a moderately developed city in China, and similar to the national economic development it is performing increasingly economic growth (Ningbo Municipal Peoples Government Ofce, 2006). With regard to culture, people in Ningbo have opportunities to learn Western culture but no invasion of Western culture can be felt in Ningbo. Second, samples with varied demographic characteristics can be found in Ningbo. Ningbo has about 1.7 million working people who come from other parts of China (Ningbo Municipal Peoples Government Ofce, 2005). Ningbo also has working people

who have varied education background, among whom over 860 people have a PhD degree, more than 7,400 people have a master degree, about 187,000 people have a bachelor degree and approximate 390,000 people have a three-year diploma (Ningbo Municipal Peoples Government Development Research Centre, 2007). Third, different forms of organizations, including foreign invested enterprises, domestic private enterprises and non-business organizations, are available in Ningbo. According to Ningbo Municipal Economic Commission (2007), there are more than 11,000 foreign-invested enterprises, where over 0.8 million people are working, in Ningbo. Economic & Trade Commission of Zhejiang Province (2007) reports that the number of domestic private enterprises has reached to 91,000 in Ningbo by 2006. A number of them are nationally prominent private enterprises (Firth, 2005). All these suggest that Ningbo is a city which is appropriate to studying work motivation of Chinese employees. 3.1.2 Sampling strategy. Convenience sampling, which refers to obtaining samples based on the researchers convenience, was adopted in this research. It is believed that working places, the personnel market and shopping centres are places employees normally go, so samples in this research were obtained through three ways. The rst one was getting samples from employees of some organizations, including foreign invested enterprises, domestic private enterprises and non-business organizations, in Ningbo. The second method was asking some people who were looking for new jobs in the Ningbo personnel market to ll in the questionnaire. The third way was selecting samples from people walking around in shopping centres in downtown Ningbo. 3.1.3 Participants. The number of respondents in the sample was 207. Table II shows that 100 of the respondents (48.3 percent) were male and 107 (51.7 percent) were female. Their ages ranged from 18 to 58 years (mean 27.69, standard deviation 7.61). With regard to educational level, 124 (59.9 percent) respondents had
Personal factors Gender Male Female Age (years) Educational level High school or below University education Working experience (years) Marital status Single Married Personality Introvert Extrovert Income per month (RMB) , 1,500 1,500-1,999 2,000-2,999 3,000-4,999 5,000-10,000 . 10,000 Number of respondents 100 107 124 83 86 121 74 133 61 52 30 38 17 9 % 48.30 51.70 18 59.90 40.10 0.1 41.50 58.50 35.70 64.30 29.50 25.10 14.50 18.40 8.20 4.30 35 6.35 7 58 7.61 27.69 Minimum Maximum SD Mean

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Table II. Demographic information about the participants

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a high school education or below, and 83 (40.1 percent) had a university education. The respondents working experience ranged from 0.1 to 35 years (mean 7.0, standard deviation 6.35). For marital status, 86 participants (41.5 percent) were single, and 121 (58.5 percent) were married. As far as personality is concerned, 74 respondents (35.7 percent) described themselves as introverts and the remaining 133 (64.3 percent) described themselves as extroverts. Concerning the respondents income per month, 29.5 percent (61 respondents) were below 1,500RMB, 25.1 percent (52 respondents) were between 1,500RMB and 1,999RMB, 14.5 percent (30 respondents) were between 2,000RMB and 2,999RMB, 18.4 percent (38 respondents) were between 3,000RMB and 4,999RMB, 8.2 percent (17 respondents) were between 5,000RMB and 10,000RMB, and 4.3 percent (9 respondents) were above 10,000RMB. Therefore, participants with varied personal characteristics were obtained in the study. 3.2 Questionnaire design A four-page questionnaire was used. This study involved three types of variables, which were personal characteristics, motivation factors and work motivation. All of them were explained by numerical values. 3.2.1 Personal characteristics. In the rst part of the questionnaire, respondents were asked for their gender, age, educational level, working experience, marital status, personality and income. Except that the variables of age and working experience were measured by continuous data, the other variables of personal characteristics were measured on ordinal scales. Gender was coded 0 for female and 1 for male; educational level was scored 0 for high school or below and 1 for university education; with regard to marital status, 0 for married and 1 for single; personality was scored 0 for extrovert and 1 for introvert; income per month was ranked using a score from 1 to 6, where 1 meant less than 1,500RMB, 2 was 1,500 to 1,999RMB, 3 was 2,000 to 2,999RMB, 4 was 3,000 to 4,999RMB, 5 was 5,000 to 10,000RMB and 6 referred to above 10,000RMB. 3.2.2 Motivation factors. The variables of motivation factors were measured by a question: how often the motivation factors motivate employees work hard and a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always) was used to assess the frequency. There were 15 factors listed in the questionnaire and they were good pay, promotion, desirable work environment, good welfare package, good bonus system, good company policy, good interpersonal relationships, good supervisors, job security, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job. These motivation factors are based on the content motivation theories and other literature about work motivators. In summary, there are three kinds of motivation factors and they are extrinsic factors, intrinsic factors and a higher set of motivation needs. 3.2.3 Work motivation. A total of 15 items, which were adopted from the Job Diagnostic Survey developed by Hackman and Oldham, were used to measure of the variable of work motivation. Each respondent was asked to score to what extent do you agree with the below statements with regard to your current job with a Likert-type seven-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The 15 statements, concerning ve dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task signicance, autonomy and feedback, were used to assess the motivating potential of the respondents present jobs (Cyberchefs Electronic Union, 2007). Three items for each dimension were used.

3.3 Procedure Altogether, 250 questionnaires were handed out. Of these, 150 were given to employees in the six organizations, among which two are foreign invested enterprises, two are domestic private enterprises and two are non-business organizations. In total, 100 went to the subjects found in shopping centres in downtown and the Ningbo Personnel Market. In total, 217 completed questionnaires were collected nally. Thus, the response rate was 86.8 percent. Whereas ten questionnaires had to be discarded because there were excessive missing data, the total number of usable responses was 207. 3.4 Data analysis In order to answer the RQ1 and test the H1, both descriptive statistics and one sample t-test were used in the study. First of all, the descriptive statistics, mean in particular, of the 15 motivation factors were carried out with SPSS 16.0. Then, one sample t-test for each motivation factor was carried out to nd out whether the average value of each motivation factor is higher than four, which refers to the factor sometimes motivates the respondents work hard. The factors with p-values (sig. in SPSS) less than 0.05 would be classied as motivators; otherwise they would not be included as factors which motivate employees in China. Finally, all motivators were ranked based on their means. The one with the highest mean was ranked as the most important motivator; the factor with the second highest mean was ranked as the second important motivator, and so on. In this way, the H1 would not be rejected when good pay was ranked as the most important motivation factor otherwise it would be rejected. The effects of personal characteristics on work motivation (the RQ2 and the H2) were analyzed through regression analysis, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and scatter plots. Regression is often used to measure the relationships between one variable and several other variables (Malhotra, 2007; Oakshott, 2006). Therefore, a regression analysis was conducted to analyze the relationship between personal characteristics and work motivation. In order to study the effects of personal factors on work motivation in more detail, rst, the means for each motivation factor under each subgroup of the respondents demographic information, including gender, educational level, marital status, personality and income per month, were carried out. Then, independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to test if the average values for each motivation factor under different subgroups are different. In this way, it would be clear if employees with varied gender, educational level, marital status, personality and income per month have diverse work motivation preferences. Finally, the relationships between motivation factors and age and working experience were examined, respectively, by scatter plots. 4. Results and discussion 4.1 Results Descriptive statistics of all variables, which are shown in Table III, were carried out. The mean of the respondents age is 27.69-year old, and the mean of their working experience is seven years. The mean income per month is between 2,000RMB and 2,999RMB. The minimum value and maximum value of all the 15 motivation factors are 1 and 7, respectively, except that the minimum value of good supervisors is 2. That is, no respondent replied that good supervisors never motivate them to work hard. Table III clearly shows that the means of all the 15 motivation factors are larger than 4.

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Variables Gender Age (years) Educational level Working experience Marital status Personality Income per month Good pay Promotion Desirable work environment Good welfare package Good bonus system Good company policy Good interpersonal relationships Good supervisors Job security The opportunity to use my ability A sense of challenge and achievement Positive recognition Autonomy Self-actualization Interesting job Work motivation

Minimum 0 18 0 0.1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Maximum 1 58 1 35 1 1 6 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6.53

Mean 0.48 27.69 0.40 7.00 0.42 0.36 2.64 6.18 5.12 5.31 5.87 5.77 5.25 4.84 5.87 5.68 5.34 4.58 5.22 4.64 4.98 5.51 3.64

SD 0.501 7.610 0.491 6.350 0.494 0.480 1.488 1.349 1.700 1.362 1.339 1.422 1.367 1.465 1.249 1.423 1.546 1.833 1.474 1.689 1.684 1.551 1.371

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Table III. Descriptive statistics of the variables

This means that, on average, the participants are motivated by all 15 factors. The maximum value of work motivation is 6.53. This implies that no respondent said that they strongly agreed with all 15 job-related items in part III of the questionnaire. The mean value of work motivation is 3.64 and it means that, on average, the respondents did not agree with the job-related items. This seems to suggest that, in general, organizations in Ningbo were not doing so well in motivating their employees. 4.1.1 Motivation factors. The one sample t-test conrmed that all 15 motivation factors can motivate employees in China. According to Table III, the means of all 15 motivation factors are larger than four which refers to the factor sometimes motivates the respondents work hard. This means that all 15 factors do motivate the respondents to work hard in order to test whether the average value of each motivation factor is larger than four, one sample t-test was carried out and a 99 percent condence interval was chosen. The null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis were: H0: mMF 4, H1: mMF . 4 (mMF refers to the means of motivation factors for the population). The t-test showed that the p-values for all the 15 factors are 0.000. Given the fact that the p-value in the table named one sample test is the value for the two-tailed test, the p-value (0.000) was divided by two to get the value for the one-tailed test which is still 0.000. Because p-value (0.000) is smaller than 0.02, there is very strong evidence to reject the null hypothesis. Thus, there is very strong evidence at the 1 percent signicance level that all the 15 factors can motivate employees. The RQ1 has been answered. Then, these factors were ranked based on their means. It is not surprising that good pay motivates employees in China to the largest extent, since the mean of good pay is the highest which is 6.18. About 64.3 percent respondents replied that good pay always motivate them work hard and 14 percent said that good pay almost always motivate

them work hard. This implies that, for most employees in China, good pay is an extremely important motivation factor. The second important motivation factors are good welfare package and good supervisors with the same mean of 5.87. The order of the other motivation factors, in terms the frequency of motivating employees, is a good bonus system (mean 5.77), job security (mean 5.68), interesting job (mean 5.51), the opportunity to use my ability (mean 5.34), desirable work environment (mean 5.31), good company policy (mean 5.25), positive recognition (mean 5.22), promotion (mean 5.12), self-actualization (mean 4.98), good interpersonal relationships (mean 4.84), a sense of challenge and achievement (mean 4.58), and autonomy (mean 4.46). Therefore, the assumption that pay is the most important motivation factor for employees in China was supported. 4.1.2 Personal characteristics. The effects of personal characteristics on work motivation were studied by regression analyses. In order to make sure there is no serious problem of multicollinearity, which refers to a situation where there is strong linear relationship between the independent variables of a regression model, the correlation matrix of the personal characteristics was carried out. The values of correlations between the personal factors are shown in Table IV. The table clearly shows that all the absolute values of the correlations are less than 0.75, except that the value of correlation between age and working experience is 2 0.888. This means that the correlation between age and working experience is high, and the correlations between the other personal factors are not high. Thus, working experience was not included in the regression analyses between personal characteristics and work motivation, so as to get rid of the problem of multicollinearity. The regression analysis between work motivation and the personal characteristics variables (Table V) conrmed that the factors of gender, educational level and income per month have effects on employees work motivation. The results in Table V show that gender is fairly signicant for work motivation and it is negatively connected with work motivation (coefcient 20.24, p-value 0.051). The table also shows that educational level and income per month are very signicant for work motivation, and both of them are positively related to work motivation (coefcient 1.489, p-value 0.000; coefcient 0.356, p-value 0.000). These results are easy to interpret: women, employees with a university education or employees with a higher monthly income are more motivated in their works than men, employees with a high school education or below or employees with a lower monthly income. In order to study the effects of personal characteristics on work motivation in a more specic way, the means of each motivation factor under different subgroups of

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Income Marital Educational Working per month Personality Gender status level experience Income per month Personality Gender Marital status Educational level Working experience Age (years) 1.000 0.153 20.285 0.051 20.449 0.106 20.319 0.153 1.000 2 0.084 2 0.154 2 0.047 0.067 2 0.089 2 0.285 0.051 2 0.084 20.154 1.000 20.042 2 0.042 1.000 0.125 20.081 2 0.119 0.127 0.073 0.098 2 0.449 2 0.047 0.125 2 0.081 1.000 0.475 2 0.430 0.106 0.067 20.119 0.127 0.475 1.000 20.888

Age (years) 2 0.319 2 0.089 0.073 0.098 2 0.430 2 0.888 1.000

Table IV. Correlations between personal factors

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Personal factors Gender Coefcient p-value Age Coefcient p-value Educational level Coefcient p-value Marital status Coefcient p-value Personality Coefcient p-value Income per month Coefcient p-value

Work motivation 2 0.240 0.051 2 0.005 0.664 1.489 0.000 2 0.096 0.500 0.025 0.837 0.356 0.000

284

Table V. Regression analyses between personal characteristics and work motivation

employees personal characteristics were compared. First, the means for each motivation factor under each subgroup of gender, educational level, marital status, personality and income per month were carried out with SPSS 16.0, and the data were summarized in Table VI. Then, independent sample t-tests between the motivation factors and each of the personal factors, including gender, educational level, marital status and personality, were carried out, and 95 percent condence interval was chosen. The null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis were: H 0 : mM mF ; H 1 : mM mF ; H 0 : mH mU ; H 1 : mH mU ; H 0 : mMR mSG ; H 1 : mMR mSG ; H 0 : mE m I ; H 1 : mE mI (mM refers to the average value of each motivation factor for male; mF refers to the average value of each motivation factor for female; mH refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees with a high school education or below; mU refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees with a university education; mMR refers to the average value of each motivation factor for married employees; mSG refers to the average value of each motivation factor for single employees; mE refers to the average value of each motivation factor for extroverts; mI refers to the average value of each motivation factor for introverts). The p-values of these independent sample t-tests can be found in Table VII. The null hypotheses were rejected when p-values were less than 0.05, which are highlighted in italics in Table VII. Therefore, the average values of good pay, promotion, good welfare package and good bonus system are different for male employees and female employees; the average values of promotion, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job are different for employees with varied educational levels;

Gender , 1,500Married Single Extrovert Introvert 1,500 1,999 6.32 5.33 5.21 5.95 5.84 5.23 4.88 5.88 5.82 5.35 4.64 5.37 4.76 5.03 5.33 5.99 4.81 5.44 5.76 5.67 5.28 4.78 5.85 5.49 5.34 4.49 5.01 4.47 4.91 5.76 6.29 5.20 5.31 5.98 5.85 5.28 5.01 5.95 5.74 5.39 4.47 5.30 4.60 4.95 5.57 6.00 4.97 5.31 5.66 5.64 5.20 4.53 5.72 5.58 5.26 4.30 5.08 4.70 5.04 5.39 6.13 4.39 5.23 6.62 5.80 5.44 4.74 6.10 5.57 4.93 4.03 4.77 4.03 4.61 5.66 6.27 5.00 5.46 5.67 5.38 5.10 4.44 5.42 5.73 4.67 4.04 4.77 3.77 4.13 5.00 5.80 5.50 5.47 6.07 5.93 5.53 5.30 6.10 5.90 5.70 5.10 5.67 5.07 5.37 5.63 6.24 5.29 5.71 6.18 5.66 5.21 5.47 5.87 5.79 6.00 5.26 5.55 5.50 5.42 5.61

Marital status

Personality

Factors Female Male 6.22 4.64 5.39 5.80 5.67 5.36 4.70 5.85 5.71 4.80 3.92 4.75 3.84 4.27 5.26 6.13 5.83 5.19 5.98 5.93 5.08 5.04 5.90 5.64 6.16 5.57 5.93 5.83 6.05 5.88

Educational level High school University or below education

Income per month (RMB) 2,000- 3,000- 5,0002,999 4,999 10,000 6.65 6.35 4.53 6.12 6.35 4.76 4.65 6.00 5.41 6.29 5.53 6.18 5.94 6.41 5.76

. 10,000 6.22 6.33 4.22 6.22 6.67 5.00 3.89 5.89 5.44 6.22 5.00 6.22 6.22 6.56 6.11

PA PM WE WP BS CP IR SP JS OA CA PR AT SA IJ

6.00 4.76 5.33 5.69 5.55 5.33 5.00 6.01 5.72 5.39 4.62 5.16 4.45 4.84 5.71

6.38 5.50 5.29 6.06 6.01 5.17 4.66 5.72 5.64 5.29 4.54 5.29 4.84 5.13 5.29

Notes: PA good pay, PM promotion, WE desirable work environment, WP good welfare package, BS good bonus system, CP good company policy, IR good interpersonal relationships, SP good supervisors, JS job security, OA the opportunity to use my ability, CA a sense of challenge and achievement, PR positive recognition, AT autonomy, SA self-actualization and IJ interesting job

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Table VI. Means of motivation factors under each subgroup

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Factors Good pay Promotion Desirable work environment Good welfare package Good bonus system Good company policy Good interpersonal relationships Good supervisors Job security The opportunity to use my ability A sense of challenge and achievement Positive recognition Autonomy Self-actualization Interesting job

Gender 0.043 0.002 0.845 0.046 0.019 0.410 0.095 0.990 0.688 0.637 0.764 0.526 0.096 0.218 0.054

Educational Marital Income level status Personality per month 0.657 0.000 0.337 0.351 0.201 0.151 0.092 0.730 0.725 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.003 0.089 0.310 0.238 0.304 0.402 0.805 0.640 0.841 0.100 0.963 0.547 0.083 0.216 0.597 0.045 0.168 0.368 0.990 0.115 0.299 0.704 0.023 0.188 0.452 0.551 0.098 0.305 0.681 0.704 0.426 0.444 0.000 0.006 0.210 0.051 0.345 0.002 0.076 0.825 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.139

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Table VII. P-values of independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA

the average value of an interesting job is different for married employees and single employees; the value of good interpersonal relationships is different for employees with different personalities. According to Table VI, the means of good pay, promotion, good welfare package and a good bonus system are higher for male respondents. This means that male employees are more likely to be motivated by good pay, promotion, good welfare package and a good bonus system than female employees. Table VI also shows that the means of promotion, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job are higher for the participants with a university education than those for the respondents with a high school education or below. That is, employees with a university education tend to be more motivated by promotion, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job than those with a high school education or below. Furthermore, the mean of interesting job is 5.76 for single participants, and it is 5.33 for married ones. This indicates that single employees are motivated by interesting job than married employees. In addition, the mean of good interpersonal relationships is 5.01 for extroverts, and it is 4.53 for introverts. Hence, employees who are introverts are less motivated by good interpersonal relationships than those who are extroverts. Given the fact that the variable of income per month has more than two categories, one-way ANOVA was used. The null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis were: H0: m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6, H1: not all the m are the same (m1 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees whose monthly income is lower than 1,500RMB; m2 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees whose monthly income is between 1,500RMB and 1,999RMB; m3 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees whose monthly income is between 2,000RMB and 2,999RMB; m4 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees whose monthly income is between 3,000RMB and 4,999RMB; m5 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for employees whose monthly income is between 5,000RMB and 10,000RMB; m6 refers to the average value of each motivation factor for

employees whose monthly income is higher than 10,000RMB). The p-values of the test are also shown in Table VII, and the ones lower than 0,05 are highlighted in italics. The results showed that the average values of promotion, desirable work environment, good interpersonal relationships, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy and self-actualization are different for employees with varied monthly income. Since the means of these motivation factors (Table VI) neither keep increasing nor keep decreasing as the value of income per month increases, it can only be concluded that employees with different monthly income show diverse motivation preferences towards promotion, desirable work environment, good interpersonal relationships, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy and self-actualization. With regard to the effects of age and working experience on work motivation factors, scatter plots were carried out. The graphs, which are shown in the Appendix, suggest some form of positive relationships between good pay and age, between good welfare package and age, between good bonus system and age, between job security and age, between good pay and working experience, between good welfare package and working experience, between good bonus system and working experience, between job security and working experience. Thus, older employees are more likely motivated by good pay, good welfare package, good bonus system and job security than younger employees. Also, employees with more working experience tend to be more motivated by the four factors than those with less working experience. 4.2 Discussion 4.2.1 Motivation factors. One of the main purposes of the study is nding out what motivates employees in China. The results showed that all the 15 factors listed in the questionnaire, which include good pay, promotion, desirable work environment, good welfare package, good bonus system, good company policy, good interpersonal relationships, good supervisors, job security, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job, do motivate employees in China. This nding was supportive to the arguments on McClellands Theory of Needs, Herzbergs two-factor Theory and Job Design Theory, and conrmed that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors can motivate employees. On the other hand, these factors were summarized based on motivation theories and other literature on motivation factors. According to Geren (2002) and Humphreys (2007), all the motivation theories were developed in the west and may not apply to Chinese employees. Also, the motivation factor literature is not especially in connection with employees in China. It could therefore be argued that there might be some other factors which motivate employees in China but were not mentioned in the questionnaire. Thus, the nding of the present study conrmed that all the 15 factors in part II of the questionnaire motivate employees in China to work hard, but it could not lead us to believe that all the factors which motivate employees in China have been found in this research. Moreover, the motivation factors were ranked, in terms of importance, based on their means. The research conducted by Wang (2001) shows that good pay is ranked as the most important motivational factor by managers working in China. The present study was supportive to this result suggesting that good pay represents the most important motivator for employees in China, including managers, and 64.3 percent of the participants said that good pay always motivates them to work hard. This nding

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provides a strong negative evidence for the theories which do not include pay as a motivator. It is written by Lingnan University (2007) that positive leadership motivates Chinese employees to a large extent. This study also conrmed this, because good supervisors were ranked as the second important motivator for employees in China. Besides, good welfare package also represents the second important motivation factor with the same mean with good supervisors. The order of the other factors, in terms of the frequencies of motivating employees, is good bonus system, job security, interesting job, the opportunity to use my ability, desirable work environment, good company policy, positive recognition, promotion, self-actualization, good interpersonal relationships, a sense of challenge and achievement, and autonomy. This corresponded with the point made by Jackson (1998) that monetary rewards, including pay, welfare package and bonus system, are very important element to motivate employees in China. In addition, the ndings indicate that extrinsic factors, as a whole, can motivate employees in China to a larger extent than intrinsic factors. 4.2.2 Personal characteristics. As expected, the study has conrmed that work motivation is affected by employees personal characteristics. First of all, the nding corresponded with the point made by Eskildsen et al. (2004) that women tend to be more satised with their work than men. Then, notwithstanding the fact that Eskildsen et al. (2004) report that less educated employees tend to be more satised with their work than those who have a high education, the results of the present study showed that employees with a university education are more motivated in their jobs than those with a high school education or below. Finally, work motivation is further impacted by employees income per month. The ones with a higher income per month are more satised with their jobs than those with a lower income. It is quite obvious that, except for gender, the other two factors are somewhat related. Generally, having a high education is likely to result in getting a higher position and getting a higher position is often accompanied by a higher income. Also, the employees with a high education are generally provided with good pay, good working environment and interesting jobs, so it is likely for them to be satised with their jobs. This is probably why there is a positive relationship between work motivation and these two factors. The effects of personal characteristics on work motivation were also reected by the variation in motivation factors. With regard to gender, differing from the nding of Kamdrons (2005) research, which is that female employees are less satised with their pay than male employees, the present study found that female employees are not as frequently motivated by good pay as male employees. The results also showed that male employees are more motivated by a good welfare package and good bonus system than female employees. The reason for this could be, as has been mentioned previously, men need more money since they are the ones who need to feed their families. Furthermore, it has been found that men are more likely to be motivated by promotion than women. The reason for this might be the glass ceiling which refers to the situation that it is much more difcult for a woman to get a high position in the organization than it is for a man. As far as an educational level is concerned, rst, the results showed that employees with a university education are more motivated by promotion than those with a high school education or below. One signicant reason for this is that, generally, employees with a university education have more opportunities to get a high position in organizations compared with those with a high school education or below. Then, the results clearly showed that the intrinsic motivation factors and higher set of motivation needs, including

the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job, are much more valued by employees with a university education than by those who are less educated. This nding corresponded with Wood et al.s (1994) central argument on McClellands Theory of Needs, which is the theory focuses on higher level of needs and these needs are particularly valued by managers, because managers are normally those with a higher education. Concerning marital status, personality and income per month, rst of all, it has been found that married employees are less frequently motivated by interesting job than single employees. Next, the study found that extroverts are more likely motivated by good interpersonal relationships than introverts. This is quite easy to understand, since extroverts are fond of communicating with other people. Finally, employees with varied monthly income show diverse preferences towards promotion, desirable work environment, good interpersonal relationships, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy and self-actualization. However, the results did not show if employees with a higher monthly income are more motivated or less motivated by these factors than those with a lower income. So, it seems that further investigation on this is needed. With respect to age and working experience, rst, the scatter plots showed some form of positive relationship between age and good pay, between age and good welfare package, and between age and good bonus system. This nding was supportive to the view that employees with varied ages have different attitudes towards benet (Hong et al., 1995). The study also found that older employees tend to be more motivated by job security than younger employees. The main reason for this could be that people would like to keep stable when they are getting older. Then, similar results were found concerning the relationships between working experience and the motivation factors. There is some form of positive relationship between working experience and good pay, between working experience and good welfare package, between working experience and good bonus system, and between working experience and job security. The correlation matrix (Table IV) showed that the correlation between age and working experience is high. Even though the value of the correlation is negative, it is believed that, generally, employees working experience increases as their ages increase. Thus, it is reasonable that similar results have been found for these two personal factors. 4.2.3 Conclusions. To sum up, all the research questions and hypotheses have been studied. With regard to the RQ1, the one sample t-test conrmed that all the 15 motivation factors listed in the questionnaire can motivate employees in China. Meanwhile, the H1 was supported since the mean of good pay is higher than the means of the other motivation factors. For the RQ2 and the H2, it has been found that work motivation are affected by employees gender, educational level and income per month. Moreover, employees with different personal characteristics show diverse preferences towards motivation factors. 4.2.4 Practical implications. The ndings of the research have some practical implications. First of all, the ndings of the present study suggest that organizations in China can motivate their employees by providing them with the 15 motivation factors. Of course, managers should choose factors based on their ranks of importance to motivate their employees, since it is impractical to satisfy their employees with all the 15 factors. The rst motivator that managers should consider is a pay raise, because the nding shows that good pay is the most important motivator. Then, this

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study implies that managers should motivate their employees based on the employees personal factors, including gender, age, educational level, working experience, marital status, personality and income. For example, a salary raise can be given to employees who are less educated, and intrinsic rewards should be provided for those with a high education. Finally, the ndings of the present study may be applied to organizations located in other parts of the world which have Chinese employees. 4.2.5 Limitations and future research. There are two limitations in the data collection and the questionnaire for the present study. The rst limitation is that the dimensions used to measure work motivation are not comprehensive. The instruments of measuring work motivation in the current research were adopted from the Job Diagnostic Survey which was developed by Hackman and Oldham. Work motivation was measured by 15 items assessing the jobs variety, identity, signicance, autonomy and feedback. Even though the Job Diagnostic Survey is one of the most established and internationally famous instruments for measuring work motivation, it has one critical drawback: it only focuses on the task itself; it can be argued that the measurement of work motivation should include all the inuencing factors, such as supervision, present pay, promotion opportunities and interpersonal relationships (Ehrlich, 2006). The second limitation of the study is using questionnaire resulted in not nding out all the factors which motivate employees in China. This is also the reason why it cannot be concluded that the RQ1 was fully answered in this study. It is believed that interviews with open-ended questions, for example, what are other factors which motivate you work hard but are not mentioned by the researcher, would enable future research to obtain all the factors which motivate Chinese employees. However, it should be noted that, generally, interviews with open-ended questions are time consuming. This is why they were not used in the present research. 5. Conclusion This study set up to investigate employees work motivation in China. First of all, this study has conrmed that all 15 factors in part II of the questionnaire, including good pay, promotion, desirable work environment, good welfare package, good bonus system, good company policy, good interpersonal relationships, good supervisors, job security, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job, can motivate employees in China. Among these factors, good pay was ranked as the most important motivator for employees in Ningbo. Then, both good supervisors and good welfare package were ranked as the second important motivators. The order of the other motivators, in terms of importance, is a good bonus system, job security, interesting job, the opportunity to use my ability, desirable work environment, good company policy, positive recognition, promotion, self-actualization, good interpersonal relationships, a sense of challenge and achievement, and autonomy. Thus, the RQ1 has been answered in the study, and also the H1, which is good pay is the most important motivation factor for employees in China, has been supported. Next, the present research conrmed that work motivation is affected by employees personal characteristics. The ndings included the following: male employees are less satised with their work than female employees; employees with a high school education or below are less motivated in their jobs than those with a university education;

employees with a lower monthly income are less satised with their work than those with a higher monthly income. Finally, with the purpose of exploring the impact of personal factors on work motivation in more detail, the relationships between work motivation factors and personal characteristics were analyzed. The ndings can be summarized as below: male employees are more likely to be motivated by good pay, promotion, good welfare package and good bonus system than female employees; employees with a university education tend to be more motivated by promotion, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self-actualization and interesting job than those with a high school education or below; single employees are motivated by interesting job than married employees; employees who are extroverts are more motivated by good interpersonal relationships than those who are introverts; employees with different monthly income show diverse preferences towards promotion, desirable work environment, good interpersonal relationships, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy and self-actualization; older employees or employees with more working experience are more likely motivated by good pay, good welfare package, good bonus system and job security than younger employees or employees with less working experience. In general, the ndings have fullled all the purposes of this research. It is believed that these ndings have practical implications for organizations in China in terms of motivating their employees. The ndings may also benet organizations in other parts of the world which have Chinese employees to a certain extent. On the other hand, this research has two limitations. First, it can be argued that the measurement of work motivation used in this research can be improved by adding dimensions of other inuencing factors. Second, it is possible that more comprehensive results about motivation factors would have been found if interviews with open-ended questions had been used. Thus, future research should be carried out with the improvement and reconsideration of these two limitations.
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Further reading Koustelios, A.D. (2001), Personal characteristics and job satisfaction of Greek teachers, International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 15 No. 7, pp. 354-8. Rollinson, D. (2005), Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach, Pearson Education, Harlow. Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2003), Research Methods for Business Students, Pesrson Education, Harlow. Wiley, C. (1997), What motivates employees according to over 40 years of motivation surveys, International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 263-80.

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About the author Fang Yang graduated from the University of Nottingham with an MSc degree in International Business in 2008. She worked as a marketing assistant from April 2004 to September 2006, as a marketing executive from October 2008 to January 2009 and as a college teacher since February 2009. Fang Yang can be contacted at: yangfang1981@gmail.com To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints