Effects of Work Content and Work Context on Job Motivation of Hospital Pharmacists-Juniper Publishers
JUNIPER PUBLISHERS-OPEN ACCESS GLOBAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACY & PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
The behavior of employees is influenced by the
environment in which they find themselves and dissatisfaction associated
with bad working conditions account for employees’ new job searches and
actual separations. The objectives of this study were to examine the
relationship between work content and motivation, on one hand, and work
context and motivation, on the other hand, of hospital pharmacists in
Osun state of Nigeria. Eighty seven out of 110 practicing pharmacists in
secondary and tertiary hospitals in Osun State were selected randomly.
They were then interviewed with the aid of a set of pre-tested
semi-structured questionnaire that comprised two sections. The main
section employed thirty three items made of statements on a Likert-type
scale to elicit information on the relationship between work content,
work context and motivation of the respondents. Descriptive statistics
including frequencies, percentages and medians were used to summarize
the data while linear regression analysis was used to test for
relationship between variables at 5% level of significance. The results
showed that work content and work context contributed significantly to
the regression model, F (1, 89) = 93.68, P =.00) and accounted for 55.6%
and 51.3% of the variation in job motivation respectively.
Conclusion: Work content and work content factors are important determinants of job motivation of hospital pharmacists.
Keywords:Work-content; Work-context; Pharmacist; Motivation; Satisfaction; EmployeesIntroduction
The workplace is a significant part of an
individual’s life that affects his or her life and the well-being of the
community. Campbell [1] asserts that the average adult spends much of
his or her life working, as much as a quarter or even a third of his
waking life in work. As much as a fifth to a quarter of the variation in
adult life satisfaction can be accounted for by satisfaction with work
Campbell [1]. The work environment has effect on the performance level
of employees and absence of office building, drugs, equipment etc. can
affect the performance of the employees Asigele [2]. The behavior of
employees is influenced by the environment in which they find themselves
and will be a function of that employee’s innate drives or felt needs
and the opportunities he or she has to satisfy those drives or needs in
the workplace. Employee motivation has been defined as: “the willingness
to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned
by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need Ramlall [3].
Poor employee motivation can manifest as lack of courtesy to patients;
tardiness and absenteeism; poor process quality, such as failure to
conduct proper patient examinations; and failure to treat patients in a
timely manner Gilson [4]. In
the workforce, it can manifest in high staff turnover rates, high
vacancy rates and indifferent performance Bennett & Lynne [5]. If
employees are never given opportunities to utilize all of their skills,
then the employer may never have the benefit of their total performance.
Work performance is also contingent upon employee abilities. If they
lack the learned skills or innate talents to do a particular job, then
performance will be less than optimal. The success of productivity
improvement strategy is dependent on employee commitment, job
satisfaction, skills and motivation Alshallah [6]. The two-factor theory
of Fredrick Herzberg [7] distinguishes between:
Motivators
(e.g. challenging work, recognition and
responsibility) that give positive satisfaction, arising from the
intrinsic conditions of the job itself, such as recognition, achievement
or personal growth.
Hygiene factorss
e.g. status, job security, salary, fringe benefits,
work conditions) that do not give positive satisfaction or lead to
higher motivation, though dissatisfaction results from their
absence. The term “hygiene” is used in the sense that these
are maintenance factors. These are extrinsic to the work itself
and include aspects such as company policies, supervisory
practices or wages/salary. Herzberg’s hygiene factors contribute
to the work context dynamics Schermerhorn [8]. According to
Herzberg factors that involve job context (hygiene factors) tend
to lead to job dissatisfaction Herzberg [7]. When these factors are
considered good, or acceptable, workers do not tend to become
“satisfied“, they simply become “not dissatisfied Herzberg [7].”
Productivity is not restricted – it is just held at an acceptable
level. When workers become dissatisfied with any of these
factors they tend to restrict output.
Job or work context
This includes the condition or environment in which the
specific activities involved in the job take place. It identifies
the actual duties and responsibilities associated with the job.
They are the factors which are externally controlled by the
organization and include company policy, supervision, and
relationship with supervision, work conditions, relationship
with peers, salary, personal life, relationship with subordinates,
status and job security Ruthankoon & Ogunlana [9].
Job content factors
They are the factors which are internally controlled that the
individual is responsible for. They include growth, achievement,
responsibility, advancement, recognition and the quality of work
itself. Another key direction involves identifying the conditions
under which rewards increase motivation. A debate exists about
whether managers underestimate the power of intrinsic relative
to extrinsic rewards for motivating employees Heath [10], or
whether there is a discrepancy between what employees say
and what they do, such that employees report that extrinsic
rewards are relatively unimportant, but the preferences
revealed by their behaviours suggest otherwise Rynes [11].
Scholars may take steps to resolve this debate by attending not
only to the instrumental features of rewards, but also to their
symbolic features. For example, Mickel & Barron [12] propose
that rewards will be more likely to increase motivation when
they are distributed by high-status authority figures, for high
performance and accomplishments and in public ceremonies.
This raises a more general issue with respect to rewards.
Lumping all rewards into a common category may obscure
the importance of understanding the effects of different types
of rewards on motivation. In particular, researchers have
focused primarily on pay and financial incentives, giving far
less emphasis to more symbolic rewards such as recognition
and appreciation, even though these rewards are frequently
intended to motivate and can be effective Frey [13]. Herzberg
[7] considered compensation as a more potent dissatisfier than
as a job satisfier. Herzberg discovered that salary was connected
with other factors such as company policy and administration and how it affected advancement, recognition, rewards and
work itself. The fairness and timeliness of the compensation
system was mainly the cause of dissatisfaction. The working
conditions included the amount of work and the physical
environment including ventilation, lighting, tools, space and
other environmental characteristics Herzberg [7]. A study that
explored the relationship between pharmacists‘ job satisfaction,
intention to quit the profession and actually quitting, found that
those who actually left the profession did so for extrinsic reasons
such as physical working condition and long hours Seston [14].
Identifying and assessing the various extrinsic (organizational
characteristics) and intrinsic (personal characteristics) factors
of a job situation as they potentially relate to the tendency to
leave is important for the efficiency and effectiveness of an
organization. Under the conceptualization of factors that affect
job attitude and cause behaviors, job satisfaction can be viewed
as “the sum total of an individual‘s met expectations on the job”
Porter & Steers [15]. A study carried out by Ojokuku & Salami
[16] at the University of Ilorin teaching hospital concluded that
some improvement in motivation could be attributed to how
well a hospital’s management organizes and runs the hospital.
They also posit “workers’ monetary considerations cannot be
gainsaid; however, implementing nonmonetary factors like
quality of supervisions, availability of tools and materials to
work with, staff welfare and career development also appears
to be important in creating satisfaction with job environment.”
Adams [17] equity theory shows how fairness affects
motivation of hospital pharmacist. The theory explained
that employees are motivated when their inputs (e.g., effort,
knowledge, skill, loyalty) are matched by outcomes (e.g., pay,
bonuses, benefits, recognition), which creates a sense of equity or
fairness. Also according to Adams, when outcomes do not match
inputs, the resulting perceptions of inequity leads to distress,
which motivates employees to take action to reduce it. The
objectives of this study are to examine the relationship between
work content and motivation on one hand and work context and
motivation on the other hand of hospital pharmacists in Osun
state. A worker’s motivation is not an attribute of the individual
or the organization; rather, it results from an interaction between
the worker and the work environment. The health care sector is
important and the quality and efficiency of service depend to a
large extent on human labor. Poor health worker motivation can
greatly affect health outcomes and patient safety.
Experimental
The study is a descriptive cross-sectional survey of
hospital
pharmacists in Osun State. It covers pharmacists in secondary
and tertiary hospitals in the state and excludes pharmacists in
primary health care, private hospitals and other pharmacists
outside hospital pharmacy practice. Ethical approval was
obtained from the Institute of Public Health Obafemi Awolowo
University Ile-Ife Osun State. The study was conducted at Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Osun State in South-western part
of Nigeria between January 2015 and August 2015. The towns
covered included Ile-Ife, Ilesha, Osogbo, Ijebu-Jesa, Ila, Ikire, Iwo,
Ede, Ipetu-Ijesha and Ikirun. All the hospitals (two tertiary and
nine secondary) in the State were selected for this study. The
population of study comprises of 110 pharmacists from which 87
were selected by random sampling method. Policy makers which
include the head of pharmacy unit in each of the hospitals as well
as the director of pharmaceutical services (DPS) at the Hospitals
Management Board were also selected. The questionnaire for
the study had two sections. Section A was designed to elicit
demographic information about the respondents. Section B
contained statements on work content, work content and job
motivation of the pharmacists made of thirty-three items on a
Likert-type scale of agreement with alternative responses of
neutral, strongly disagree, disagree, agree and strongly agree
with weighting scores of 1-5 respectively.
Construct validity was ascertained by the professional
judgment of hospital staff members, the researcher’s supervisor
and relevant senior Faculties. The internal consistency of the
instrument was determined and gave a Cronbach alpha value of
0.84. The questionnaire was subjected to test-retest reliability
check over a two week period and gave a test retest reliability
coefficient of 0.79. Initial visits were conducted to establish
rapport with the participants and to prepare the ground for
data collection. The consent of the respondents was obtained as
appropriate before administering the questionnaire to them. Out
of the hundred and ten questionnaire administered, ninety-one
were retrieved for a returning rate of 82.7%. The data were loaded
into computer using SPSS package Version 20. The entered data
were cleaned of any errors and descriptive statistics techniques
such as frequency counts, percentages, weighted averages (WA)
and median (Mdn) were used to organize and summarise the
data. Inferential statistics including correlation and regression
analyses were used to determine significant relationships at 5%
level of significance.
Results
Motivators
Table 1 presents the demographic data of pharmacists by
age, gender, marital status, religion, hospital type, hospital
location, cadre, and length of hospital pharmacy practice. Of the 91 respondents, the highest number of respondents was
recorded from Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital Complex,
Ile-Ife (40, 44%). A considerable proportion of the respondents
were within the age bracket of 30 and 39 years (36, 39.6%).
64.8% (59) of the respondents were males and 35.2%(32) were
females. Majority of the respondents were christians (69, 75.6%)
and were married (57, 62.6%). 72 (78.7%) of the respondents
had 10 years or less of hospital pharmacy experience with
24 (26.4%) of these possessing five years or less of hospital
pharmacy practice experience. Only 11 (12.4%) of them had
between 11 and 15 years of hospital pharmacy practice. Of
the lot, 26 respondents (28.5%) were actually internees with
majority of those remaining (22, 24.2%) located within the
Grade 1 Pharmacist cadre.
Table 2 presents the relationship of work content and context
on the motivation of the pharmacist. The weighted average (WA)
scores of the responses for each of the numbered items were
computed. In order to examine the association between work
content and motivation; and work context and motivation of the
hospital pharmacists, the null hypotheses were suggested which
states that:
- There is no relationship between work content and motivation of the hospital pharmacists.
- There is no relationship between work context and motivation of the hospital pharmacists
These were analysed using Spearman rank correlation
coefficient test at a 0.05 level of significance. The work content
factors (Growth, Work itself, Responsibility, Advancement,
Achievement and Recognition) all had significant relationship
with job motivation as moderate correlation values were
obtained (Table 3). The work context factors (Interpersonal
relationship, Company policy, Supervision, Status, Salary and
Job security) had significant relationship with job motivation
as moderate correlation values were obtained (Table 4). When all these factors were reduced to two variables ‘work content’
and ‘work context’ factors and correlated with Job motivation, a
significant relationship was observed between the variables and
Job motivation (Table 5). ‘Work content’ factors gave correlation
values of r = .698, P=.00 while ‘Work context’ factors gave
correlation values of r = .618, P=.00.
A linear regression analysis was conducted with job
motivation as the dependent variable and work content with
work context constructs as the independent variables. The result
of the analyses (Table 6 & 7) revealed that on one hand work
content construct contributed significantly to the regression
model F (1, 89) = 111.426, P =.00 and accounted for 55.6% of the
variation in job motivation and on the other hand, work context
construct contributed significantly to the regression model, F (1,
89) = 93.68, P =.00 and accounted for 51.3% of the variation in
job motivation.
Discussion
The results of this study revealed that the work environment
of the respondents did not support high productivity and
agrees with the work of Asigele [2] who observed that the work
environment has effect on the performance level of employees
and absence of office building, drugs, equipment etc. can affect
the performance of the employees. Also according to Herzberg,
factors that involve job context (hygiene factors) tend to lead
to job dissatisfaction Herzberg [7]. These factors are externally
controlled by the organization and include company policy,
supervision, and relationship with supervision, work conditions,
relationship with peers, salary, personal life, relationship with
subordinates, status and job security Ruthankoon & Ogunlana
[9]. Ojokuku & Salami [16] asserted that implementing
nonmonetary factors like quality of supervisions, availability
of tools and materials to work with, staff welfare and career
development also appears to be important in creating
satisfaction with job environment. The results of this study also
show that for most pharmacists, the work environment did not
allow high productivity. According to Alshallah [6], the success
of productivity improvement strategy is dependent on employee
commitment, job satisfaction, skills and motivation.
The respondents in this study appear to be marginally
motivated on their current job and employee motivation has
been defined by Ramlall [3] as: “the willingness to exert high
levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the
effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need. When employees
do not feel motivation towards their jobs as a result of some unmet needs, they would not put their best into it and Gilson
[4] posits that poor employee motivation can manifest as lack of
courtesy to patients; tardiness and absenteeism; poor process
quality, such as failure to conduct proper patient examinations;
and failure to treat patients in a timely manner. In the workforce,
it can manifest in high staff turnover rates, high vacancy rates
and indifferent performance Bennett & Lynne [5].
It was also observed from the results of this study that
respondents believed they did not receive recognition for their
accomplishments on the job. Herzberg [7] discovered that salary
was connected with other factors such as company policy and
administration and how it affected advancement, recognition,
rewards and work itself, therefore equity and timeliness of the
compensation can cause job dissatisfaction. Mickel & Barron [2]
work also reveal that rewards will be more likely to increase
motivation when they are distributed by high-status authority
figures, for high performance and accomplishments and in
public ceremonies. Frey [13] inferred that researchers have
focused primarily on pay and financial incentives, giving far
less emphasis to more symbolic rewards such as recognition
and appreciation, even though these rewards are frequently
intended to motivate and can be effective. The respondents
also reported that the benefits offered by the hospital to meet
personal and family needs are not satisfactory. What happens in
an employee’s personal life can affect productivity on the job.
Family time and personal goals are important to total fulfillment
of the employee and if the work does not permit time for other
important activities that the employee deems necessary, then it
may adversely affect the work.
Most of the respondents reported that favouritism is a
problem at the hospital. Favouritism at the workplace displaces
the perception of equity by the employees and this can create
a lot of problem as expressed by Adams [17] in his work.
They also perceived that communication of information and a
sense of direction were deficient at the hospitals. The pitfalls
of lack of communication would be seen in lack of direction
and suboptimal results when the pharmacists are evaluated.
The respondents’ reported that the hospitals did not provide
support to deliver high standards of quality to patients and this
is a major problem if optimized patient care is the goal of the
hospitals. Work content and context play significant roles in an
employee’s life and Campbell [1] asserts that the average adult
spends much of his or her life working and as much as a quarter
or even a third of his waking life in work. Also much as a fifth
to a quarter of the variation in adult life satisfaction can be
accounted for by satisfaction with work. From the foregoing, the
correlation obtained between work content, work context and
job motivation from this study could easily be understood.
Conclusion
There is strong correlation between work content factors and
motivation and between work context factors and motivation
of hospital pharmacists. Employers of pharmacy can explore improvements in the content and context of work to increase
productivity and maximize profit.
Conflict of Interest
There is no conflict of interest as regards the work done and
results obtained in this study and no financial gain is intended.
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