An Examination of Employee Culture-Based Perceptions As a Predictor of Motivation‪.‬

ABSTRACT As worldwide competition continues to increase, corporations are feverishly seeking ways to increase productivity. A critical element to increasing productivity is employee motivation. This task of understanding and influencing the employee's motivation is often made easier, if the company attempts to select employees with specific values, beliefs and needs that align with those of the company. This study explores the relationship between the Hofstede cultural dimensions (as a predictor of values) and Vroom's expectancy theory (valence, expectancy, instrumentality) for the purpose of determining whether Hofstede's instrument can be used to predict an individual's motivation potential in a given organizational environment. A variety of hypotheses were tested using a web-based survey of US and German workers. Although the hypotheses concerning the relationship between culture-based perceptions and expectancies and instrumentalities were not heavily supported, several of the relationships between an employee's cultural values and valences were supported. This suggests that motivation, to some extent, can be predicted by knowledge of an employee's culture-based values. Additionally, this research presents some interesting findings on motivation across various demographic categories (e.g., nationality, gender) and suggests some issues for future research on selecting for motivation.