A Preliminary Investigation of Employee Motivation in Pakistan's Banking Sector‪.‬

INTRODUCTION The banking sector plays an important role in the worldwide economy and the employees of these institutions are the best resources responsible for delivering good services to bank customers (Khan, Farooq & Khan 2010). The banking sector in Pakistan is one of the fastest growing service sectors (Hanif & Kamal 2009), resulting in fierce competition among the considerable number of banks. The ability to offer a wide range of services with a high level of quality is becoming the most common scheme used by banks to satisfy their customers and enable them to win a niche in the sector surrounded by stiff competition, since in the eyes of bank customers good quality services could contribute to their positive perception as well as ever lasting impression and image of the banks, resulting in the development of a sense of patronage (Khan, et al. 2010). It is, therefore, a challenge for management of commercial banks in Pakistan to motivate their employees in order that quality services are provided, and subsequently to satisfy the needs of their customers. Nowadays, employee motivation is, therefore, used as a key factor to gauge the performance of a particular employee and an organisation (Ghafoor 2011), a fact largely confirmed in the management literature (e.g., Pfeffer 1994, Rainey 1997, Judge & Ilies 2002), asserting that people are the most important organisational resource and the key to achieving high organisational performance.