Motivating Bankers of Sri Lanka: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This study was concentrated on identifying the perceptions on motivation held by executive level employees in the banking sector in Sri Lanka. The study was a comparative analysis between the employees of licensed commercial banks and licensed specialized banks and attempted to identify what factors bankers perceive as motivating them, and factors that had an influence in their actual level of motivation. The study attempted to test the validity of twenty one factors derived from, sixteen different theories of motivation in the context of Sri lankan banking executives using a quantitative approach for data analysis, collected from seventy respondents representing seven banks in Sri Lanka. The results analyzed using SPSS - Version 18, indicated that regardless of the type of the bank they work for, executives at banks in Sri Lanka are motivated by intrinsic factors with a positive coefficient of determination of 51%. Out of the twenty one factors that employees perceived to be motivating them, eleven factors had an influence over the actual level of motivation. They were identified as self esteem, goal setting, agency (having ample control over their job activities), equity, training opportunities, job security, relationship with boss, relationship with colleagues, challenging work, manageable workload and upward movement. It was also revealed that perceptions of motivation held by bankers in Sri Lanka did not differ based on the type of bank they worked for but they did differ based on other demographic characteristics such as education, age and civil status.