Generation X's Theory Of Motivation

Generation X which is known as Gen X are born between the year of 1966-1976 and are reaching the age of 39-49 years old as of year 2015 (William, 2008; Tay 2011). Generation X employees has actually learned from their elders that following company rules and regulations would least likely secure their jobs (Dougan et.al, 2008). Besides that, this generation employees would place high importance on maintaining their work-life balance and constantly seeking for a balance between family, life and work (Gursoy et.al., 2008; Kaylene et.al.,2010). This generation people would emphasize their families and personal time very important. They would least likely scarify their leisure hours to go to work. For an example, they are people who are unwilling

Various researchers has discussed on the term of motivation. Motivation provides energy to individuals to take action, concerned with the choices the individual makes as part of his or her goal oriented behavior (Wregner and Miller (2003)). Motivation is a person’s strength, direction and determination of efforts to reach a specific objective (Fuller, 2008). In the recent days, motivation is defined by Saraswathi (2011) as the willingness to exert high levels of effort, towards organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need. The above definition defines that a motivation starts with recognition of a desire, followed by mental desire to achieve the desire, thus following by physical actions to obtain the desire. The motivation level of individual or team apply in their work task can affect all aspects of organizational performance. In the Frederick Herzberg’s well known Two-Factor Theory has introduced unique factors of employees’ motivations. The employees’ theory has separated the motivation into two category which is extrinsic and intrinsic

In order to further support this, Lahoud (2006), discovered that motivation factors are positively correlated with person’s education and life experience. There were also other studies such as Japanese Electrical and Electronic Manufacturing Companies Mohani et al.,(2010) has also revealed that elder executives with more years of working experience has higher level of motivation compared to the younger executives.

According to Ringer and Garma (2006), Generation X has higher preference for intrinsic motivations compared to Generation Y. Besides the findings, Jang (2008) has also revealed that Generation Y employees are more motivated and attracted to extrinsic motivations. There are high possibilities for these employees to leave their current job and to more on for another job if the other company provides better extrinsic factors such as pay and