Individual vs Group Motivation? : Effect of the Culture
AbstractIn recent years, according to the changes in business environment, competition became a critical issue for organizations and therefore management strategies gained importance. Especially in highly competitive industries, to be profitable and obtain customer loyalty, motivation of the individuals working in the company became an important factor. The main point here is how to motive them. Individual motivation or group motivation? Which one is more effective than the other on performance? There is a moot point about individual and group motivation effect on performance and there are different views about this issue. Some of the researches show that individual motivation performs better and some others affirm that the group motivation has more impact on performance of individuals in comparison to individual motivation. While there are different perspectives on individual and group motivation according to the studies on motivation, it is generally clear that this social category has different effects on the performance of individuals in parallel with cultural differences. This study focuses on the differences between individual and group motivation effects on performances from individualist and collectivist perspectives with a conceptual analyze. The motivation in both individual and group level and its impact on performance is going to be examined, compared and contrasted to explore attitudes of individual behavior in two different domains, and it is going to be analyzed which of them is more effective on performance considering the cultural differences that direct the individual behaviors. It is hard to define some generally eccepted rules or guidelines to evaluate the impact of motivation on performance because every organization should be handled individually but this study aims to create a framework that can be used as a guideline by managers and researchers to realize the importance of the effects of culture on motivation and the difference between the impacts of individual and group motivations on performance that can be used to direct the management strategies.