Motivation Sources Inventory (MSI) and its application for ERP implementations

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Motivation Sources Inventory (MSI) and its application for ERP implementations Juergen Alexander Gollner Doctoral Student at the University of Latvia Faculty of Economics and Management Hinterstoder, Austria Abstract - For the success of ERP implementations, motivation of employees is widely seen as one of the most crucial factors. Nevertheless, the use of motivational theories in context with ERP projects seems to be very rare. Further, a fitting scientific approach for measuring employees’ motivation and testing motivational theories in ERP projects seems to be missing at all. Since the middle of the last century, a lot of studies dealt with issues related to motivation, its sources and development. In 1998, John E. Barbuto and Richard W. Scholl developed the theory of ‘Motivation Sources Inventory’. Their main goal was to find out new scales to measure an integrative system of motivation. This article describes its development and gives an overview on which fields the theory of ‘Motivation Sources Inventory’ has been used on in the past, and suggests using this theory on a research about employees’ motivation during ERP implementations. Therefore, methods for measurement and a model for setting up correlations is proposed. Key words: Motivation, Motivational Theories, Sources of Motivation, ERP, ERP projects, measurement of project success.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Business enterprises are permanently facing challenges that encourage them to reconsider and adapt their structures, goals, processes and also their technologies. To maintain their competitive advantage and to operate better in dynamic business environments, companies have implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, which combine different software components with the purpose of operating, integrating and optimizing all business processes within an organization, as enablers to facilitate related changes. Implementation of new ERP Software within a company is usually seen as an economical and technical topic, as costbenefit calculation is mostly the trigger for deciding on that kind of projects. Concerning employees, at most considerations about missing or limited resources and insufficient knowledge are made.

The purpose of this article is to investigate a valid measurement of motivation during ERP projects, as it points out the recent application of this theory. This typology (Barbuto, Scholl, 1998) has been used in several studies and has been found to be reliable and valid in determining the different sources of motivation of employees (Barbuto, 2001). Further studies will analyze the impact of motivation on ERP projects success in mid-sized companies. To assess employees’ sources of motivation, the Motivation Sources Inventory (MSI) of Barbuto and Scholl will be applied on finished ERP implementations. An overview of the proposed model is given in figure 1, showing the dimensions of each aspect.

For most employees, an ERP implementation is the first and probably only in their professional career and therefore an unusual situation away from the daily business. Most employees have to work overtime or even forego vacation to achieve the main goal of having a successful go-live of the ERP project. It is important to mention, that ERP projects usually are implemented in a time span of over 1 year. Increased workload, along with the immanent pressure of a potential project failure are reasons why a high amount of motivation for all project members is so important. As many books concerning ERP project management state, a central factor in ERP projects is motivation: No project manager can succeed without or against his team in the long run (Drath, 2010). As a result, management and especially project-management have to focus on providing a long time motivation for their employees during that difficult time span.

Figure 1. Impact of employees’ motivation on ERP project success

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The first goal of this article is to examine the characteristics of different sources of motivation during ERP projects. Afterwards, a comprehensive overview of applications of MSI will be given. The main objectives of further studies will be to find out a correlation between employees motivation and ERP project success, and which source of motivation is mostly dominant during implementation phase. This will be measured and validated with empirical data from over 200 ERP projects. Therefore it is necessary to identify and categorize the motivational factors for project members involved. Also, a research model and hypotheses for the primary research are proposed. II.

THE RELEVANCE OF MOTIVATION IN ERP PROJECTS

ERP systems have been defined as ‘comprehensive, packaged software solution that seeks to integrate the complete range of a business’ processes and functions in order to present a holistic view of the business from a single information and IT architecture’ (Gable, Timbrell, 2001). ERP software can also be defined as customizable, standard application software which includes integrated business solutions for the core processes (e. g. sales and distribution, purchasing, warehouse management, production planning and control) and the major administrative functions (e. g. human resource management, controlling and accounting) of an enterprise. By integrating the business processes across the organization and the central database, ERP differs from earlier information systems in its capacity to disseminate information in real-time and increase organizational flexibility and agility. Enterprise Resource Planning systems have a strategic relevance for the company, because their integration into the core business processes or strategies can directly impact the

companies’ performance. Thus, many firms have begun to develop strategies focusing on information technologies, with ERP adoption being a critical thrust (Bharadwaj, 2000). Currently, the most important ERP vendors worldwide are SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, with companies like BAAN, J. D. Edwards or PeopleSoft also holding minor market shares. A typical implementation project takes between 9 to 18 months, which means motivation should be on a high level for most of the time, especially during the critical phases. The later study will only be done on finished ERPimplementations, which will be categorized by its level of success. For that reason, a concrete measurement of success for ERP-projects was defined. An extended model developed by Van der Westhuizen and Fitzgerald (2005) (see figure 2) combines classical perspectives from project management and aspects of the success model developed by DeLone and McLean (2003). This concept is basis for quality reviews to rate projects success selected for this following research. The measure of ERP projects success will divide successful and not successful projects. Subsequently, a correlation between the different occurrences of motivation and ERP project success can be drawn. Motivation has been researched from different perspectives and the most important approaches are widely known. Classic theories’ perspectives, including need-based (Maslow, 1954; McClelland 1961; Alderfer 1969), hygiene factors (Herzberg, 1968), value-based (Etzioni, 1961) and intrinsic (Deci, 1975), focus on the areas of goal setting, reward systems and leadership. But these traditional models of motivation do not explain the diversity of behavior found in organizational settings (Leonard et. al, 1999). Special consideration can be given to Self-determination theory (Deci, Ryan, 2002), which has similar approaches compared to MSI.

Figure 2. Dimensions combining project management success with project product success (compiled by author, compare: Van der Westhuizen and Fitzgerald (2005)).

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TABLE I.

Motivation Sources Inventory

INTEGRATIVE TYPOLOGY OF MOTIVATION SOURCES (ADAPTED BY AUTHOR. COMPARE: BARBUTO & SCHOLL, 1998)

Intrinsic process

Maslow (1954)

Instrumental

Self-Concept External

Self-Concept Internal

Goal Internalization

Physiologica

Safety

Love

Esteem

Self-Actualization

N/A

Power

Affiliation

Achievement

N/A

Social Moral

N/A

Pure Moral

l McClelland (1961) Etzioni (1961)

N/A

Calculative / Alienative

Herzberg (1968)

N/A

Satisfiers

Satisfiers

Motivators

N/A

Alderfer (1969)

Existence

N/A

Relatedness

Growth

N/A

Overcoming

Outcome Valence

Deci (1975) Deci (2002)

&

Task Pleasure Ryan

Intrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic

Interpersonal Challenges

External Regulation

Introjected Regulation

These content theories all propose a limited set of motivational sources. Some arranged in a hierarchy, others are viewed as developmental stages and still others theorizing no basic process of transition from one source to another. The models differ with respect to the degree to which they theorize a dominant source of motivation. Table I is designed to match each of the motivation sources models, which were mentioned before, with the Five Sources of Motivation Model. The listing was done in temporal order of draw up of the theories. The theoretical concept of Motivation Sources Inventory was firstly described by Barbuto and Scholl (1998), suggesting five sub-scales with a predefined number of unique loading items per subscale that seem to capture the domains of interest for each source of motivation. Therefore, Barbuto and Scholl defined five sources of motivation (figure 3), namely ‘intrinsic process’ (fun at work), ‘internal self-concept’ (challenge), ‘instrumental motivation’ (rewards, money), ‘external self-concept’ (reputation within

Integrated Regulation

Identified Regulation

company) and finally ‘goal internalization’ (purpose of company). If people are motivated to perform certain kinds of work or to engage in certain types of behavior for the sheer fun of it, then intrinsic process motivation is the driving motive. The work itself, not the task outcomes, acts as the incentive as followers enjoy what they are doing. Individuals primarily motivated by intrinsic process will only engage in activities which they consider fun. Self-concept internal motivation followers set internal standards of traits, competencies, and values that become the basis for the ideal self. They are motivated to engage in behaviors that reinforce these internal standards and later achieve higher competency. The motivating force for individuals who are inner-driven and motivated by their selfconcept is task feedback. It is important to these individual that their efforts are vital in achieving outcomes and that their ideas and actions are instrumental in performing a job well.

Figure 3. Five sources of motivation by Barbuto / Scholl (Compiled by author).

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Instrumental rewards motivate followers when they perceive their behaviors leads to certain tangible extrinsic outcomes such as pay, praise or promotions. Rooted exchange theory, the basic assumption is that individuals and organizations constitute an exchange relationship. Expectancy and equity theories are currently accepted models of motivation based on exchange relationships. Self-concept external motivation tends to be externally based; followers attempt to meet the expectations of others by behaving in ways that elicit social feedback consistent with their self-concept. Followers behave in ways that satisfy reference group members, first to gain acceptance and then status. When positive task feedback is obtained, the individual finds it necessary to communicate these results to members of the reference or peer- group. The individual behaves in ways which satisfy reference group members, first to gain acceptance, and after achieving that, to gain status. And finally, behavior is motivated by goal internalization when the individual adopts attitudes and behaviors because their content is congruent with their value system. The individual believes in the cause, and as such is willing to work towards the goals of an organization supporting this cause. It is important to understand that each source of motivation exists in various proportions in each employee, but in varying degrees. No person is motivated exclusively by just one source of motivation, and everybody has a different weighting between intrinsic and extrinsic motives. III.

CONTEXT IN REALITY AND PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

A. Motivation and ERP projects A lot of books explaining business roadmaps to ERP implementations handle the topic of motivation of employees during ERP projects at the edge. One main goal was the identification of how motivational methods are used during the implementation ERP projects. For the purpose of this study, an important question is whether the Motivation Sources Inventory has been used for examining motivation during ERPprojects before. To figure out what kind of motivational methods, styles or theories are states of the art in ERP projects, the area of research needs to be structured. The topic has a quite large extend, so it is reasonable to use approximation. The Information System literature points out that ability of motivating people, vision, attitude and behavior of leaders are critical for employees’ perceptions of IT innovation and thus its adoption outcomes. But in this literature, not really motivational theories are proved and tested. A scientific article by Ko, Kirch and King (2005) focuses on knowledge transfer in ERP-projects in the USA. The text also refers to the influence of motivational factors for knowledge transfer within the project. Morris (2010) examined the impacts of ERP systems implementation on job satisfaction. Based on surveys in a telecommunications company, he found that ERP system implementation moderated the relationships between three job characteristics (skill variety, autonomy, and feedback) and job

satisfaction. Nevertheless, motivation was only seen as a minor factor which leads to job satisfaction. Hwang (2005) investigated enterprise systems management and implementation issues based on the informal control mechanisms. The article applied adoption and implementation to the informal controls, such as cultural consistent control and self-control, which can be viewed as a tacit perspective in knowledge management. Hwang described uncertainty avoidance, cultural control and intrinsic motivation as selfcontrol as the important antecedents of ERP systems adoption. According to Frey and Osterloh (2001) motivational antecedents can be differed into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and motivation has to be seen as a key factor to motivate employees to share their knowledge very fast and effective during projects. Motivated employees also play a crucial role in creating a company’s sustainable competitive advantage. Successful Management by Motivation shows that in a knowledge-based society, this goal cannot be achieved by extrinsic motivation alone. Pay for performance often even hurts because it crowds out intrinsic motivation. To succeed, companies have to find ways of fostering and sustaining intrinsic motivation. With the help of in-depth case studies, representative surveys, and analysis based on a large number of firms and employees, this work identifies the various aspects of motivation in companies and shows how the right combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be achieved. Whether these findings can be applied to ERP-projects, needs to be examined. There seems to be a lack of scientific study focusing on the examination of motivational theories utilized in ERP-projects. In addition, there was no study found with content about Motivation Sources Inventory related to ERP projects. B. Motivation Sources Inventory and its application Over the last 15 years, Motivation Sources Inventory theory has been applied on various topics, countries or working groups, as over 100 studies. Since 1998, most of further development was continued by John E. Barbuto, and the taxonomy of motivation was applied on various topic and society groups. The first publication was based on testing 60 items, namely 12 questions assigned to each Source of Motivation (figure 3). The survey was done at business courses at a north-eastern U.S. university, which means the geographical reach was quite restricted. With varimax-rotated component pattern at least six unique items per motivation source were identified. The best resulted goodness of fit, measure by coefficient ‘α’, was accomplished by ‘Intrinsic Process Motivation’. Results also showed that intrinsic motivation is more dominant than extrinsic motivation. The main findings on this investigation were, that a relatively high validity and reliability of the measure is given. As a result, the Motivation Sources Inventory model and the developed scales can be used for empirical inquiries. In 2001, three remarkable publications were published by J.E. Barbuto. The remarkable publication examined a teaching approach to show how motivation sources are evident in

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behavior and decisions. The taxonomy again included the five sources of motivation, adding an easy understandable description of the five categories. The paper offered instructions for conducting and processing of class exercise. The exercise was designed to stimulate and challenge students to apply motivation theory to understand organizational behavior in a variety of situations. Through the execution and processing of the scenarios and role plays, students developed an appreciation of individuals’ sources of motivation and their effects on behavior (Barbuto, 2001a). An alternative scoring method for the motivation sources inventory was proposed, using ratio analysis for getting better results (Barbuto, 2001b). Alternative scoring scheme had become necessary to avoid centrality of the means for empirical surveys. That means in practice, respondents tend to fill out questionnaires by avoiding clear statements. One of the weaknesses in the measure was that respondents demonstrated a bias (prejudice) towards large or small agreement with items, resulting in centrality of the means. As a result, an alternative scoring scheme that alleviates these effects was introduced. The new method, ratio analysis, provided an empirical assessment more with the theoretical framework of the inventory. Rather than using the summated score for each of the five subscales (six items for each subscale, samples can be seen in table 2), researchers may calculate a ratio for each source, dividing the subscale, score by the sum of scores on all 30 items. In addition, theoretical and empirical support for ratio analysis was provided. The next study (Barbuto, 2001c) demonstrated the relationship between sources of motivation and organizational citizenship behaviors. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) research started to be extensive in the 1980is, and since then it focused on the effects of OCBs on individual and organizational performance. Employees of agriculturally based companies completed a survey about the motivation sources inventory and were rated by their supervisors for demonstrated organizational citizenship behaviors. The questionnaire to determine Organizational Citizenship Behavior was consisting of questions about participants work habits. For example, questions were about frequency of missing work, helping out colleagues, making breaks or performing only required tasks. Sample items for MSI were again clearly assigned to each category. The result of this study showed some significant TABLE II.

relationships between specific sources of motivation and organizational citizenship behavior. Expression of MSI was quite divergent compared to the studies before, as very high levels of self-concept-internal motivation were measured. The importance of this finding can be concluded, because selfconcept-internal motivation is based on personal challenge and self-authorship. That means organizational policies and procedures will not affect these individuals' motivation. The homogeneity of the sample limits the generalizability of results, as the target organizations of this survey shared the same geographic location and are of similar business. In 2003, Barbuto issued a paper dealing with gender differences (Barbuto, Fritz, Plummer, 2003) among five sources of motivation for a sample of 208 undergraduate students, who completed the Motivation Sources Inventory. Results generated by t-tests produced few statistically significant sex differences for the five sources of motivation. Four motives showed no sex difference (note: original term used by authors), but interestingly, Instrumental Motivation was significantly higher among men than women. In 2004, the focus of study moved to relationships between leaders’ sources of motivation and the influence tactics used when influencing subordinates. Moderating variables such as leaders’ Machiavellian disposition were suggested as possible explanations also reported weaker relationships between motivation and influence tactics. A clear interpretation of the results was not possible (Moss, Barbuto, 2004). Further studies dealt with special characteristics of motivation in agricultural surroundings. Identifying Sources of Motivation of Adult Rural Workers demonstrated a high proportion of self-concept internal work motivation, as the other four sources were evenly distributed across the sample population. It is concluded that to engage the interest and involvement of rural workers most effectively, when influence attempts that appeal to workers’ internally derived standards and sense of the ideal self are carried out (Barbuto, Trout, Brown, 2004). An investigation on agriculture and non-agriculture students indicated statistically significant differences between for 2 sources of motivation. For student of agricultural subjects, self-concept internal and goal internalization motivation were both significant higher pronounced, while the other three items were quite the same (Barbuto, Fritz, 2004). Furthermore, implications for teaching, recruitment and future research were also discussed

SAMPLE ITEMS FOR THE MOTIVATION SOURCES INVENTORY

Source of Motivation

Sample Question

Intrinsic Process

I only like to do things that are fun.

Internal Self-Concept

I consider myself a self-motivated person.

Instrumental

I would work harder if I knew that my effort would lead to higher pay.

External Self-Concept

I work harder on a project if public recognition is attached to it.

Goal Internalization

I would not work for a company if I didn't agree with its mission.

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Leadership styles and conflict management were examined on Motivation Sources Inventory through two comprehensive studies (Barbuto, 2005). To test relationships between leaders' motivation and their use of leadership style (charismatic, transactional, and / or transformational), one hundred eightysix leaders and 759 direct reports from a variety of organizations were sampled. Leaders were administered the MSI, while followers reported leaders' full range leadership behaviors using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Result showed, that Motivation Sources Inventory subscales significantly correlated with leaders' self-reports of charisma, transactional and laissez-faire leadership.

psychological type specifically or personality in general. Summarized this examination of the relationships between psychological type and sources of work motivation yielded no consistent results.

To test the relationship between sources of motivation and conflict management styles of leaders, 126 leaders and 624 employees were sampled (Barbuto, Xu, 2006). The five sources of work motivation were associated with Rahim's modes of interpersonal conflict management. The model explained variance for 4 modes, namely obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising, but explained little variance for integrating. The second question, how these variables influence effectiveness of leadership, could not be answered clearly by the model.

Retesting these two topics, a further study in 2010 examined leaders’ and members’ scores on locus of control, sources of motivation, and mental boundaries to predict the quality of leader-member exchanges. Analysis pointed out that, followers’ scores on locus of control and rated goalinternalization motivation, along with leaders’ scores on locus of control and leaders’ scores of self-concept internal motivation were positively related to leader-member exchanges (Barbuto, Weltmer, Pennisi, 2010).

In 2007, the first cross-cultural comparison testing motivational differences in response to the Motivation Sources Inventory between U.S. and South-African work samples (Barbuto, Gifford, 2007). Using ratio analysis for measurement, results and analysis indicated that American managers scored significantly higher on intrinsic process (fun), while South-African managers scored significantly higher on self-concept external (reputation within company) and goal internalization (purpose of company). A study of the relationship between followers' mental boundaries and sources of work motivation was conducted with government employees (Barbuto, Story, 2007). Tests only gave a significant positive but weak correlation between followers' mental boundaries and self-concept internal motivation, while other correlations were not significant. The next study (Barbuto, et al. 2008) sampled 208 undergraduate students to test the relationships between the four dichotomies measured on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument and the five sources of work motivation measured on the Motivation Sources Inventory. The four pairs of preferences or dichotomies are defining personality types: -

Focusing: Extraversion (E) versus Introversion (I)

-

Taking information: Sensing (S) versus Intuition (N)

-

Making decisions: Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F)

-

Living outer life: Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P).

The results revealed several relationships, most with small effect sizes, like Extraversion–Introversion is significantly related to both intrinsic process and goal internalization. Further analysis suggests that the MBTI-instrument and the MSI are measuring distinctly different aspects of the human psyche. Motivation and psychological type appear to be two distinct dimensions of the human psyche. It also shows motivation seems to be a different construct than either

A similar field study tested the relationship between locus of control, which refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them, and sources of work motivation (Barbuto, Story, 2008). Analysis showed a significant positive relationship between follower's locus of control and self-concept external motivation, selfconcept internal work motivation, and goal internalization.

The relationship of work motivation and organizational citizenship behaviors was retested in 2010 by Barbuto and Story (2011), pointing out more insights. A significant positive relationship between individuals' self-concept internal motivations and organizational citizenship behaviors was confirmed. Additionally, analysis also yielded significant negative relationships between instrumental and self-concept external motivations and organizational citizenship behaviors. C. Motivation Sources Inventory and noteworthy application by other authors The MSI had been applied on several topics, and some of the most relevant should be mentioned. Most recently, a paper by Yan (2013) investigated the relationship between employees’ motivation sources and organizational commitment among Chinese employees. Each motivation source was tested against affective, continuance or normative commitment. A difference between Chinese and European employees concerns the type of commitment. While in China continuance commitment plays a dominant role, affective commitment is the most important commitment in Western settings. Other publications use this measurement for comparison with leadership styles. For example, a thesis by Wagner (2010) analyzed the relations of transactional and transformational leadership styles in context with the Motivation Sources Inventory. In this context, also gender, leadership experience or organizational types were tested. A study from 2005 by Carter and Rudd analyzed factors which influence leadership participation in agricultural organizations. MSI was used in this context as a factor that contributes to members willingness to serve (or not to serve) on their county Farm Bureau boards. Lin (2013) applied the five Sources of Motivation on the use of Enterprise Wikis. The strongest apply was found for External Self-concept, while Instrumental Motivation and Internalization of Goals also have significant importance. It is

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concluded, that the MSI is suitable to measure the motivation to use Enterprise Wikis.

IV.

FURTHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS

As mentioned above, still no profound study on motivation during ERP-implementations had been made yet. Every year, for thousands of employees and ERP-Users, a new ERPimplementation is probably the most important aspect of their respective work. The success of the projects often decides about companies’ prosperity in the future. There is actually a lack of knowledge of how to motivate employees during that difficult one or two years. ERP-projects change tasks, processes and ways of working, making a high level of employee motivation absolutely essential. It is kind of surprising that so few scientific studies exist about that specific topic. This study provides an alternative perspective on the five sources of motivation, applied on employees during ERP projects in small and medium-sized companies. Original studies have been made with students, agricultural workers, or cross cultural - this empirical research will be done with employees, which actually have finished full circle ERP projects. This application and combination of cited theories is a novelty. An obvious research question would be: Is there a correlation between motivation of project key users and the success indicators of ERP projects? Generally, correlation analysis could prove a positive impact of employees’ motivation on ERP project success. This assumption looks to be very obvious, but a correlation between motivation of project key users and the success indicators of ERP projects still needs to be approved. Based on existing experience in the field of MSI, a main hypotheses can already be suggested: There is a positive correlation between motivation of key users and the overall ERP project success of Small and Medium Enterprises. F(x) = y

The novelties of the research can be summarized:



F (key user) = success

F (motivation of key users in middle-sized companies) = ERP implementation success

Some sub-hypotheses can also be tested, like assuming that the motivational source of ‘intrinsic process’ is dominant during successful implantation of ERP projects in mid-sized companies. Another presumption can be that project members in successful ERP projects have on average have a significantly higher ‘intrinsic process’ motivation score than employees in not successful implementations of ERP projects in mid-sized companies. These hypotheses still need to be proved or falsified.

A validated inventory of items for measuring ERP project success is defined

-

For the first time, MSI is tested on ERP projects

-

For the first time, correlation between employees motivation and ERP project success is examined V.

PROPOSED METHODS

Barbuto and Scholl developed a usable typology of motivation that integrates the strong points of the trichotomy of McClelland. Most importantly, they added a system which makes the different sources measurable. The questionnaire of MSI had been applied on several occasions, and therefore the results are comparable to previous studies. Another main advantage is the availability of an existing and proven catalogue of questions or statements assigned to the different sources. This fact makes this study very well verifiable to previous researches. The generation of the Motivation Sources Inventory’s questionnaire (Barbuto and Scholl, 1998) did initially start with development and validation of an inventory to measure the five sources. Step one was to develop new, conceptual consistent and operational definitions of each of the five sources. The detailed contents of each source were mentioned before. The next step was to generate items and validate its content. A list of 78 potential scale items were evaluated by experts familiar with the construct for conformity to the theoretical definitions. For redundancy, the experts approved 74 items to be retained for a review. These 74 items were judged by 2 independent panels concerning examination of content and validity. The randomly ordered items had to be classified in one or more sources of motivation. As a result, the 60 items that were assigned more than 60% of the time by both judge panels were kept. Then the scale was tested on 156 students with a series of expanded component analyses, resulting in a final set of scales with high unique item loading. The measures for the 5 different motivation sources were the 60 remaining items, 12 items for each source. For the sample, participants had to specify the extent of their agreement with the randomly ordered items. Then for each of the five subscales the varimax-rotated component pattern was carried out, and the 6 items with the highest factor loadings per source were retained. The revised scales with six items each were finally subjected a confirmatory factor analysis to assess the goodness of fit of a factor structure to the set of data. The goodness of fit was very good, pointing out a relatively high validity and reliability of the measures, indicating the subscales capture the five sources of motivation. On the basis of this proven survey, work motivation of ERP project related employees is measured using MSI items. The surveys, which consists of 30 items embedded in a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored by ‘1: Strongly disagree’ and ‘5: Strongly agree’, were sent to ERP-project team members. Besides the proven items for questioning motivation, also a survey for measuring ERP-project success was developed. An

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extended model from DeLone and McLean (2003) is used to classify the ERP-projects into 11 dimensions (figure 1). The development of this questionnaire was similar to the evolution of the MSI survey, including expert interviews assessing the understandability, formulation and accordance of all items.

TABLE III.

Theoretica l background

The measurement of ERP project success will be done with 6 final statement per dimension. A preselection of these statements was done with 10 expert interviews, checking the understandability and fitting of each statement. Afterwards, varimax-rotated component pattern will assign mixed questions to each aspect of success. Using confirmatory factor analysis proves the ‘goodness of fit’ of every item measuring the success of ERP-projects. The measurement of the ERP project success was also done in a 5-point Likert-type scale, and the online-surveys are filled out by IT managers or CEOs. The target group for measuring ERP project success obviously could not be the employees or ERP project team members itself, because a too positive rating of their own project would be evident. To guarantee an objective evaluation of the project, IT managers or CEOs reviewed the ERP project success. A structural model can already be suggested, showing dependencies between motivational sources and ERP-project success (figure 4). The context between these dimensions will be analyzed with correlation-analysis and multi-dimensional regression analysis. To get useful conclusions, the examined projects will be split into successful and not successful projects to get 2 comparable groups.

PROPOSED SURVEY PARAMETERS

Motivation of employees

ERP project success

Motivation Sources Inventory

Extended DeLone and McLean Model

Number of dimensions

5

11

Statement per dimension

6

6

Target group

IT-managers, CEOs

Sample size

Minimum 200 companies, with filled out surveys on employees’ motivation and ERP project success VI.

ERP project team members.

SUMMARY / OUTLOOK

Literature review has shown that Motivation Sources Inventory theory has become the significant research area in the domain of motivation systems over the last years. The factor structure and scale reliability of the MSI was examined in various studies during the last 15 years. The concept of MSI, which originally came from work- or industrial psychology, proved to be very useful measuring employees’ motivation. In

Figure 4. Structural model – Sources of Motivation in Sucessful ERP projects

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addition, the frequency of its use make results comparable, which makes it easier to draw conclusions.

sources of motivation and single ERP project success dimensions.

According to different studies, a lot of ERP projects do not reach the expected results or even worse, lead to the complete failure of the project. Further studies aim at investigating the impact of employees’ motivation on ERP project success. The extensive implementation of ERP by small and medium-sized organizations has attracted particular interest in recent times. This expansion of ERP software has taken place because of the increasing need in organizations to integrate their internal processes as a requirement to remain competitive (Ross, Vitale, 2000). The analysis of the so called ‘ERP Revolution’ causes interest of researchers not only from the Information Technology discipline, but also from the major disciplines in business research (Wieder et. al, 2006). Consequently, this research is touching economical, technical and social context and its scientific basis refers to ideas from psychology, management and computer science.

The conclusions could also help to better understand motivators of employees during ERP-implementations, and could also derive some recommendations for project management or leadership styles.

Although some of ERP-project failures arise from technical aspects, the majority of these problems result from management, social and organizational issues within the companies. Management can promote motivation, and motivation is both a social and organizational aspect. For a successful ERP implementation, these issues must be considered because there are multilayered challenges for organizations during ERP projects.

[6]

Nevertheless, it is often difficult for project-managers to show a corresponding behavior in their everyday work. For the situational run is not only important to develop a great behavioral repertoire, they must be able to adapt their behavior at the development of the employees. Otherwise they do not reach the overall goals, which are often strongly dependent on motivation or frustration of employees. In addition, sub-project managers should ensure that the department fulfills its function in the area of organization. Also employees need to develop the skills and show enough commitment to fulfill their tasks successfully. To ensure commitment, employees have to be motivated. It is widely assumed that motivation is improving efficiency and productivity of employees. In addition, the achievement of common organizational goals should be easier, as motivation stimulates cooperation and coordination of employees. Being motivated by one of the five sources could also lead to higher satisfaction and the building of a friendly relationship and atmosphere within a project team. As a result, more cooperation, less disputes, less resistance to changes and more affiliation to the organizations’ interests should improve the prospect for ERP project success. The upcoming analysis should critically reflect on the relevance of motivation and discover concrete linkages and correlation between motivation and success of ERP implementations. The study tries to give more insight about motivation across ERP projects in small and medium-sized companies. As the implementation of ERP projects is an extreme situation for employees, an even more stringent expression of results is possible. Furthermore, it can be suggested that there is a positive correlation between selected

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