The results of a limited initial study of manager perceptions ofemployee motivation in local agency street and highway maintenance organizations are presented. All data are taken from cities and counties in iowa. The agencies represent organizations generally having professional engineering management at some level in the organization. Managers were found to believe strongly that salary and benefits were prime determinants of employee satisfaction and morale, which is indicative of an organization that subscribes to the "rational-economic man" principle (i.E., Tends to see working-level employees as a labor commodity to be bought and used). Conversely, managers were found to believe strongly that their employees were motivated by individual needs, suggestive of an organization with a management philosophy at the opposite extreme--the "complex man" model. The intermediate philosophies of management in the "social man" and "self-actualizing man" models were not found to be significantly subscribed to by local agency maintenance managers in this research. The results suggest that local agencies cannot be expected to be interested in training or programs to enhance employee motivation unless such programs recognize the wide variance of manager perceptions. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1276, Maintenance management 1990: proceedings of a workshop, jackson, mississippi, july 25-27, 1990.
Samenvatting