FACTORS AFFECTING AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION PERSONNEL ’ S MOTIVATION LEVEL

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing professional staffs’ motivation. This was a national study using a descriptive-corrolational design. A total of 478 extension professional staffs from these organizations were selected by a complete randomized sampling technique as a sample of the study. The study showed that more than 68% of the respondents’ motivations are in low (or somewhat motivated) levels. This indicates that a substantial work needs to be done in order to improve the situation. Extension organization in Iran needs to develop strategies to optimize its human potential. The result showed that age of the respondents had a positive and statistically significant association with their motivation level. The result also showed that respondent’s participation, experience, and management system (under which they work) have a ‘low’ association with their motivation. The respondents’ professional satisfaction was highly correlated (r=0.61 with their motivation level which is considered a ‘substantial association’. A Multivariate Linear Regression indicated that among the independent variables, age, experience, participation, management system, and professional satisfaction accounted for 38% of the variance in the respondents’ motivation level. This implied that there are other factors that may have contributed substantially to variations in motivation level that were not investigated in this study. Introduction and Theoretical Foundation Organizational psychologists have been studying motivation for more than five decades. However, the progress in understanding the specifics of what motivates people has been advancing slowly. Motivation –the psychological process that gives purpose, direction, and intensity to behavior—is the most important determinant of effective job performance and is mainly responsible for differential work output (Lawler III, 1973; Kreitner, 1986). Employees work harder and perform better if motivated and satisfied with their jobs (Beder, 1990; Watanabe, 1991). Motivated behavior has been described as one that is under central or voluntary control (Lawler, 1973) thus the challenge for administrators is to influence motivation of their individual members, and create a suitable environment so people voluntarily aspire to excel, and be successful in the future. By exploring motivational needs of employees, managers and administrators can determine what motivates their employees. If the motivators can be identified, then behavior may be predicted. According to the Motivator-Hygiene theory, jobs have factors that lead to satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Job satisfying (motivator) factors included achievement, responsibilities, advancement, recognition, and the work itself. Hertzberg (1972) stressed that enriched jobs rather than pay, and other environmental factors were the key to motivation and job satisfaction. AIAEE 22 Annual Conference Proceedings Clearwater Beach, Florida 601 Hertzberg advised managers to redesign jobs to provide opportunities for individual achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement and personal growth. He notes that overall job performance of a worker is a function of his/her ability plus motivation. Job dissatisfying (hygiene) factors were related to the work environment and were pursued in order to prevent job dissatisfaction or discomfort. Job dissatisfying factors included pay, working conditions, supervision, policies, and interpersonal relationships. Expectancy theory, one of the most widely accepted explanations of motivation, was particularly well-suited as a basis for this research. Its premise is that motivation depends on how much an individual wants something (the strength of the valence) relative to other things, that they will get it. The transaction is essentially an economic one and it is assumed that individuals have expectations and preferences regarding the rewards they will receive in exchange for their investment of time and efforts. One can presume that if an imbalance exists for an individual, that individual will be motivated to attend to the inequity at the expense of being motivated toward a particular organizational objective. The optimal point exists when an individual perceives the exchange to be a balanced one, when their “wants” and “gets” match. Presumably the focus of individual energies will be toward the organization’s goals, and in turn, this will satisfy personal goals. Similarly, imbalance exists when ratios are unequal. To determine if a state of disequilibrium exists, it is necessary to know the value placed upon a set of potentially achievable outcomes by the individual in the workplace. It is also necessary to appraise the relative attractiveness attributed to the perceived rewards that will be granted in exchange for the job done. Motivation depends on incentives that the staffs value and believe to be attainable with increased individual performance, and is high when staff frustration is minimal (Bender, 1990; Cohen, 1990; Watanabe, 1991). As times and conditions change, past motivational strategies become ineffective (Buford & Bedeian, 1988). Therefore, agents’ needs should be identified regularly in order to provide meaningful motivation, and incentives (Kreitner, 1986). As staff motivation changes as time and conditions changes, this study was important in order to provide reliable information, which is essential for good decision making and accountability (Altschuld & Thomas, 1991). Purpose and Objectives The primary purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing professional staffs’ motivation. The more specific objectives of the study were to: 1. determine the professional characteristics of the extension staffs; 2. determine the extension professional staffs’ motivation levels; 3. determine the Bivariate relationship between dependent variable and the staff members’ professional characteristics (independent variables); 4. determine how much of the variability in participants’ level of motivation could be explained by their professional characteristics; and 5. determine R level using hierarichal and multivariate regression analysis. Methodology This was a national study using a descriptive-corrolational design. Four provincial extension organizations (representing each geographical region of North-Central, Southern, Western, and Eastern provinces) were randomly selected for the study. A total of 478 extension professional staffs from these organizations were selected by a complete randomized sampling AIAEE 22 Annual Conference Proceedings Clearwater Beach, Florida 602 technique as a sample of the study. Sample size and sampling technique utilized were supported by the study of Krejcie, and Morgan (1970). The motivation instrument used in this study was based on expectancy theory developed by Hackman, Lawler, & Porter (1977) was used in this study. This instrument was previously used in similar studies to measure agricultural extension professional staffs’ level of motivation (sadighi, 2000; Djire, 1994). The motivation instrument consisted of three major components: The first component concerns performance to outcome expectancies (P-O). Performance-outcome expectancy implies that an individual expects to get something in return (rewarded as an outcome) for certain behavior (performance) that he or she puts out. The second component of this instrument concerns with the valences of the outcome (V), which is a subjective value that an individual gives to an outcome. The third part deals with effort to performance expectancy (E-P). The combination of high positive valence, high expectancy, and high instrumentality, produces the strongest motivation. If any key element is low, then motivation will be moderate. If all three elements are low, weak motivation will result. The first and second parts of the questionnaire have corresponding scores. The motivation measurement was computed as follow: 1. The average expectancy times valance = (Q1p1 X Q1p2) + (Q2p1 X Q2p2) + (Q3p1 X Q3p2) + . (Q19p1 X Q19p2) / 19 2. The average effort to performance = Q1p3 + Q2p3 + Q3p3 / 3 3. Motivation score = The average expectancy times valence (the result of step 1) multiply by the average effort to performance (the result of step 2). In the above notations Q = question, and p = part. A pilot study was conducted on a similar population in a province outside of the population area, and reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) of the instruments were computed with the aid of SPSS program (Norusis/SPSS Inc., 2000) to be 0.92, 0.87, and 0.84 respectively for the parts one, two, and third. In a recent study utilizing this instrument, Sadighi, & Akhondi (2000) found reliability coefficients of of . 83, . 87, and . 74 for part one, two, and three of the questionnaire respectively. According to Pedhazur (1982) a reliability coefficient between . 50 and . 80 is acceptable for a non-experimental study. In order to characterize the staffs’ motivation levels, after normalizing the motivation data, the Intervals of Standard Deviation from the Means (ISDM) was used to categorize motivation into four levels. The computation was done as follows: Less Motivated=A: [Minimum score≤A