Low intrinsic motivation–problem of esnetworks vietnam co , ltd

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Nguyen Huu Quynh Phuong

LOW INTRINSIC MOTIVATION–
PROBLEM OF
ESNETWORKS VIETNAM CO., LTD.
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

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UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Nguyen Huu Quynh Phuong

LOW INTRINSIC MOTIVATION–
PROBLEM OF
ESNETWORKS VIETNAM CO., LTD.
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: TRAN HA MINH QUAN .PhD

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

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Executive summary
Vietnam has recently been regarded as a prospective destination of foreign investment
presented with its high-speed development. In which Japan is the leading economic partner
of Vietnam, the leader in ODA, the second largest foreign investor, the third largest tourism
destination and the forth major trading partner of Vietnam. As one of the leading. However,
there are potentially existing problems in the company which may reduce the competition
edge of organization and harm to its culture. This research was commissioned to examine
what problem in Esnetworks Vietnam Co., Ltd., the causes leading to problem are and to
suggest the validated solutions to deal with problem, which are in line with company’s policy
and resources.
Method of the analysis is combination between theory-informed and validated data,
collected through interview and survey to identify and confirm existence of the problem as
well as causes and alternative solutions.
From the general diagnosis of potential problem at Esnetworks Vietnam Co., Ltd.,
findings suggest the existence of low intrinsic motivation as the main problem. The study
examines 03 main Departments within the Company especially Business Avisory
Department. Low intrinsic motivation is analyzed in terms of its existence, antecedents,
consequences, and solutions are proposed to tackle such a problem. Finally, this report
indicates organization of actions to deal with problem in the lead time of one year and limited
budget approved by the company.

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Recommendations discussed focus on two main causes of low intrinsic motivation
within the Company, which are job characteristic and Compensation and Benefits. The report
also investigated three accordant solutions:

-

Conduct clear job description

-

Provide ideal working environment

-

Complete the system of compensation and benefits

Total estimated cost to implement these 3 solutions is approximately 253 mil VND,
which is in line with company’s approved budget of 255 mil VND while benefit brought is
453 mil VND.
Since there is limitation of time and resources constrain as well as research exist such as the
current company conditions data did not provide enough information and only sample of
interviews are performed. However, the report provides diversified and validated data in
conjunction with theory to propose meaningful suggestion for Esnetworks Vietnam Co., Ltd.
to strengthen its personnel resources and organization behaviors.

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I. INTRODUCTION
1.

The Company background
Firstly established in Vietnam in 2008 with initial name is Flagship, Es Networks

Vietnam Co., Ltd. (herein after referred as “Es Networks VN” or “The Company”) is 100%
directly invested by Es Networks Japan Co., Ltd. As described in the Figure 1, the Company
focuses on three segments: market entry, accounting/tax/labor, M&A and other services.
With an aim of establishment, Es Networks Vietnam’s main vision is to provide professional
consulting services such as accounting, investment and Human Resource services for
Japanese clients who have investment activities in Vietnam. The Company provides
consulting service for all procedures and problems from establishment to termination the
operation of the clients.

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Figure 1. Business lines of Es Network Vietnam
Currently, Es Networks VN has two offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Ha Noi City
with around 56 employees. Given the short history of operation from establishment, Es
Networks VN owns the qualified employees who committed to provide the completed
services, the Company gains clients’ belief, therefore, its clients portfolio is expanded by
days. Even that the market of consulting companies is became more competitive nowadays,
the board of management and all of employees are building Es Networks VN’s position more
and more stable especially in Japanese segment.
Today, due to the investment stipulating policy of Vietnamese government, Vietnam
becomes more and more attractive investment destination for foreign investors, in which
Japanese investors are not exception. In advance of thinking about operation and generating
profit, those investors have to carry out procedures in compliance with the Vietnamese law,
tax regulations and other administrative procedures. For which, many consulting firms are
launched. Particularly, in segment of consulting firms that serving for Japanese investors,
except the leading position of companies from Big 4 group (PWC, Ernst and Young, Deloitte
and KPMG), there are a big competition from second tier companies, in which the big rivals
of Es Networks VN are KT accounting Vietnam, AGS Vietnam and I-Glocal Co., Ltd. In
which, I-Glocal Co., Ltd. is considered as the biggest rival.

2.

The Company structure

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Figure 2. Organization chart of Es Network Vietnam
As mentioned above, Es Networks VN currently provides consulting services, the
company consists of three departments: Business Advisory Department (hereinafter referred
to as “BA Dept.”), Accounting Department (hereinafter referred to as “AC Dept.”) and
Administration Department (hereinafter referred to as “AD Dept.”) accordingly. Each
Department has its own function. The AC Dept. specializes in providing the accounting
services such as: tax compliance, tax advisory, booking accounting books and financing
advisory. BA Dept.’s main duties are seeking and directly accessing the clients, the
department with Japanese experts and other Vietnamese experts that can use Japanese
language excellently always play the role of listening, explaining and providing alternatives
directly for Japanese clients. Furthermore, BA Dept. also providing Human Resource
services including applying for visa, work permit, calculating payroll and declaration of

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personal income tax for Japanese clients. Finally, AD Dept. comprises director, manager,
human resource team and internal accounting team that is in charge of maintaining the
relationship with clients, authorities, internal human resources, financing, and further general
management.

Table 1. The Profit and Loss Summary of Es Network Vietnam
In 2015, Es Networks VN generated profit of 4,714 billion VND which is counted

about 57.28% of Sales. From 2015 to 2016 the operating profit increased 1.202 times while
the increase of that from 2016 to 2017 is up to 2.654 times. In general, the Company is steady
growth but it is still not reach its target over the years. However, the different amount of
profit between actual and target is insignificant. Moreover, the target amount of sale and
profit increases rapidly over the years. This means the Company is trying to expand its
market, hence, the number of clients are raised by years. However, the staffs of the Company
just raise a little bit and the current staffs are now facing with the problem of overload.
II.

PROBLEM SYMPTOMS
In order to have an overview about the backlog issues within the company, we

conducted the initial interviews with 02 staffs of BA Dept. and AC Dept. and 03 managers
of 03 departments. The detail of these initial interview is displayed in Appendix 1. Due to
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the nature of work, AC Dept. undertakes the accounting job for clients which is considered
as the specialized job. Therefore, they may have precise idea and judgment. AD Dept. is the
non- profit department which is responsible for the internal operations and support other
departments hence, they can stand on the management point of view to provide unbiased
judgments in the general way. In addition, the BA Dept. is the department that generates the
highest profit for the Company. The jobs in BA Dept. are also much more distinctive with
the others while its job content changes depend on the request of the clients. As the most
important Departments of the Company which has to communicate with other teams while
working, the manager and staff here can provide multidimensional outlook about the
Company. The study applies qualitative questions to investigate the interviewee’s point of
view about the problems existing in the Company.
1. The turnover rate status
From the interview with HR managers of the Company, the most prominent

symptoms that mentioned by many interviewers that currently the Company has high
turnover rate. In general, the turnover rates fluctuated over time. In 2017, the turnover rate
was 27% while in year 2016, such amount reached 20%. The table is collected base on
criteria by gender, age and departments of the Company. According to the table, there is no
significant upward or downward trend of gender in turnover rate is apparent. This means
turnover rates in the Company does not depend on the gender, the one rate for women was
essentially the same as that for men. The table below shows the turnover rate from 2015 to
2017:

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Gender (%)
Male
Female
Age (%)
Under the age of 32
32 and above the age of 32
Department (%)
Administration Department
Accounting Department
Business Advisory Department
Turnover rates (%)

2015

2016

2017

45
55

47
53

49
51

70
30

75
25

80
20

20
20
60
15

25
20
55
20

25
15

60
27

Table 2. Turnover rate of Es Network Vietnam from 2015 to 2017
As stated in the above table, younger employees had higher turnover. The HR
manager believes that the younger ones are willing to take risk and challenge in their job,
from which they can gain more knowledge and experience for their future career, hence, they
quite easy to move and out the Company. On the other hand, middle-aged employees who
are from 32 year olds and above had lower turnover, probably because the middle-aged
employees has the tendency to stick with stable job, they conceive the important of their job.
Moreover, they afraid to change the working environment as starting the interview and make
acquaintance of new job, new colleague and new working style at their age.
Finally, those with different job characteristic suffer higher turnover. For example, in
year 2017, the turnover rate for those with Administration Department was 25%; for those
with Accounting Department was 15%; while such rates of Business Advisory Department
was up to 60%. This pattern may arise because of job characteristic. The specific of Business
Advisory Department requires that employees must to take the time to research and update
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new regulations of the laws. The employee may work under high pressure during long time.
While employees from other department may do with stable job during working here.
2.

Over workload
The Company receives many complaints of employees regarding to the over

workload. Some employees experience a heavy workload for many reasons, including tight
deadlines, projects increase in the peak season that have caused staff shortages and
unplanned company growth that has created more work for the same staff. It can be difficult

to manage an overworked staff, and even the most dedicated employees often reach their
breaking points. The staffs face with the difficulties of work-life balance because it’s an
activity that needs to be maintained over time. Moreover, there is bad meeting due to
unsuitable reason for the meeting, poor agenda or none at all, the meeting "creeps" its way
into a several-hour ordeal, staff unprepared, and/or no contribution. The staffs intend to keep
silence during the meeting although they are offered for contribution requirement from
supervisor. Their managers do not receive any active feedback regarding to work overload
status or aspiration. Thus, there is no any improvement or effective ways to change working
style or encourage employee motivation. This may lead to waste time and deflate energy for
the participants.
3.

Low compensation and benefits

According to interview with Mrs. Doan Thi Nhu Truc, a staff of BA Dept. for her
experience during working time at The Company. She is disappointed about benefit policy

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applied for the employee. Especially, in the peak season of project increase that requires
employee must work overtime and get high pressure to meet the deadline, even they must
work for double person’s jobs. Even though, the employees shall receive the overtime
allowance, they still believe the few promotion and poor benefit cause lack of energy
and enthusiasm. In addition, another issue worth paying a special attention to is the
cooperation and support from colleagues. She mentioned about the attitude and expression
of the colleagues when shared the jobs. Accordingly, the employee may just want to keep
with current job instead of taking the time to research and do new tasks.
4.

Passive involvement
As the interview was conducted with Mrs. Tran Thi Thuy Linh stability - minded

employee who prefer a stable work than flexible work. She wants to spend working time in
a stable environment and remain unchanged. She does not want to try a new fields to discover
new chance and get promotion opportunity. She is afraid that she can’t catch up and may
face with risk for new challenges. Thus, she just finished her tasks as assigned rather than
taking the time to learn and do new things. Although there are several major operations, they
are still different in client’s business line and various specific cases that arises in the reality
of operations. Whenever the Company receives orders from the new clients especially the
client in the brand new fields, it has to make many researches about that fields. The Company
also has to bear the higher risk rate because it is the first time it enters into the new market.
That is the reason why unpredicted problems are mainly occurred in the BA Dept. in various
types and difficult to solve.
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5.

Low job commitment
The interview with HR manager provides the general point of view through the survey

of the Company in the end of 2017. As Es Networks Japan desires to reform the HR
management within the Company to increase the job efficiency. They ask the Administration
Department to conduct the survey to take the employees’ opinion of the following aspects:
job satisfaction, work environment, job stress, job commitment, working motivation,
working effectiveness . The survey with 22 questions was send to 46 employees in the
Company. The survey is considered as the basic understanding of employees’ concern on
current organization behavior. The survey has been done by all employees in 03 departments
and have the following result:

Result

Business Advisory

Accounting

Administration

Criteria

Dept.

Dep.

Dept.

Job satisfaction

61%

68%

71%

Work environment

51%

57%

54%

Job stress

76%

72%

68%

Job Commitment

38%

48%

51%

Working motivation

69%

60%

62%

Working effectiveness

82%

78%

79%

Table 2: Survey result of Es Networks Vietnam Co, Ltd. in 2017
The table result shows that in general the three departments have the same tendency.
The ratio of the job satisfaction, work environment, working motivation, working

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effectiveness are higher than 50%, which are the acceptable ratios. The employees satisfy
with their job in acceptable ratios but not really highly satisfying. On the other hand, the job
stress ratios are quite high in all 03 departments. In which, the assessment of job stress by
BA Dept. ranks the highest position with 76%. One significant point from this survey is that
the job commitment in all departments are lower than 51%, especially BA Dept. with only
38%.
Then, the interview was conducted with Mrs. Truc, a consultant and Mr. Hoa, an
accountant, they reveal that they intend to work for the Company for around 2-3 years for
gaining enough experience, knowledge then they will take the new challenge to get a
promotion opportunity. They tend to complete their tasks as acceptable level rather than
taking time to investigate new tasks from the others. The commitment to the organization is
low so their perception is to search for another job outside the Company.
In conclusion, based on the initial interview and the internal survey of the Company
in 2017, there are several symptoms of current problems that can be realized including: high
turnover rate, over workload, low performance appraisals, passive job involvement,
low job commitment. Even though it has not been defined which one is the most important
backlog of the Company, the Company still need to have the action plan to solve these
problems because they may partly influence the working efficiency of the employees in
particular and the whole Company in general.

III.

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

In order to identify the potential problem of the Company, the in-depth interview are
conducted with 05 interviewers including managers of 03 departments and an ex-employees.
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As mentioned before, the AC Dept. is responsible for specialized jobs, their characteristic
therefore distinctive with the others. The manager of AC Dept. is the one who communicates
and has regularly interactive with the staffs, her judgment will be precise and show the actual
status of employees. The BA Dept. is the most important department which provides various
services in different extensive fields, hence, the manager of this team shall have the overall
view from diversified perspectives. According to the internal survey, the manager of AD
Dept. has a certain understanding of the Company together with her view of a HR manager,
her idea is valuable in justifying the problems raised by the interviews.
Similar to the initial interview, the qualitative questionnaire is applied to investigate
the most potential problem. Besides, with the aim of exploiting information thoroughly, the
wh-question and yes/no question are used interlace depending on each situation. The
interview will figure out the main problem currently existing in the Company from 05
symptoms above. The Appendix 2 is detailing the content of the in-dept interviews.
In generally, the turnover rate is increasing over the year. In which, the job
characteristic, over workload and job satisfaction may be the main factors which affect to
such rates. According to the statistic of the Company, BA Dept. reached the highest turnover
rate and AD Dept. ranks the second position.
Job satisfaction is one of factors influencing to turnover intentions. According to
survey was conducted among employees at the Company, the rate of job satisfaction is
acceptable. The employees are not satisfied with their job in case of job stress they may face
with. However, this situation only takes place during the peak season when employees have

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to work overload and it is irregular. Besides, as mentioned above, job stress may be caused
due to high turnover rate. It’s quite difficult for the Company to timely recruit new employee
replacing for employees who leave off work. Thus, current employees must to receive
handover and fulfill all tasks from others. Whether the Company has found the new
employees, job stress may be reduced. In sum, job satisfaction is not completely positive
related to turnover intention.
Job characteristic is an important key in organizational outcomes like job satisfaction,
Most of companies care about knowledge and experiences of candidates when hiring the
employees. While the employees may concern to company reputation when they apply for
job, they even don’t mind whether they fit to the employee personality and value of work
which brings to them. Some employees stick to the Company for a long time because they
prefer working in environment which fits to their personality. So, when employees find the
difference between individual and organizational, their characteristic is opposite with work
values, they may intend for turnover. However, the fit between the individual and
organization has been discovered easily for the probation period. During two months of the
probation period, the employees realize that they may fit or not for job. On the other hand,
the job characteristics also can be approached in 2 aspects: unclear job description, repeated
and boring works. Some interviews shows that as the high work volume, in order to protect
themselves the employees tends to pass the jobs that have unclear job description to the
others and concentrate in their daily jobs. With the huge number of clients they have to
serves, their task area is limited and they cannot expand their knowledge and experience the

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new field to find the work inspiration. Gradually, they feel boring about their job and loss

the inspiration to work. Then, as the result, the exit interview showed that the employees in
BA Dept. faced with the difficulties in maintaining their enthusiasm at work after 1-2
working years.
In a general expression, this relationship looks like a circle problem:

High
turnover
rate

Loss
enthusiasm
with work

Lack of
suitable
employees

Pressure to
the
remaining
employees

Over
workload

On the perspective of employees in AC Dept. and AD Dept., they are facing with the
problems in developing themselves, or lack of assiduous and creative characteristics to work
effectively. Different with BA Dept., their jobs are stable and remain mainly the same from
time to time. The majority of employees in these departments are satisfied with their current
jobs and behaviors so they have the tendency of maintaining their current working style

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without any significant improvement. As revealed by Ms. Chi, manager of AC Dept. and her
staff, Mr. Hoa, most of employees thinks that they want to maintain their stable life, do not
want to take change which is similar to take risk, so that it is easier for them to balance their
work- life. It can be said that with low intrinsic motivation, the employees cannot fully
express themselves, show their strength and potential abilities as well as they cannot
recognize their weakness to improve it. That is the reason why day by day, they feel boring
at work and become passive, do not want to strive and challenge themselves with the new
things. Low intrinsic motivation prevents employees to reach the high working effectiveness
and reduce the profitability of the Company.
One of the problem that is claimed by many interviewers is that the Company provides
low performance appraisals. It means the Company does not have the assessment system to
evaluate the working of the employees as well as the reward package is evaluated as low
comparing with the other Company. From which it affects the desire of work of the
employees. They do not want to take risk and receive more jobs because they believe that
even though they work harder or more effective, they still receive the same salary. A staff of
BA Dept. commented that as her colleague takes the maternity leave or quit job, she has to
cover multiple tasks in the time of personnel shortage in a long time, she still received the
same benefits as before. She felt it not fair when the Company does not appreciate and
evaluate her effort precisely. She believed that in such case, no one is willing to take that
challenges and share the burden with the Company. In addition, an ex-employee of AC Dept.
mentioned about the undefined career growth for the employees. Unfair compensation and

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benefit package as well as unclear career growth are the main reason that he decided to find

another opportunity outside the Company. He admits the compensation and benefit are the
motivation to push the employees’ performance and the Company satisfied it. It can be said
that the low intrinsic motivation prevents employees to have positive reactivity with their
jobs, and develop themselves while their benefit requirement remains unchanged.
In conclusion, there are several duplications in the result of the interviews, however
they can be summarized into 03 potentials problems occurring in the Company. They are
over workload, low extrinsic motivation and low intrinsic motivation. The table below shall
provide the main interview result from 04 interviewees:
No.

1

Interviewee

Mrs.

Over workload

Nguyen The number of over

Thi Lan Anh- time

increases

manager of BA significantly
Dept.

this

Low extrinsic

Low intrinsic

motivation

motivation
Staffs do not feel
motivated at work.
Staffs

protect

year

themselves

by

The staffs complaint

rejecting

about the job stress

unclear defined tasks.

and over workload

Staffs do not rearch or

other

try new strategy in

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order

to

improve

working efficiency
2

Mrs. Do Le Chi-

The Company is Staffs do not feel

manager of AC

not

Dept.

recognition and no work, do not want to
chance

full enthusiasm

for communicate

promotion
3

with

with

teammate, colleagues

Mrs. Dang Thi The Company lacked

Staffs just want to

Bich

maintain their stable

Van- of human resource to

manager of AD distribute
Dept.

to

each

Dept.

life, do not want to try
new challenge, or take
risk

4

Mr.

Nguyen I’m always in job I feel unfair when Not interest at work

Minh Nhut- an stress, the number of I’m paid the same
ex-employee of clients I have to serve while I have to do
AC Dept.

are

too

much, more tasks

especially when one
of my colleage quited
his job.
Table : Summary the interview result of potential problems

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Firstly, regarding to the over workload of the employees, the main reason that leads

to the over workload of the Company is human resource shortage. Currently, due to the
limited Company’s scale, the Company does not have demand to establish the professional
Human Resource Department which can itself conduct the completed recruitment process.
In order to overcome this problems, the Company refers to outsource the recruitment to an
professional Headhunter Company to find the skillful and suitable candidates. Moreover, the
Company also takes advantage of employees’ relationship by encouraging them to introduce
their friends, acquaintances for the Company. In this case, the Company shall pay the
reasonable introduction fee corresponse with the position in the Company of the candidate.
Besides promoting the recruitment, the Company also changes its personnel strategy. As the
number of new clients increase, two or more employees are responsible for the same clients
so that they can support and assist each other. With this arrangement, it is not necessary to
have two or more employees with professional skill and knowledge. With the aim of saving
cost, new graduate students shall be recruited to support and assist their mentor. The new
strategy is apply and gain several achievements. It is not only reduce the workload of the
current employees, employees can substitute and support each other when the other leaves
work, but also saving the training cost for new employees by learning and gaining experience
during the working time. By the above reasons, over workload in the Company is improving
day by day so it is not considered as the most important potential problem to solve.
Secondly, mentioned about the extrinsic motivation, Ariani, D.W.1 defined:
“Extrinsic motivation refers to activities that are engaged to ways to get the final result, gain

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respect or avoid criticism, and not to satisfy the activity” and it is divided into three types:
identified regulation (motivation to participate in activities to successfully gain new skills
but not to enjoy the activity), introjection (motivation to perform well to avoid negative
emotions such as anxiety or humility), and external regulation (motivation derived from the
need to get rewards or punishment). Curently, the Company have operated recognition
program for all the employees to set their target, doing mid-year and full year review. The

targets are set for both business result of all departments and employees objective to ensure
the employees work efficiency and employee’s ability. The recognition program forces
employees to try their best to achieve their personal target and required a strong collaboration
between departments to reach the Company’s objectives. In addition, beside the insurance
stipulated by the Government, the Company also have additional insurance policy which is
fixed every year for 1-year employees and above . This insurance policy allowes the
empoyees to enjoy the 24/7 insurance package in a wige range of hopital and higher
percentage of medical examination fee. Salary budget is revised by the mother company
every year to ensure that the employees receive appropriate salary.
Finally, through the interview with managers, ex- employee and internal survey of the
Company in 2017, it is reasonable to determine “low intrinsic motivation” as the potential
problem of the Company and to do deeper investigation in term of company resource
limitation. From the investigation, low intrinsic motivation is affecting directly to company
working quality and employee’s daily emotion, which leads to the demand to solve it timely
from both Company and employees’ perspective. In addition, from the interview, “low

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intrinsic motivation” is recognized as the most important problem initial evidence to prove
the existence and damage to work quality. Taking consideration of the biggest concern from
the interview, the research will focus on dealing with low intrinsic motivation.
1.

Problem definition
Motivation is one of the most important factors in any organization. Chintallo &

Mahadeo2 confirmed that all organization encounters the matter of motivation whether they
are in public or private sector. The research of Salman, M., Aamir, M., Asif, M., & Khan, I3
defined “Motivation is about the ways a business can give confidence staff to give their most

excellent” and “Motivation is the act of stimulating someone or oneself to achieve preferred
course of action”. In fact, this definition contributes basic idea for psychological research on
people behavior, especially in working environment. It can be understood that motivation is
the best tool for improving performance in short term and in the long term. Therefore, up to
now, there are many research about the relationship between motivation and employee’s
efficiency and organization efficiency. For example, the research of Muogbo U.S4 showed
“Not only non-monetary motivation factors but also monetary motivations such as attractive
salaries or pays act as a valuable tool and play an important role to increase employee's
performance and also increase the productivity of an organization”.
Together with the development of the international economic, many companies focus and
spend all of their heart and mind to gain the customer loyalty, they ignore the employee
motivation. There is one thing that should be recognized that when the customers interact
with the employees frequently and the behavior and attitude of the employees display the

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image of the Company. Therefore, “Company should move their attention towards
the employee motivation. Now the era of globalization companies face competition in the
market, if company could not successfully motivate their employees, company will not exist
in the competitive environment of business” as Ahmad MF, et al.5 researched. Deci & Ryan6
divided motivated behavior into two types: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In
which, “The first deals with behavior performing itself, in order to experience pleasure and
satisfaction in the activity, and has been called intrinsic motivation” and “the second, which
involves performing behavior in order to achieve some separable goal such as receiving
rewards or avoiding punishment, has been termed extrinsic motivation”.
Deci & Ryan6 defined “Intrinsic motivation refers to voluntary activities or behaviors for
their own desires and attaches to joy, satisfaction, interest, and enjoyable because of their
participation”. Moreover, the researchers also justify that the individuals promoted by
intrinsic motivation are motived to find challenges and improve the ability to learn new

things. In addtion, Vallerand & Bissonnette7 stated “ intrinsically motivated individuals will
participate voluntarily in activities and do not expect rewards”. Clearly, intrinsic motivation
is good for the improvement of work creativity, work quality and job performance when
people have internal desires to perform a particular task that gives them more pleasure,
develops a particular skill, or satisfies their self- esteem. Intrinsic motivation helps
employees have more creativity and strong desire to perform their best ability and expect to
receive good evaluations from their supervisors and business partners. Therefore, intrinsic
motivated employees are interested in explore new pathways and to take greater risks as
Amabile et al8 discussed.
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Lindenberg9 ddifferentiates between two types of intrinsic motivation. The first type is
enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation. This type is defined by the research of Deci, Koestner
and Ryan10 as below: “People who experience enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation derive
pleasure from the activity itself and often report a "flow experience" that makes them lose
track of time”. And the second type is introduced by Frey11 is obligation-/ challengebased intrinsic motivation. He believed that “Individuals feel better when they observe group
norms, such as ethical standards, professional codes of practice, or norms of procedural
fairness” and “People who experience obligation or challenge-based intrinsic motivation are
prepared to follow the norms, even if those norms limit their self-interests-as long as these
individuals accept the legitimacy of the norms, which can be an organization or a profession
that frequently corresponds closely with its members' value systems”
2.

Causes validation

The causes of low intrinsic motivation in the Company were investigated and confirmed
through other interviews with 5 employees: 02 accountants in AC Dept., 02 consultants of
BA Dept., HR. Through the interviews, it is realized that their comments and idea are
overlapped to each others. In addition, some of mentioned causes are valid by existing

researches as follows.
First of all, the study regarding to the level of knowledge workers is dependent upon
perception of job characteristics were investigated by Kumar13. Beaumont et al14 informed
that kknowledge workers take the work such as research and development, advertising,
education and professional services e.g., law, accountancy and consultancy. Moreover,
Sveiby15 indicated that they are highly qualified and educated professionals. Moody et al16’s
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