ABSTRACT

Employee motivation is a much-researched area in management and organizational sciences. It sits at the confluence of organizational behavior, organizational/occupational/industrial psychology and human resource management. A special issue of the journal Applied Psychology—An International Review highlighted the wealth of research and conceptual development in the field (Wood 2000). However, there is a significant gap in the literature: employee motivation is hardly examined with input from national culture and/or regional geopolitical realities. In this chapter, we offer a focused review of the work on employee motivation generally and in Africa and suggest a number of points toward redressing the imbalance in the African dialogue. Among other things, this chapter suggests that in addition to theory testing, grounded theory generation and conceptual innovation is required to enable organizations, management and governments in Africa to better understand and manage worker motivational dynamics.