Motivation Strategies for Knowledge Workers: Evidences and Challenges

Abstract

Many studies have been performed previously to investigate different theories of motivation and, more specifically, how to motivate technical professionals. Through a questionnaire survey carried out on 376 development engineers, identified as “knowledge workers” by managers in their firms, this study identifies what methods are used in industry to motivate these individuals, what works and what does not. While many aspects of standard incentives and reward systems used to motivate technical professionals in general are also motivating for technical visionaries, these results indicate that they are motivated by additional factors not generally discussed in the literature.

Keywords

• Job satisfaction
• Engineering
• Motivation
• Reward
• Skilled workers
• R & D