The Influence of Motivation upon Performance: A Quantitative Research Conducted Among Software Developers

Abstract

In a complex and unpredictable business environment that is constantly changing, often the individual performance of software developers directly influences the performance of the entire organization. Thus, the more motivated employees (respectively software developers) are, the results obtained by them are higher, because the achievement of the individual objectives is closely related to the achievement of the organization's objectives. Therefore, this paper aims to study the link between motivating software developers and organizational performance for a multinational company in Romania using Charles Handy’s theory of motivation. Starting from the 4 “E” factors (energy, excitement, effort and expenditure), a quantitative research was carried out by applying a questionnaire among 32 software developers. The questionnaire was made up of Likert-scale questions, so that each software developer could choose the option that seemed most appropriate. The results revealed that there is a strong link between the four motivational factors (e factors) and organizational performance within software developers. Also, for the study of the concepts most often encountered together with motivation, software developers and performance, bibliometric research was carried out.