Title: Employee motivation as an indicator of the desire to continue working: evidence from SMEs in Bangladesh

Authors: Mohammad Rashed Hasan Polas; Md Muhibbullah; Rafia Afroz; Md Nazmus Sadekin

Addresses: Institute of Scientific Research and Graduate School, Universidad de Lima, Lima, Peru ' Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ' Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ' Department of Economics, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Santosh, Tangail-1902, Bangladesh

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore how employee motivation factors impact on the employee's desire to keep working in SME firms. This study primarily is based on raw data which are collected from 278 employees of SME firms in Bangladesh. Apart from adopting the quantitative method, the Smart PLS 3.0 and SPSS V23 were utilised for analysing the gathered primary data. Furthermore, we predicted ten hypotheses in this study. Our findings assure that a positive and significant relationship among working conditions, salary and incentive, and job stability with employee motivation is sustained which indicates a direct relationship on the desire of employees to continue working in this sector. This study did not find any conventional relationship between the behaviour of presidents and subordinates with employee motivation. This study further demonstrates that employee motivation does not mediate the relationship between behaviour of presidents and subordinates with the desire to continue working.

Keywords: working conditions; salary-incentives; job stability; employee motivation; HRM; SME; Bangladesh.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMP.2021.115110

International Journal of Management Practice, 2021 Vol.14 No.3, pp.343 - 367

Received: 19 Aug 2020
Accepted: 05 Oct 2020
Published online: 18 May 2021 *

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