A phenomenographic examination of work motivation to perform at the municipal corporation of Bangladesh.

The explorative purpose of this study is to investigate and analyse the work motivational conceptions of employees, to expand a better understanding of work motivation in the municipal corporation of Bangladesh. The municipal corporation is one of the key administrative bodies of Bangladesh’s local government. Work motivation has been defined as a result of interaction between the individual and the environment. Local government studies indicate the work environment of the municipal corporation is unique because of its key colonial and political history, several reform attempts, non-western social perspectives, job functions, and traditional governance. Twenty-two semi-structured online interviews were conducted in this study. Phenomenographic research methodology has been adopted to describe the limited number of qualitatively different ways of experiencing work motivation. During the analysis of the semi-structured interview transcripts, the focus was on the second-order employee perspective to explore and analyse the conceptions. Based on the participants’ collective experiences and dimensions of variation across the different ways of experiencing, six conceptions of employee work motivation to perform at the municipal corporation were identified in this study. Besides, six dimensions of critical variations have emerged within and between the conceptions. In the outcome space, the relationships between conceptions, and dimensions of critical variations are presented in a logical structure. The findings of this research study show significance to expand the understanding of work motivation and the research context of phenomenography. The findings of this research will contribute to the ongoing attention of contextual work motivational understanding from a Bangladeshi perspective and phenomenographic research conceptions in organisational behaviour studies.