Motivators of the Next Great Generation : A quantitative study conducted on Millennials employed in Sweden

Abstract: It is argued that the new generation called Millennials are being needy, disloyal and narcissistic, and need more attention than previous generations. This is an issue for organizations and managers considering that employed Millennials have higher turnover intention, thus will not stay for as long as prior generations which further contributes to large costs for the companies. Consequently, managers will have an advantage of understanding what is motivating Millennials in order to facilitate for the workforce to perform to the highest extent whilst being employed for the company. As a result, the purpose of this thesis was to examine if previous conducted studies regarding motivation and Millennials were applicable to employed Millennials in Sweden. Furthermore, we wanted to more specifically examine if job satisfaction, work-life balance, organizational commitment and feedback were of importance since those factors has been argued to be highly influential regarding what is motivating this new workforce. Motivation can further be divided into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, where the former can be described as the drive that comes from within whilst the latter describes that the drive is the result from external factors. Our research question was as a result: Do job satisfaction, work-life balance, organizational commitment, and feedback have an effect on intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation among Millennials working in Sweden? To answer the research question and fulfil the purpose of our thesis, we conducted a quantitative study by publishing a questionnaire online in order to reach Millennials working in Sweden since most previous studies conducted has been more focused on a qualitative nature within Anglo-Saxon countries. When analysing our results from the survey we could conclude that organizational commitment had a significant positive effect on both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, whilst work-life balance had a significant negative effect and unfavourable feedback had a significant positive effect on the sample ́s extrinsic motivation. To conclude, the theoretical contribution of this study has been to further provide knowledge regarding Millennials and more specifically employed Millennials in Sweden. Lastly, since we both are students enrolled in the Master’s program in Management, our focus has been on managerial considerations and has therefore contributed to results that can be of advantage to managers and organizations regarding how they can both motivate their new workforce in addition to obtain greater knowledge of understanding them and their needs.