Measuring motivation in a learning organization

Motivation constitutes a central element when going through the process of human learning. If the organization does not possess the ability to motivate its employees, the knowledge within the organization is not practically used to a maximum. Therefore, it becomes the aim of every successful learning organization to find the factors that enable it to motivate its employees to continuous learning and to take advantage of this knowledge to ensure its living. Many motivational theories have been constructed to find these motivational factors, but the values of the employees in the specific organization are seldom included in the theories. Since a suitable combination of motivational factors only can be created through an understanding of the values in the measured object (i.e. employees), this can be seen as a risk for validity problems in the measuring instrument. A closer survey of the measured object, where such factors as society, organizational culture and personality of the employee are taken into account, is required. To respond to this requirement a dynamic model for the application of existing motivational theories based on needs is created in this article. In the model the shortcomings, which result from an often non‐existing dialogue between the examiner and the examined, are removed.