Impact of Employee Job Satisfaction and Motivation on Job Performance: Bunnings Warehouse, New Zealand

This research proposal investigates the impact of employee job satisfaction and motivation on job performance at Bunnings Warehouse, New Zealand. The study aims to examine the factors contributing to employee motivation and job satisfaction and evaluate their impact on employee performance. The research uses a quantitative approach and a case study design, with primary data collected through a survey of 60 employees. The study will test two research hypotheses using statistical analysis.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Impact of employee job satisfaction and employee motivation on employee job performance:
Bunnings Warehouse, New Zealand
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Bunnings Warehouse is Australia and New Zealand’s leading retail store of home
improvement and outdoor living goods. The company was established in 1886 in Perth,
Australia. After it was acquired by the Australian retail giant Wesfarmers in 1994, the business
was expanded in multiple locations in Australia and also in New Zealand, UK and Ireland. It
provides hardware supplies to the project builders, housing industry and to the commercial
traders. In 2017, the total revenue for Bunnings was $11.5 billion (bunnings.co.nz, 2018). It has
around 40000 employees across Australia and New Zealand. The internal and external
stakeholders of Bunnings New Zealand are the thousands of employees, suppliers, contractors,
distributors and millions of customers across the country. By December 31, 2017, Bunnings had
253 warehouses, 33 trade centers, 77 small stores and 3 frame and truss stores across New
Zealand and Australia, and people involved in all these centers are the stakeholders of
Bunnings (Garcia, 2017).
Being a multinational company, owned by the retail giant Wesfarmers, Bunnings has
almost 50 store locations in New Zealand and has strong employee strength. The business is
still expanding in New Zealand. As the business is growing and number of employee is
increasing, Bunnings also faces challenges in job satisfaction, motivation and the job
performance of the employees. The particular issue of the research is that the warehouse is
facing challenges in improving employee job satisfaction and increasing motivation to
maintain retention of employees and absenteeism.
Research aim
This study aims to investigate to what level of extent makes employee’s job satisfaction
and intrinsic or extrinsic motivation factors impacts on employees’ job performance (Task and
Contextual performance) of Bunnings Warehouse, New Lynn.
Research objectives
The objectives of the research paper are:
 To examine the factors contributing in employee motivation and job satisfaction

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 To evaluate the impact of employee motivation and job satisfaction on the performances
of the employees
Research questions
Based on issues at Bunnings Warehouse, New Lynn this study addresses and investigates
following questions:
 Question 1: Is there an impact on employee’s job performance by employee job
satisfaction?
 Question 2: Is there an impact on employees’ job performance by employee motivation?
Research hypotheses
H10: There is no impact of employee’s job satisfaction on employees’ job performance.
H1: There is a positive or negative impact of employee’s job satisfaction on employees’ job
performance.
H20: There is no impact of employee’s motivation on employees’ job performance.
H2: There is a positive or negative impact of employee’s motivation on employees’ job
performance

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Literature review
Factors of employee motivation
Employee motivation is a crucial factor that influences the job satisfaction as well as
productivity of the employees. It also affects the overall organizational performance to achieve
the goals and objectives, and hence, the organizations put high emphasis on increasing the
motivation of the employees. There are many factors that contribute in the employee motivation.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the most applied theory in explaining the motivation of the
employees in a work place. The factors for motivations can be arranged in a pyramid, which
displays a hierarchy. According to Anderson (2014), people must satisfy their physiological
needs first, followed by the safety needs, belongingness or love needs, esteem needs and
finally the self-actualization needs for getting motivation. It does not necessarily mean that all
these needs must be satisfied for a human being to be motivated, but it implies the order of the
needs must be followed while fulfilling the needs.
The employees of any organization can be motivated, if the organization can fulfill their
hierarchy of needs. The employees must be provided enough remuneration to be able to have
the basic goods and services to meet the physiological needs. Financial security affects the
safety needs. The healthy working environment and cooperation and coordination among the
employees fulfil the need of love and belongingness with an organization (Lester, 2013).
Recognition for good work, respect from the other employees, and importance in the
organization meet the need of esteem and lastly, when an employee can achieve his full
potential by going through all the other needs, then his need of self-actualization is met, leading
to high level of motivation. Hence, following from the theory, it can be said, when an
organization suffers from the problem of lack of employee motivation and absenteeism, then it
can be inferred that the organization cannot fulfill the needs of security, belongingness and
esteem. This makes the employees leave the organization or remain absent from work (Niemela
& Kim, 2014).
At the same time, when an employee gets motivation from his organization, he feels
motivated to increase his productivity and give the best performance. Miner (2015) says that to
get the enough motivation, the hierarchy of needs of the employee has to be fulfilled by the
organization. Hence, it is seen that, an employee puts his best effort when he is motivated from
his work.

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Factors of employee job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a highly relative factor. Almost every organization faces the challenge
of providing job satisfaction to the employees. There are many factors that affect the job
satisfaction of the employees of an organization and motivation is one of them. When the
employees do not get motivation from their jobs, they do not get the job satisfaction (Ozguner &
Ozguner, 2014). Many theories have addressed the factors influencing job satisfaction of the
employees and one of the most commonly used theories in this regard is the Two Factor Theory
by Herzberg. This is also known as the motivation-hygiene theory or the dual-factor theory.
According to this theory, there are two sets of factors in a workplace, one set causes job
satisfaction, known as the motivation factors, and the other set, known as the hygiene factors,
causes dissatisfaction (Yusoff, Kian & Idris, 2013). Motivations factors are the intrinsic factors,
such as, rewards and recognition, value to the organization, sense of achievement, scope for
personal growth etc. These give rise to the job satisfaction of the employees. On the other hand,
extrinsic factors, such as, salary, fringe benefits, job security, working conditions, paid and
unpaid leaves, and organization’s policies, cause dissatisfaction regarding the job (Latham,
2012). These are the hygiene factors. This theory is also relevant for explaining the job
satisfaction of the employees.
Hence, increasing the job satisfaction of the employees requires not only the reduction
of the hygiene factors, but also increasing the motivation factors. Miner (2015) points out that
job satisfaction influences the employees to increase their productivity and perform well. Hence,
it is seen that, when an organization takes efforts to increase the motivation factors and reduce
the hygiene factors, the job satisfaction of the employees increases and that is reflected in the
work performance.
Gap in the literature
The theories on the job satisfaction and motivation have addressed only the specific
issues of satisfaction and motivation respectively. However, the combined impact of employee
motivation and job satisfaction on the employee job performances was not measured.

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Theoretical framework
Methodology (Paradigm)
Research methodology illustrates the paradigm or philosophy of research. This is the
first step of any research study. Research paradigm presents a set of beliefs or assumptions on
the process of gathering the data or information about the research topic, its analysis process
and presentation of the explanation (Saunders et al., 2015). A research study can follow
different ways according to the requirement. The research philosophy exhibits the specific way
that would be chosen by the researcher to meet the research objectives, based on the source
and nature of the knowledge gathered (Hughes & Sharrock, 2016). Four types of research
paradigm are interpretivism, positivism, realism and pragmatism. Interpretivism involves
qualitative analysis of the research phenomenon, on the basis of the interpretation skills of the
researcher and it is mostly objective in nature. Positivism includes quantitative analysis of the
research phenomenon as it allows the researcher to apply statistical method for calculating and
analyzing the data. Realism depends on the idea of independence of the reality of the research
topic from the human mind and under pragmatism, the researcher uses both qualitative and
quantitative method of research to get the outcome (Ryan, 2018).
In the given research study, the researcher needs to identify the factors influencing
motivation and job satisfaction of the employees and their impact on the work performances of
the employees in Bunnings Warehouse, New Zealand. To test the research hypotheses, the

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researcher needs to collect primary data and analyze the data using any scientific method to
reach to a logical and rational conclusion. Hence, positivism philosophy will be chosen by the
researcher for this research.
Research design and methods
A research study consists of many processes, such as, research approach, design,
strategy, sampling, data collection and analysis process. The selected methods for this research
study are as follows.
Research approach refers to the exploration of the research topic that the researcher
adopts. Three types of research approaches are inductive, deductive and abductive. Inductive
approach enables the researcher to take the exploratory approach of research, that is, exploring
the topic of the research to generate a new theory from the observations. In the deductive
approach, the researcher evaluates the research hypothesis based on the established theories.
In other words, the inferences are drawn from the theories to get the conclusion (Hughes &
Sharrock, 2016). In the abductive approach, the researcher takes the decision to draw the most
possible inference among numerous possible explanations, which can generate from the
specific set of observations (Walton, 2014). In this study, the researcher will choose the
deductive approach, since, the evaluation of the role of employee job satisfaction and
motivation on the work performances of the employees of Bunnings Warehouse, New Zealand,
will be tested against the theories of motivation and job satisfaction. There is no need to
generate new theories or there will not be many possible outcomes to choose one from.
Research design or is the strategy of the researcher about how to go ahead with the
research to answer the research questions. It mainly presents the strategy of integrating
different components of the research in a logical and coherent way, which ensures the effective
addressing to the research problem. It consists of the steps and direction of data collection, their
measurement and the analysis process. Various types of research design are case study,
causal, action research, cohort, cross-sectional, descriptive, experimental, longitudinal,
exploratory, historical, meta-analysis, mixed-method, observational, philosophical and
sequential (Lewis, 2015). The researcher will adopt the case study research design for this
research study. The research topic is narrowed down to a researchable example and the
hypotheses are tested against a real world phenomenon (Hancock & Algozzine, 2016). The

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researcher has taken Bunnings Warehouse as the case study company and conducted a survey
to get the information on the research topic. It helps in getting specific data on the factors, which
makes it easy to comprehend.
Research method refers to the steps that are taken to collect, analyze and present the
findings to get the desired outcome of the research. Two fundamental research methods are
quantitative and qualitative method. Quantitative research is mainly based on explanatory
research approach and positivism philosophy of research. It mainly deals with numeric data and
statistical functions, applied to them to obtain a scientifically proved result. The behavior of the
sample, attitude and opinions are quantified using statistics for the calculation of the data. Large
samples are usually considered and surveys, online polls are used for data collection (Hussein,
2015). On the other hand, qualitative research method is mainly followed for exploratory
research. It is used to analyze the underlying reasons, motives and opinions of the sample. This
method is beneficial for providing insights into the problem of the research. Interpretivism
philosophy is applied, sample size is usually taken small, and interview or focus group method
is usually followed for data collection under this method (Brannen, 2017). In the given study, the
researcher will adopt the quantitative research method as it is easier to comprehend the trend
in the data collected from the sample and generate a logical and scientifically proved outcome
of the research topic (Bernard, 2017).
The researcher will collect primary data for the given research study. Survey method is
chosen for the data collection. The survey will be conducted on the employees of Bunnings
Warehouse, New Lynn, New Zealand. The questionnaire will contain approximately 45 close
ended questions, focusing on the factors of employee motivation and job satisfaction and its
impact on the job performance of the employees. The responses will be collected using 5 point
Likert scale.
Sampling is essential for data collection. Sample is a subset of the population displaying
the similar characteristics. The researcher will conduct simple random sampling to choose the
sample of around 60 employees among the 100 employees in Bunnings, New Lynn.
Data analysis process will include quantitative methods, that is, statistical calculation
on the data. The responses of the participants will be converted into numeric values and
statistical functions will be performed using SPSS version 20. Mean, Reliability test, Pearson
Coefficient, that is, Correlation, and Linear Regression Analysis will be performed on the data to
test the research hypotheses.

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Ethics
The research work will follow the code of ethics of New Zealand in the workplace.
Personal information of the participants will be confidential and the data will be used only for
educational purpose. The study will follow ethical means of conducting research and
organizational code of ethics by not breaching the privacy and data confidentiality policies,
followed in New Zealand. The respondents for the survey must participate voluntarily. Informed
consent should be taken before conducting the survey. The government of New Zealand follows
some rules of the Treaty of Waitangi in the organizational culture. It was an agreement between
the British and the Māori tribes of New Zealand, signed in 1840. It is not a part of the domestic
laws of New Zealand, which focuses on the protection of the Māori settlements and lands, but it
was incorporated in limited manners in the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986
(Nzhistory.govt.nz, 2018). The basic principle of this treaty is the protection of right and the
researcher must follow the principle of protection of information while conducting the research.
Significance of the research
The significance of the research is to provide a solution to Bunnings Warehouse, New
Lynn, to address the issue of retention of the employees and absenteeism due to lack of
employee motivation and job satisfaction. This research will help the organization to understand
the specific problem leading to employee dissatisfaction and find out ways to eliminate those
problems.

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Project Plan
Research Milestone
(Source: Author)

10RESEARCH PROPOSAL
References
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Business and Social Science, 5(7).

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