Facets of Competitiveness in Improving the Professional Skills

The goal of the study is to examine age- and gender-differences between employees in regards to motivation for training. Four facets of competitiveness and three types of orientation in extrinsic motivation are considered. In a Hayes conditional process analysis, the research uses the data from a questionnaire survey carried out in Poland in 2016 among higher-educated employees at mobile-working age. Our findings show that the competition in self-development is the most important facet of competitiveness for under 40-year-olds, while it is competing in terms of enjoying the job for employees of age 39-45. Competing in terms of financial compensation was shown to be the least important facet in each age group. In general within each age group, the participants were shown to be more strongly stimulated to improve their skills by less extrinsic forms of motivation. Higher-educated women and men are motivated to improve their professional skills by the same stimuli up to the end of their 40s, after which less extrinsic motivation (self-development and autonomy) become more important for men than women. The findings contribute to the literature on competitiveness and motivation, suggesting a number of recommendations in terms of how to organize training for employees of different age groups, contributing to the overall growth of productivity within an economy.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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