Beyond static snapshots of intrinsic motivation: sociocultural influences on organisational nepotism and self-determined behaviour in the Pakistani textile industry

Abstract

Societies, organisations and individuals are interlinked, fluid and dynamic entities in constant engagement with each other, hence create causalities across multiple levels of analysis. The primary aims of this thesis include exploring relational elements impacting upon organizational nepotism and intrinsic motivation in Pakistan, thereby contextualizing both constructs with cultural sensitivity using a sociocultural lens. Through theoretical and empirical research, this project applies an integrative, systems thinking and multi-level approach to amalgamate findings across macro, meso and individual disciplines to build a relational framework of behaviours in the workplace from a social perspective. It also seeks to understand the top-down influence of institutions and culture as initial conditions, the causality they create, and recursive patterns of behaviour they instigate over time, which traverse across all three paradigms. It then concludes that social context plays a crucial role in influencing the adoption of organisational nepotism and the impact it has on self-determined behaviour in Pakistani workplaces. This thesis uses conjunctive theorising to build a relational framework, and qualitatively utilises the oral history and semi-structured interview format to collect data. It further analyses data using template analysis, validates current findings and illuminates themes that emerge from the data. The findings of this study confirm that both organisational nepotism and intrinsic motivation in Pakistan are heavily influenced by repeated patterns of behaviour and constructs stemming from its sociocultural environment. Results demonstrate that organisational nepotism originates in collectivism, social trust and tribal mentality, whereas relatedness plays a key role in defining the level of intrinsic motivation amongst employees. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of literature in two ways: firstly, it expands the existing theory and adds a dimension to Self-Determination Theory literature that has previously been unconsidered. Secondly, it broadens the perception of how intrinsic motivation should be contextualised- as part of a broader social system- in order to make it generalizable across the globe. The results from this research can aid a variety of private organisations in the manufacturing industry, policymakers and stakeholders in textile firms in collectivist countries with weak government institutions.