The Impact of Bonuses in the Context of Non-Governmental Organizations A qualitative study on how motivation among fundraising team leaders in the Norwegian branches of NGOs is affected by bonus schemes
Abstract
The aim of this master’s thesis is to uncover how bonuses affect the motivation among fundraising team leaders in Norwegian branches of non-governmental organizations. To do so, we present four additional research questions that are related to the main purpose of the thesis based on literature about NGOs, motivation and bonuses. In order to find answers to these, we conducted semi-structured interviews with twelve team leaders from three separate NGOs. By coding the interviews, we found that the effect of a bonus scheme on motivation is dependent on whether the team leaders already have it or consider a potential bonus. Such a scheme seems to increase the motivation among those who have it but impair the motivation of those who don’t. For the latter, the bonus seems to affect the intrinsic and prosocial motivation in a negative manner. These findings are interesting and provide implications for non-governmental organizations about how bonuses can affect their employees. However, future research is necessary to reach a more general conclusion for NGOs, as our results are ambiguous since they show that bonuses can have both a positive and negative effect. The thesis contributes to the existing research on the effect of bonuses on motivation by expanding it to a new area that has yet to be touched upon.