This ebook provides a brief overview of motivation and job satisfaction in a technical environment. The purpose is to aid the study of the subject and to provide additional background, as well as some practical application guidelines to help the reader understand the process of motivating people.

In trying to understand what motivates people, what influences their satisfaction with their jobs and how these themes relate to each other, we should never forget why we are interested in the subjects to start of with. The end result to be achieved should be high performance in the workplace.

The purpose of motivation and job satisfaction is to utilise people to achieve organisational goals.

Many theories have risen and fallen around the subjects of motivation and job satisfaction. Many of these theories developed in the industrial age were used for some time. Soon, when people started to value their way of living and their surroundings, these theories and their application became obsolete. New ways of managing people had to be developed, and slowly the subject of "Organisational Behaviour" as a holistic concept came to the fore.