Взаимосвязь систем мотивации и удовлетворенностью трудом производственного персонала. Пример издательско-полиграфической отрасли

“Human Resources isn’t a thing we do. It’s the thing that runs our business.” – Steve Wynn, Wynn Las Vegas
“In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what matters most to your people.” – Julie Bevacqua, CRO of Rise People

I am Aleksandr Shmakov, a second year MIM student, an operating director of printing company NP-Print, LLC and the owner of the publishing company Goodwin, LLC. Before my masters, I was always wondering how to make people work better? How to get more from the existing for so long, at the same time declining business. By the beginning of the second year of the Master program, I found myself in the middle of an M&A deal, where my family’s company NP-Print is taking over other printing company of about the same size. By the time of finalizing the master thesis, an economic crisis hit. All of that had raised a set of questions, and the search for answers for them is an aim of the given research – how to motivate and satisfy people better.
The aim of this research is to analyze the correlation between job satisfaction and the satisfaction with the motivation system that has been implemented in Small and Medium Enterprises from the printing and publishing industry, which operates in Russia. It is an interesting topic because results of productivity of such low-profit industries might become outstanding if certain practices were introduced. The study of the ways of survival and development of SMEs in emerging economies in declining markets would be assessed as well, because it is what the Printing industry in Russia is right now. All findings would be applied to the present companies named Printing Company NP-Print, LLC, Rise Corporation, LLC, Goodwin Publisher LLC. However, other representatives of production companies of about the same size from EM SMEs may be interested in it and I would be more than happy to share the research results.
By looking at any production business more closely, there is clear evidence that at least one thing uniting all production SMEs in emerging markets is employees. They are not loyal, motivation-lacking people who are not trying to perform better. Therefore, the goal has been set – to study the motivation of labor position employees in SMEs from the print and publishing industry in Russia, because they are operating in transforming market with old machinery within the emerging economy to improve its performance afterwards.
Relevance of the study
The world economy is experiencing fourth industrial revolution significant in a matter of transition from production to service economy. Despite this fact in many advanced economies around the globe processing manufacturing account for more than a fourth of the overall employment.
Been an insider to the printing industry drives the interest in researching particular industry. Despite the decline in public consumption demand for informational and educational printed products and increasing competition for printed publications from electronic media, printing production retains its potential and its niche (Federal Agency for press and mass communications report, 2019).
To get a helicopter view on the most recent situation in the Russian economy we got to the Business climate in industry in November-December 2019 Report (HSE). The report is conducted on a monthly basis by the Center for market research of the Institute of statistical research and Economics of knowledge of The national research University “Higher school of Economics”, where presented the information and analytical materials on the results of market surveys of business activity of industrial enterprises. Based on the November-December time-period (I am sure that after the coronavirus pandemic the situation would be different) the production companies experienced mild optimism (Figure 1).

Dynamics of the entrepreneurial confidence index. From the Business climate in industry in November-December 2019 Report
At the same time the Economic sentiment index (HSE IEN) in the fourth quarter of 2019 maintained the value of the previous quarter (-13%), recording a pause in the gradual recovery of the total consumer sentiment of the Russian population. Therefore, the customers are less willing to spend money on new products, entrepreneurs less willing to invest in new machinery.
An internal part of the working process in production companies could be divided into two major factors: people and machinery. The average age of the machinery in Print and publishing industry tend to be quite old (10.2 years) among all other production industries in Russia, according to the study of investment activity of industrial enterprises in Russia (2019):

Estimation of the average age of machinery and equipment in the manufacturing industry by type of economic activity in 2018 (years)
Therefore, the other thing that could be affected to increase the quality of the outcome – the more precisely implemented employee motivation practices.
In the era of numerous possibilities, the main goal of companies is set to attract and retain workers, no matter in what industry it operates. The difficulty for SMEs is that they need to compete with corporations that could afford to spend more money on the HR and remuneration of its employees. That is why it is important for SMEs to know what the most efficient practices are considering that they do not have resources to spend on inefficient ones. The situation becomes more complex and difficult when it is referred to companies operating in the changing markets with low profits within the emerging economy (such as printing). Employees may feel stressed and underestimated that is why it is so important to pay precise attention to the motivation of such employees.
Research gap
Job satisfaction is the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values. (Locke, 1969)
The statement that job motivation is driven by the level of job satisfaction of employees (Stefanovska-Petkovska, Bojazdiev, Handjiski, Trajkovska, V, 2017) shows that some analysis of the relation between job satisfaction and motivation system has been done before, but how properly, if any, in the context of the chosen industry?
Despite the fact that job motivation and job satisfaction considered as quite well elaborated in the context of HR management studies, but there is a lack of modern studies concerning following issues:
• Differences in job satisfaction and the motivation of blue collar employees in developing and developed countries
Existing researches are focused primarily on the office workers and managers from banks, public services and health industry. The most recent research from the developed country was concerning the amount of pay compensation in banking industry. The findings were that interpersonal relationships and internal climate play a greater role and serve as the most significant variables of compensation policies of the company. The amount of money paid was found not related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation (Olafsen, Halvari, Forest, & Deci, 2015)
For developing country, the most recent research was about comparison the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic factors were found to affect job satisfaction in a greater way compared to intrinsic factors. The level of payment is four times greater than any other study variables and is considered as the strongest determinant of workplace satisfaction (Addis, Dvivedi, and Beshah, 2018).
• Motivation and job satisfaction in the print and publishing industry.
If one would be looking for printing industry articles, the situation would be even worth. The last time when the US Printing association published an article on the motivation was in “Motivating employees” (Oller, 2002, pp. 33-35) for the UK, the last article was “Working for your workers”. (Chadwick, 2008, pp. 28-29). It is obvious that the interest in the topic from the emerging market researchers is higher because of their need for managing such employees more efficiently. For China printing companies (for example), it is common to have a high level of internationalization, when in Russia their orientation is on the internal market only. The printing companies from the developing countries due to the fact that are heavily penetrating European and American markets of print and publishing, cover the topic a bit, for instance in “Employee Motivation on the Organizational Growth of Printing Industry in the Kumasi Metropolis” (Boakye-Amponsah, Enninful, & Osei-Poku, 2015, pp. 8-20) and “Motivating employees for effective organizational advancement: the focus on the managers of printing industry in the Kumasi Metropolis” (Boakye-Amponsah, Enninful, & Osei-Poku, 2016, pp. 72-86) but significantly less in a number and the length of studies in comparison to the banking managerial motivation studies. It is good to remember the phrase of the classical author that Russia has its own third path, different from the eastern and the wester worlds. That is an angle from which we are going to look at the motivation of the industry’s employees.
• Recent studies of blue-collar employees in CIS countries.
The existing fundamental researches could be to out-of-date. These are researches conducted by Yadov & Zdravomyslov and Gerchik throughout the period of 1970s-2000s. As the environment changes, methods and approaches need to be adjusted to market alterations in order to reach success. In addition, it is a lack of questionnaires developed to measure the labor position workers’ job satisfaction as well as the motivation system analysis.
To sum it up: a low interest to the motivation of the labor position workers from the developed countries and the high level of internationalization of printing companies in developing world creates a gap of a size of the motives and motivation of the labor position workers from the emerging economies but that works for companies operating in changing and challenging market like Russian printing companies does.
Research questions and aims of the study
The aim of the given research is to define and to discover relationship between personnel motivation systems and job satisfaction among labor position workers in printing companies.
The questions are:
• What correlations among different job satisfaction factors for staff in printing industry exists?
• What is the relation between job satisfaction factors and the level of contentment with the motivation system?
• How socio-demographic and job related factors influence on motivation and job satisfaction?