OF MOTIVATION-ENHANCING OF HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES

This analysis of 115 articles about motivation-enhancing human resource practices published in seven Human Resource Management journals in a period between 2010 and 2015 presents significant contributions of individual scholars and institutions to research of motivation-enhancing human resource practices. Coauthor relationship is found through network analysis in order to show interrelationship among scholars who have contributed to this research. However, in order to provide main categories and subcategories in the field, authors carried out content analysis of the articles. Moreover, research locations, and methodologies of the articles are analyzed. Finally, to demonstrate recent trend of the research of motivation-enhancing human resource practices in the aforementioned period, this study provides some essential information such as number of articles published in each journal and in each year.


INTRODUCTION
In today's competitive business environment, only the best managed and the most efficient organizations can survive.Many different types of compensation and benefits have been used to attract, retain, and motivate employees and achieve organizational goals (Rynes and Gerhart, 2000;Barber and Bretz, 2000).Due to this reason, the research on the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) and various organizational outcomes has augmented in the past several decades; thus, researchers have started to examine why and how organizations achieve their goals through the use of human resource (HR) practices (Kaifeng, Lepak, Hu, and Baer, 2012).As a result, there has been a need for a systematic assessment of the contributions of researchers and academic and non-academic institutions to motivation-enhancing HR practices, demonstration of the interconnectedness of those contributions, and classification of the content of the articles.This research review tries to meet the aforementioned need by identifying the researchers who have contributed to the motivation-enhancing HR practices and the institutions in which the research has been conducted.The review article also analyzes the content areas that have been studied over the period between 2010 and 2015 using the categorization found in Lepak and colleagues (2006) and Kaifeng et al. (2012) studies.Moreover, this study aims to present an inquiry and investigation of certain productive scholars and institutions by analyzing the network relationships among the authors.Finally, the authors attempt to present valuable information regarding the research of motivation-enhancing HR practices such as research locations, methodologies of the articles, number of articles published in each journal, and in each year.This review focuses on the publications in seven leading "HRM" journals, because most of the scholars who conduct research about motivation-enhancing HR practices publish their work in those outlets.
The contribution of this article to the motivation-enhancing HR practices research is apparent in several instances.First of all, this review identifies the authors who have made the largest contribution to the literature of motivation-enhancing HR practices based on the number of their papers published in some of the leading HRM journals, and the number of coauthors they have worked with.As it is shown in the analysis, a relatively small number of authors have dominated research in this area.
This study also introduces a list of the academic and non-academic institutions that have been the most dominant in supporting motivation-enhancing HR practices research.While majority of the previous review articles only provide information about the contribution of academic institutions to the researched field (Debicki, Matherne, Kellermanns, and Chrisman, 2009), this review identifies contributions of both academic and non-academic institutions.Findings of this article suggest that academic institutional support, in particular, is crucial for the development of research areas.The authors of the study present evidence of the contributions of academic and non-academic institutions to the research of motivationenhancing HR practices, and they hope to provide justification for the continuation and greater investment in the future.
Furthermore, the analysis of the topic areas that have been covered in this study about motivation-enhancing HR practices research will help in identification of research trends and areas needed for further scholars' investigation.Considering that these trends and gaps are related to the individuals, institutions, and networks involved in this research, this study hopes to encourage scholars to produce more publications in cooperation with other authors in order to fill the gaps in knowledge identified in this article.Furthermore, this study presents the connection between specific areas of research and the location where the research was conducted in order to show a detailed assessment.
Finally, through the list of countries, this study provides the analysis frequency of each country's practices that shows its perceived importance and interest.To receive an overall understanding, authors sorted countries based on continents as well.In addition to this, the analysis of methodologies used in the articles provides a list of frequently used methods, and explains the appropriateness of each method and the possible reasons for its usage.The analysis of the number of articles per year shows that an increase or a decrease in the number of publications can also be seen in motivation-enhancing HR practices research.

METHOD
In order to carry out the analysis, the authors identified and reviewed 115 articles about motivation-enhancing HR practices published in seven HRM journals in a period between 2010 and 2015.
Publications considered relevant to this study contained peer-reviewed articles.For the categorization of the articles, their titles, volumes and issue numbers, authors and their affiliation, and keywords were explored.Abstracts were also analyzed to determine the methodology, country, continent, and research field of each article.

Individual and Institutional Research Productivity
The research productivity of individuals and institutions was determined in the following ways.Initially, the authors determined the number of articles that each individual authored and coauthored.A list of all authors with more than one publication about motivationenhancing HR practices during the analyzed period is presented in Table 2.
The impact factors of the Social Science Citation Index and h5 index were used to determine the quality of the publications.Finally, institutional productivity scores were established by adding the individual journal publications that were adapted by coauthorship at an institutional level.To provide this information, this study recorded the primary institutional affiliation of the authors at the time in which the article was published.

Network Analysis
Co-authorship of research articles was analyzed in terms of networks formed by the authors.The authors reviewed 115 articles and coded names of authors to find the interrelationship among the most active scholars in the motivation-enhancing HR practices research.A detailed interpretation of the co-authorship network analysis is provided in the results section.

Content Analysis
The authors reviewed the articles and coded them according to four main categories and 61 subcategories classified by Lepak, Liao, Chung, and Harden (2006) and Kaifeng et al. (2012).These categories consisted of (a) skill-enhancing HR practices with 6 subcategories, (b) motivation-enhancing HR practices with 34 subcategories, (c) opportunity-enhancing HR practices with one subcategory, and (d) organizational outcomes with 20 subcategories.

Research Location Analysis
To account for the location of each research article, this study identified countries in which the research was conducted.The authors examined titles, keywords, and abstracts of the articles.The research locations of 80 among 115 articles were determined.In cases where articles' research was conducted in more than one country, authors coded those articles to each country separately.This was performed for six articles.To provide a more detailed assessment, a list of continents in which identified countries existed was presented.

Methodology Analysis
The titles and abstracts of the articles in motivation-enhancing HR practices research were analyzed to provide a list of the most frequently used research methods.In this way, research methods of 111 among 115 articles were identified.Articles that used more than one research method were coded separately according to each method.Disagreements in coding were resolved through the discussion with the third author.Overall, the following research methods utilized in reviewed articles were identified: (a) empirical research, (b) review, (c) case study analysis, (d) theoretical research, (e) conceptual paper, and (f) experiment.

Year of Publication Analysis
Finally, the authors reviewed and coded the articles in motivation-enhancing HR practices research published in a period between 2010 and 2015 according to their publication year.This approach has been employed in previous research (Handžić, 2015) to show the motivation-enhancing HR practices research carried out by different academic and nonacademic institutions.Table 3 displays the most operative institutions depending on the number of authors who contributed to the study of motivation-enhancing HR practices.In general, it has been found that 188 different institutions have supported 267 scholars, however, this study presented only 29 institutions with more than one article (Table 3).From Table 3 it can be interpreted that the Radboud University is the top ranked institution, followed by Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and University of Sheffield.Table 3 also displays 9 institutions that supported the publication of three articles, and 17 institutions that sponsored the publication of two articles.The number of institutions that contributed to the field with only one article during the analyzed period is 159.
Table 3 also displays academic and nonacademic institutions that contributed to the motivation-enhancing HR practices research.28 institutions are academic institutions, while only one is a non-academic institution -Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.Figure 1 shows the distribution percentage of all analyzed institutions that supported the publication of the articles.The most active non-academic institution is the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.Non-academic institutions include financial providers, consulting companies, institutes of science and technology, research institutes, and three banks.After the abstract analysis of 115 articles in seven HRM journals, four categories were examined (see Table 4).The overall research activity with regard to primary categories of the articles is as follows: skill-enhancing HR practices (6.5%), motivation-enhancing HR practices (24.4%), opportunity-enhancing HR practices (0.5%), and organizational outcomes (10.8%).According to these results, motivation-enhancing HR practices and organizational outcomes are the most frequently studied topics followed by skill-enhancing HR practices.On the other hand, opportunity-enhancing HR practices are the least frequently studied categories.
In addition to nine main categories, 61 subcategories are shown in Table 4. Work motivation is the most frequently researched subcategory (9.3%) followed by rewards (7.5%), and job performance and productivity (5.1%).

Research Location
The authors of this study obtained information about research location of 80 among 115 articles based on their abstract and keywords.Table 5 presents a complete list of countries in which the research was conducted.Studies conducted in more than one country were coded to each country separately.This was carried out for six articles.According to a new coding, total number of articles raised up to 89.Groups of the countries where the studies from these six articles were conducted are as follows: (a) Austria, Norway, Spain, and UK, (b) Canada and Australia, (c) China and Japan, (d) Lebanon and USA, (e) Russia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, and (f) Spain and UK.
A list of continents where identified countries exist is presented in Table 5.As shown in this table, Europe is the most productive continent (40.4%), followed by Asia (35.9%),North and South America (12.3%),Australia (10.1%), and Africa (0.1%).As shown in Table 5, the country in Europe where the most studies are conducted is Spain with six articles, followed by United Kingdom with five articles.In Asia, the country with the greatest number of articles is China with 11 articles, followed by Japan with six articles.While Australia is the most productive country, with seven published articles in Australian continent, USA with six articles is a country where the greatest number of studies in motivation-enhancing HR practices field are conducted in North and South America, and Africa.In overall, China is the most productive country in this field during the analyzed period, followed by Australia, Spain, Japan, and USA.
Table 6 provides distribution of topic areas of HRM and continents.As shown in the table, all four categories in HRM are studied only in Europe, followed by Asia, North America, and Australia that lack a research about skill-enhancing HR practices and opportunityenhancing HR practices.According to the number of published articles in all four categories and continents distribution, Europe is the first continent, with 32 published articles in total, followed by Asia with 27 articles, and North America and Australia with 9 published articles.Africa and South America have the smallest number of published articles in each category.
With regard to the category of the most frequently studied topic per continent, it has been discovered that motivation-enhancing HRM practices is the most frequently studied topic with 21 published articles in Europe.It is one of the most frequently studied topics in Asia as well.In Europe and Asia, the second most frequently studied category is organizational outcomes, with 8 and 11 published articles respectively.

Methodology Analysis
The authors analyzed the titles and abstracts of the articles in motivation-enhancing HR practices research in order to present the list of the most commonly used research methods.Research methods of 111 among 115 articles were identified.According to review results, empirical research is a highly dominant method in conducting a research in this field (77%).10% of the articles used review method.The remaining four methodologies such as experiments, conceptual papers, theoretical researches, and case studies have same percentages of usage (3%).

Year of Publication Analysis
Figure 3 shows the frequency of publications in the motivation-enhancing HR practices research in a period between 2010 and 2015.This approach demonstrates the tendency for an increase or a decrease in the number of articles published in all seven journals.In a period between 2010 and 2012, there was a constant decrease in the number of published articles (20 articles in 2010, 18 articles in 2011, and 16 articles in 2012).The number of published articles started to increase with 2013 (18 articles), followed by 2014 (19 articles), and it reached the highest number in 2015 (24 articles).research area in the examined period is growing, this number is still relatively small as shown in Figure 3.
As the contributions of scholars and institutions are presented and the rankings are displayed in Tables 2 and 3, it appears that the research about motivation-enhancing HR practices is dominated by a relatively small number of authors from a relatively small number of institutions.These small groups suggest that continued efforts to expand the field should be supported by organizing some mainstream conferences.Even though, scholars currently seem to be working together in rather stable groups and publishing their work in some outlets, results of this study show that more collaboration is needed in motivationenhancing HR practices research among authors and institutions.
The results of the network analysis of the authorship that shows relationship among the scholars involved in the field, support the conclusions made by the authors and institutional contributions.Small clusters of authors suggest that the roles of journal editors and conference organizers seem particularly important due to the early stage of development and small size of the field.As expected, the results of this study show that academic institutions (i.e.universities) publish the highest number of articles.This research suggests that universities' role in promoting motivationenhancing HR practices research needs to be strengthened.A research shows that research centers facilitate collaborations within a university (Boardman & Corley, 2008).Considering that many successful universities have established research centers and the most prolific scholars are located at universities, centers should have a reinforcing effect on HRM motivation-enhancing HR practices research in particular.These centers can assist in the organization of the conferences in this research area.Thus, the motivation-enhancing HR practices network will be able to allow for more rapid knowledge diffusion throughout the research community.In the same way authors will be more aware of each other's research.
With regard to the content analysis of the study, this review of research areas revealed the most widely investigated issues in the HRM domain.Motivation-enhancing HR practices and organizational outcomes were the most common themes.Conversely, the analysis of the study revealed areas that have not been sufficiently examined, such as opportunityenhancing HR practices, and skill-enhancing HR practices.

Limitations
This article identifies the contributions of authors to motivation-enhancing HR practices research in a period between 2010 and 2015.The approach of the study to assess individual and institutional contributions to this field is adapted from earlier approaches (Debicki et al., 2009;Handzic, 2015).However, there are some limitations of this study.
Firstly, this study concentrates on a research published in a period between 2010 and 2015 only.Due to the early stage of development of motivation-enhancing HR practices research, this seems appropriate.However, the research scope excludes a number of effective studies published before 2010.Future research may consider longer time periods.
The research analyzed 115 articles in seven HRM journals.The limited number of articles and journals could affect the results of the research.Therefore, future research could increase the number of articles and journals.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this study examined individual and institutional contributions to motivationenhancing HR practices research and the author networks that emerged in a period between 2010 and 2015.The content of the articles was also analyzed in seven journals.Through the identification of the scholars who conducted motivation-enhancing HR practices research, the research location, and most commonly used methods, this review aimed to provide a useful reference point for researchers and doctoral students at universities who are interested in HRM field of study.This research presented some emerging subcategories and research trends in HRM for scholars as well.

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .
Figure 1.Percentage Distribution of Academic and Non-academic Institutions

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Number of Published Articles per Year

Table 4 .
Categorization of Topics in the Research

Table 5 .
Distribution of Published Articles Based on Location

Table 6 .
Distribution of Topic Areas of the Research and Locations