Examining Motivation Theory in Higher Education Among Tenured and Non-Tenured Faculty: Scholarly Activity and Academic Rank

The pursuit of tenure in higher education is arguably the dominant focus of tenure track faculty throughout the United States higher education environment, if not a world-wide phenomenon (Gentry and Stokes, 2015; Saha, 2014). By applying Vroom’s Expectancy theory of motivation, this study intended to investigate the relationship between research productivity and motivation to conduct such activities at higher education institutes by examining the academic productions of tenured and not tenured faculty members. This study attempted to validate expectancy theory predictions and assess a multi-dimensional definition of academic productivity in term of not only research. This study confirmed the need to further investigate the impact that long-term job security, in the form of tenure, has on faculty academic productivity in higher education. The present study used the data from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) survey and sought the answers to the following three questions: 1. What is the recent scholarly activity for faculty by rank and tenure? 2. What are the unconditional effects of motivation, tenure, and rank on recent scholarly activity? 3. What are the conditional effects of motivation, tenure, and rank on recent scholarly activity