Differential Motivation and Health Workers Commitment to Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria

Abstract

Public healthcare institutions are expected to perform functions critical to healthcare delivery. However, in Nigeria, the reality is that these institutions suffer limitations that undermine quality service delivery in Nigeria. Although Nigeria’s public healthcare delivery institutions have a long and chequered history. Their services are affected partly by a lack of committed health workers, caused by inadequate motivation. To address this problem and strengthen healthcare delivery systems, Nigeria’s health sector has deployed differential motivation. Differential motivation is the use of special and selective incentives or inducements to boost the commitment and job performance of certain category of health workers over others in the same organization. One example of differential motivation, is the approval or granting of special hazard, ward-round, and peculiar allowance for clinicians only in the same public healthcare institution that has non-clinicians. Although this initiative often draws attention and commendation, it also raises concerns about certain contending issues surrounding the adoption of the initiative. Drawing on David Easton’s input-output nexus as a theoretical underpinning on the one hand, and data sourced through expert opinion interviews on the other hand, this article investigates how differential motivation stimulates superb commitment among health workers in Nigeria. The findings expand the discussion on the effectiveness of differential motivation in boosting the commitment of health workers. The findings also suggest means through which Nigeria’s public healthcare institutions can optimize differential motivation in ways that aid strategic efforts at improving the job performance of health workers in Nigeria.