Self-Motivator Factors of Senior Knowledge Workers

With the greatest turning period coming-the dominance of the community changing from the monetary and physical capital to the knowledge resource and human capital, knowledge workers has become the halo group of the society, who are considered as the most valuable asset of the organizations in the 21st century. The senior knowledge workers are workers who engage in productions, creations, expansions and applications of the knowledge with scientific research skills and managerial capabilities. They work extensively in scientific research institutes, higher education organizations like universities and colleges, as well as technological enterprises. Since the nature of the work, the senior knowledge workers are highly autonomous, strong self-worth, thirst for achievements and capabilities improvements. The aim of the research is to find a new motivational way to improve the work effectiveness of the senior knowledge workers. According to the analysis on the academic background and research fruits of 116 Chinese Chang Jiang Scholars awarded by the Chinese Ministry of Education, we anatomize the individual characters of the senior knowledge workers and find that five factors, namely achievements and challenges, individual growth, autonomy, recognition and oriented-goals, influence the motivational effect of the senior knowledge workers, which are called self-motivator factors. The true meaning of the motivation is not the external excitation, but the self-excitation. We build an individual incentive model based on self-motivator factors, which is a combination of the core circle of senior knowledge workers, the chain of self-motivator factors and the ring of individual characters.