Abstract:

Nowadays, in Poland higher education is going through deep reforms aimed at its internationalization and development. It is a huge challenge for faculties authorities and employees and in such situation they need effective motivation systems to stimulate proactive development. Meanwhile, in most public universities the motivation function of management is not implemented at all or implemented in very limited scope. Therefore the main purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the most important motivational factors which influence and shape academic teachers’ attitudes and enhance employees to get more involved in research, scientific and publication areas. To achieve this aim, in the first part of the article the conditions of Polish higher education development are presented together with the main directions of implemented and planned changes. In the second part of the article, the survey results conducted among academic teachers are included. The research concerns motivators in higher education at present legal situation and it allows us to answer for two fundamental questions: ‘What motivates you to work?’ and ‘What could your organization do, to make you more related to it and more efficient?’ The research results are the fundamentals to create the motivating system in the future.

Keywords:

Motivation in higher education, employees’ opinion on motivation systems, career development in higher education.