Understanding the evolution of motivation theories and its impact on management control systems : a systematic literature review

The scope of this work is to give a detailed scenario of the current findings on motivation theories and their evolution across the years, considering the impact on management control systems. The objective was to discover which are the current motivation theories, how have they developed along the years and their application. For doing this, a meta-synthesis using systematic literature review was performed. As a result of the research a framework summarizing the most important theories and the dependent variables they affect was proposed. The findings led the author to conclude that worker motivation is a very wide concept and the different constructs made by authors along the history cannot be generalized to all cases: each theory responds to specific parameters and there is not a single theory that can explain workers' behavior. Also, there is a direct relationship between worker motivation and the management control systems used to measure performance. It is recommended to carry out further research on the specific relation of the aspects concerning management control systems and workers' motivation.