Building Social Motivators on Workers’ Cultural Values: Investigating Effects on Creative Performance of Farmers in West Region, Cameroon
Nyuydzefon Juliana Chin, Fomba Emmanuel Mbebeb, Jacque Tchatue

Abstract
People’s lifestyle is critical in driving work behaviors, and this draws from social motivators, variables that are inherent in cultural values of workers and capable of spurring creative dispositions, which are incidental to performance. This responds to the uncritical adoption of conventional motivators that often distance reward strategies from employees’ felt needs in local contexts. Therefore, this expresses a need for a systematic investigation into indigenous socio-cultural values capable of influencing performance in agricultural ventures. The study was designed to test the link between social motivators and performance of workers in the agricultural sector. A sample of 643 farmers (302 males; 313 females)were recruited using purposive sampling technique from the Programme for the Improvement of Competitiveness of Family Agro pastoral Farm (PCP-ACEFA), in the West Region of Cameroon. An instrument with determined internal reliability (α=0.724) was used to gather information while descriptive and inferential statistics were used for analysis. Results of the study showed that social belongingness (β=0.392), social interaction (β=0.380) and refreshment (β=0.163) significantly predicted performance of ACEFA farmers. From the analysis it was evident that social motivation was able to account for the variation in the outcome measure and this was an indicator that lifestyle could be creatively used in building incentive packages to promote creativity and innovation at work. The paper suggested novel strategies of identifying and integrating indigenous values into reward schemes in order to promote creative performance of workers in local contexts.

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