By Ozokoye Ann Nkemjika
Organizations need the service of men (employees) to achieve their objectives. The extents to which these objectives are achieved depend largely on the willingness of employees to put in their best. Ugbaja (1992: 24) as sited in Tsua (1988:37), states that for the employees to put in their best towards achievement of organizational goals and objectives, they must be adequately motivated. Thus, this research work was carried out to determine the impact of incentive as a motivational tool in enhancing organizational performance in the banking sector of the Nigerian economy. To be able to carry out the above task effectively, three research questions and three hypotheses were raised and formulated respectively. The aim was to find out the sequential impact of incentive in motivating workers to achieving greater result in performance, productivity and profitability. As data were required to test the formulated hypotheses and answer research questions, knowledgeable personnel of some selected banks were issued with questionnaire. As well, oral interview was conducted too. Their responses were collected and analyzed using simple pie chart and statistical tool of chi-square (2). The analyses revealed that incentive as a motivational tool has a positive relationship with organizational performance. Following from the above analysis, the under-listed recommendations were given: (1) Adequate incentive should be used to motivate and engender employees to perform to the best of their ability. (2) In designing incentive scheme, organizations should not necessarily focus only on monetary base but have some other non-monetary incentives like good working environment, guaranteed safety of job, good management, employee relationship, good medical attention, employee focused rather than result oriented etc. (3) Implementation of incentive scheme should be well monitored to check the excesses of the staffs charged with the duty of administering it.