Abstract

The pursuit of tenure in higher education is arguably the dominant focus of tenure track faculty throughout the United States’ higher education environment, if not a world-wide phenomenon. By applying Vroom’s Expectancy theory of motivation, this study intends to investigate the relationship between research productivity and motivation to conduct such activities at higher education institutes by examining the academic productions of tenured and not tenured faculty members. This study sought to confirm the need to further investigate the impact that long-term job security, in the form of tenure, has on faculty academic productivity in higher education. The present study used the data from the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) survey which suggested that there was a significant difference in the number of academic activities among faculty of different ranks and tenure status, especially among full and associate professors, and associate professors and assistant professors, regardless of their tenure status. However, the difference was not significant among the non-tenured full and assistant rank faculty. This may suggest that overall, among the sample population of this study, tenured faculty members were more actively involved in presenting scholarly products.

Key words: Faculty motivation, Vroom's expectation theory, expectation, valance, National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), tenure, rank, academic production, scholarly activity, faculty activity, higher education, higher education institute.