Government support, employee motivation and job performance in the COVID-19 times: evidence from Turkish SMEs during the short work period

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the effect of government support (short work allowances – SWA) on SME employees' job performance and employee motivation perceptions, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data were collected from 2,781 employees working in SMEs registered to Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization (SMEDO) in Turkey. The relationships were assessed through structural equation modeling with bootstrap estimation.

Findings

The results support the proposed framework illustrating the positive effect of government support on employees' perceived motivation and job performance. Findings indicate that employee motivation has exhibited a mediating effect between government support and job performance. Another important finding is that, contrary to the classical understanding of Herzberg's two-factor theory, SWA system was able to perform as a motivating factor during the pandemic by meeting the hygiene needs.

Research limitations/implications

Since this is a cross-sectional research study, causal inferences cannot be derived from the research results.

Originality/value

There is a lack of empirical study on SME employees' perceptions on the government support during the pandemic, especially on the perspectives of emerging economies are infrequent. Turkey's case is unique in terms of providing insights on how perceived employee motivation is increased by the government supports (SWA) in Turkey, and how this motivation mediates the job performance perceptions. Besides, the impacts of government support are mostly studied at the firm or macro-levels, this study's unit of analysis is at individual level. Regarding the criticism from the motivation perspective of two-factor theory, COVID-19 context and its impact on the motivation needs have not been elaborated before. This article starts new discussions on how crisis contexts influence individual motivator factors.

Citation

Uzkurt, C., Ceyhan, S., Ekmekcioglu, E.B. and Akpinar, M.T. (2025), "Government support, employee motivation and job performance in the COVID-19 times: evidence from Turkish SMEs during the short work period", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 537-560. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-04-2022-0689