I believe that Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory is an excellent framework for understanding motivation related phenomena.

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational behavior, 26(4), 331-362.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68.

David has provided some excellent sources, in fact any of Deci's work is useful to study.  Keep in mind the power of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. This suggests that the motivation process begins with the hiring process - are you hiring faculty members who are intrinsically motivated to teach.  In addition, the first rule of motivation is : Stop demotivating!  Review all the policies and practices in the enterprise and determine with are really counter productive.  For example, if the institution's goal is to improve teaching, what counter incentives prevail.  Can a faculty member be promoted or gain tenure if the member is an outstanding teacher, but not a great fundraiser?

Dear Michael,

Your conceptual framework should graphically show what variables you are focusing on in your study based on the related theory. What you have now is two variables: work motivation (IV) and organisational commitment (DV). You could of course also study the correlation between the sub-constructs of the two variables, but if you want your study to have theoretical contributions, read the related literature and theories for any neglected variables that may moderate the relationship between your IV and DV; then, you may come up with a "a unique model" hopefully.

Happy researching

Dear Michael 

Please take a look to my publications, especially those for "cybernetics" as a conceptual framework.

Kind regards

NP 

I am a nursing faculty.  Nursing has a theorist, Nola Pender, who includes many propositions to discuss enhanced health-seeking behaviors, including characteristics that motivate or support, and those that are barriers.  She is relatively easy to find in the literature, and might be worth a look!

It is linked to the level of Employer/Regulatory authorities, Peer, Society, Community and most important is self.

1. Employer should praise or correct (not humiliate) whenever it is required.

2. In-time salary and increments.

3. Reducing gap and maintaining equivalency or even superiority with Public sector employees in terms of  all benefits.

4. Providing time for various activities e.g. research, development etc.

5. Finding even and odd among teaching faculty during recruitment itself.

6. Promoting healthy competition and discouraging backbiting.

7. Proper assignment of Task/Jobs at hand.

Motivation is a topic which has got a lot of contributions from various levels and periods. But, organisational commitment is an emerging concept with which work motivation is a new ideology.

Organizational commitment is now discussed as a result of employee engagement. Higher the Organizational Commitment higher the motivation the employees show, vice versa is the focus of such discussions among researchers. But, still long way to go to prove or say which precedes what. As Prof Vahid said, look for a good collection of studies on both variables and find the gap in what is already done. Meanwhile, Hewitt's Model of Employee Engagement mostly talks on how the "Stay, Say and Strive aspects" of an organization, work on employees commitment and ultimately results in work motivation. Consider this assumption also. All the very best.  

I agree with Vahid Nimehchisalem.

The topic you wanted to investigate is “Work Motivation and Organizational Commitment of Faculty in Higher Education.” Your independent variable is work motivation and your dependent variable is organizational commitment. Develop your conceptual framework base on the definition of your variables and relationship of variables. Your reviewed related literature will help you to define the variables and to describe their relationship.Your conceptual framework is graphic illustration of your variables and their relationship. Your conceptual framework will show the direction of the study to answer research question that will lead to development of organizational commitment model.

Are you thinking of quantitative or qualitative methods? 

You might also round out your perspective by looking at critical literature, and perhaps exploring how neoliberalism in higher education operates and constrains faculty. 

For a critical perspective or additional ideas on what features of organizations you might consider, perhaps browse this journal: http://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace

Congratulations for choosing this topic. If the focus is "private" may be you should start by  studying state and private  populatios' descriptions. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators may play  opposite roles of - causative (independant) or rezultative (dependinant) variables.  Values and conditions  factors may be studied by  crossectional multivariate or covariate analyses..

Regards,

Lydia

This is a great topic.  I might be able to provide you with some original data.  This topic has been in the back of my mind for years.  However, I am trying to apply a relatively rigorous quantitative approach, so I am still collecting data to build a reliable structural causal model.  Will keep in touch.

Hello Michael,

the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) by Deci and Ryan may be an interesting framework for your study.

interesting topic.

Regards, Alfred

I think the priority is to identify your research questions and research objectives. Is your research aimed to explore the correlationship between work motivation and organizational commitment or the approaches to increase the latter by strengthening the formmer? What kind of relationship is there between them? Are they necessarily positive correlated in that work motivation consists of survival need and spiritual pursuit or socio-cultural influence and so on. Theoretical framework serves as a graphic schemata of your research architecture. Good luck!

There have been very substantive developments and new approaches and methodologies allowing for legitimate quantitative rigor, claims of causality and reliability of purely observational studies.  Utilizing Bayesian techniques and causal inference, quite a few inconclusive, but structurally informative studies have been conducted. To gain some sense of history of thr myriad of questions you are trying to address, a good look at some older articles is actually helpful, especially for setting up the framework. Try these

Causal Inference and Faculty Satisfaction and Motivation

http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Causal+ inference+faculty+performance& ft=on&pg=4&id=ED304063

http://eric.ed.gov/?q=Causal+ inference+faculty+performance& ft=on&pg=5&id=ED397757

 After search for the few recent statement studies of causal inference applied to academic achievement, satisfaction, turnover, institutional culture, external and self-assessment approaches, and of course motivation (which is quite unique for Academics and how amazingly intertwined it is with the same measure but for K-12 educators).  My current research naturally took me three (although unexpectedly).  For an Education Dissertation this is a super rich field, you should be able to write a great thesis.  (It also helps to first take the academic part out of the equation, and explore causal models of motivation and job satisfaction in general; when moving to academia, so many parameters become irrelevant, and only a few new ones surface, and still must explain the same set of outcomes, thus carrying larger "causal weight".  Hope that makes. Good luck.