Understanding worker motivation in the Australian film industry

The Australian Film Industry operates in an environment which is uniquely challenging. Workers in the industry continuously face hardships which outweigh the benefits. This research seeks to understand how workers overcome the hardships and apparently consistently invest inequitable proportions of labour and skills to maximise their performance. Whether people will work hard or not bears strongly on their level of motivation. Motivation in the Australian Film Industry is determined by three sets of identified factors. These are modifiers which stem from the producer’s influence and internal and external drivers which arise from the individual. Using Grounded Theory this research will explicate a substantive theory explaining why people work so hard in an industry that seems to reward them so poorly.