JOB EFFORT AS MEDIATOR IN THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN INTRINSIC MOTIVATION AND JOB
PERFORMANCE
Master thesis, MSc Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
10-08-2014
DANIELLE VAN GOOR
Studentnumber: 1920529
tel.: +31(6)37626520
E-mail:
d.van.goor@student.rug.nl
Supervisor
R. Said, Msc.
Second supervisor
O. Janssen, prof. dr.
AcknowledgementAbstract
Although the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance has been researched many times, the underlying processes of this relationship are not clear. In this research, job effort is examined as such an underlying process. Using a large scale field study with leader ratings of job performance, we found that intrinsic motivation and job effort had a significant positive relationship. The other hypotheses could not be confirmed, and thus job effort did not act as a mediator. Following these results, managers can directly increase the amount of job effort employees put in their work, by increasing the intrinsic motivation of these employees. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed and directions for future research are mentioned.
Introduction
The quality of a product oftentimes does not meet standards; employees fail to meet deadlines on a regular basis and the general performance of employees frequently is not on the level where it should be. The question is where these problems come from. In a situation where real job performance is lower than expected job performance, there is a gap. This gap could account for lower quality in products or less satisfaction about the products from customers. Job performance is defined as actions and behaviors of an employee that contribute to the goals of the organization (Campbell, 1990). Managers have a hard time to appraise job performance in the right way and to increase the performance level to a certain level. Employees have to be motivated and certified to get a higher job performance. This underlines that job performance is quite complicated.
To increase job performance to a certain level, at least a specific amount of intrinsic motivation of the employee is needed to do the job as good as possible and to help the
organization achieve its goals. Intrinsic motivation is referred to as doing something, because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, rather than doing something for separable
performance has been examined before, far less is known about the underlying processes of this relationship. Therefore, in this article we will examine how effort, as mechanism, can explain the relationship between intrinsic motivation and performance.
A well-known definition of work effort is the total work done to achieve a particular end, concerning tasks and job requirements (Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2013). Intrinsic motivation can influence effort in a way that motivation plays a predicting role towards effort. According to research of Dysvik and Kuvaas (2013), high intrinsic motivation ensures more job effort. Additionally, Christen, Iyer and Soberman (2006) found that work effort has a positive relationship with job performance. We see that intrinsic motivation, effort and job
performance are interrelated, but that the process that underlines the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance are not yet clear. The conceptual model (see figure 1) below illustrates the relationship between the variables.
The theoretical contribution of this research is that we show a new conceptual model and illustrate the underlying mechanism effort in the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance. Given that job performance is very important for any organization, managers can learn a lot from this research. We show why intrinsic motivation results in job performance, and how this process works via job effort. Practical advices will be given.
In the theory section, we further elaborate on the conceptual model and the hypotheses will be stated. The method section will provide insights in how the research is conducted and will give information about the companies where the research is done, as well as the
--- Insert figure 1 about here ---
Theory
The relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance
Intrinsic motivation exists within a person and can exist of ambition, interest in the job and the satisfaction someone gets from his job (Park & Rainey, 2012). According to
Katerberg and Blau (1983), most models of job performance include motivation as a necessary condition for job performance. When an individual’s performance in an
organization is based on intrinsic motivation, he tends to be highly engaged in the task itself, and as a result, performance improves. When employees like working on their tasks and are more committed to achieve a high performance level, their performance actually improves (Joo, Jeung & Yoon, 2010). Research of Bellé (2013) has found that, within the public sector, higher motivation secures higher job performance. She found that when employees are more satisfied with their jobs, intrinsic motivation and job performance are also likely to increase. In another research, not only intrinsic motivation, but also extrinsic motivation is looked at more thoroughly. The need for monetary gains (extrinsic) and goal achievement and competition (intrinsic) were found contributing significantly to the prediction of job
As seen above, previous research has suggested a consistent positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance. We therefore hypothesize:
Hypothesis 1: Intrinsic motivation will have a positive relationship with job
performance.
The relationship between intrinsic motivation and job effort
Intrinsic motivation will make sure that employees actually try to master recent and new tasks and in other words, put more effort in their tasks. High intrinsic motivation leads to more job effort, according to research of Dysvik and Kuvaas (2013). Furthermore, the review by Gagné and Deci (2005) demonstrates how intrinsically motivated employees are more involved in their jobs and have greater effort and goal/performance attainment than those employees that are less intrinsically motivated. Those employees who are high intrinsically motivated feel more committed and involved, which makes them want to work harder, put in more effort and want to achieve more. They are trying to perform optimally and are willing to put in a lot of labor to achieve this optimum level.
Effort is seen as how hard one tries to achieve certain goals. Katerberg and Blau (1983) argue that motivation is related to effort in a way that effort is an aspect of motivation. This ultimately ensures that when the amount of motivation gets higher, the amount of effort also will increase. Walker, Churchill and Ford (1977) found that salesman would have higher effort when their motivation increased as well. With higher levels of motivation, the sales employees were more willing to work hard and do more labor for their job.
Intrinsic motivation also will increase when an employee is intellectually challenged and due to this, employees tend to put in more effort in their tasks and put in more effort to develop skills they have not yet mastered (Lazaer & Gibbs, 2009).
Hypothesis 2: Intrinsic motivation will be positively related to job effort.
The relationship between job effort and job performance, and job effort as a mediator In their research, Wheeler, Harris and Sablynski (2012) have found that greater effort ultimately leads to more job performance. When employees put greater effort in their job, they are willing to do more work to meet the requirements of the tasks and job at hand and try harder to achieve certain goals or standards. Christen, Iyer and Soberman (2006) also found that effort is positively related to job performance and that employees are more focused on getting their tasks done in the right way when they exhibit more job effort. Wetsch (2009) also found that effort led to outcomes that were not just ‘good enough’, but at their best and thus that employees were motivated to achieve their highest possible performance level.
Effort level and the direction of effort were found to be significant unique predictors of individual job performance according to Katerberg and Blau (1983). The level of effort determines the amount of labor an employee is willing to put in their job and those with a high level of effort ultimately reached a higher level of job performance than colleagues with lower effort levels.
Because of these earlier findings, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 3: Job effort will have a positive relationship with job performance.
When employees are highly intrinsically motivated to do their job, they ultimately achieve a higher job performance than other employees who are not motivated as much (Dzuranin & Stuart, 2012), but what mechanisms ensure this relationship?
should be positive. A person could have a very high level of intrinsic motivation, which in turn increases job effort and via job effort the job performance will be increased as well. We therefore hypothesize:
Hypothesis 4: The mediator job effort will be positively related to the relationship
between intrinsic motivation and job performance.
Method
Sample and procedures
The companies that were possibly suitable for this research were sent a cover letter with necessary information and explanation of the research. We tried to derive the companies from our private network. Among the companies were an engineering multinational company, a company from the education branch and a multinational company from the dairy industry.
The program Qualtrics was used to make two online questionnaires, one for the supervisors that takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to fill in and one for the employees that takes about 30 minutes to fill in. The questionnaire was sent to every participant’s work email. A supervisor was allowed rate at most ten employees, in order to make sure the amount of time it takes to rate the employees would be acceptable and to guarantee a certain level of conscientiousness and precision while filling in the questionnaire. A note hereby is that it is important that the supervisor actually leads these employees and knows about their job performance and general functioning.
completed a higher professional education, 42 employees (18.67%) hold a university degree and 2 employees (0.98%) finished a PHD.
The supervisor sample existed of 7 women and 32 men with an age range of 29-60 years (M = 46.92, SD = 8.63) and an organizational tenure of 0-41 years (M = 16.95, SD = 12.65). Out of the 39 supervisors, 15 (38.46%) had finished higher professional education and 10 (25.64%) hold a university degree.
Measures
All of the variables were measured on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 stands for strongly disagree and 5 stands for strongly agree.
Intrinsic motivation: The measure used for intrinsic motivation comes from the article of Grant (2008). The scale consists of four items, and an example item is: ‘Why are you motivated to do your work? Because I enjoy the work itself’. Cronbach’s alpha is 0.92.
Job effort: The measure used for job effort comes from the article of Brown and Leigh (1996). This scale consists of five items and an example item is: ‘When there's a job to be done, I devote all my energy to getting it done’. This scale has an internal consistency of 0.87.
Job performance: Job performance was measured with a scale from the article of Wayne, Shore & Liden (1997). An example item of this scale is: ‘...performs his/her duties as I like to see them performed’ and the scale consists of three items. The internal consistency of this scale is 0.87.
Analytical approach
Results
Correlations
To have some insights in the underlying relationships between the variables, the correlations were calculated and represented in table 1.
As can be seen in table 1, gender and age were both not significantly correlated with any of the main variables.
Intrinsic motivation and job performance were not significantly correlated (r = 0.01, p > 0.1).
Intrinsic motivation and job effort were significantly and positively correlated (r = 0.54, p ≤ 0.01), implying that a high level of intrinsic motivation in general relates to higher job effort.
Job effort and job performance were not significantly correlated (r = 0.09, p > 0.1). ---
Insert table 1 about here --- Regression analysis
The below listed table 2 shows the regression coefficients of the conducted regression analysis. Looking at hypothesis 1 (Intrinsic motivation will have a positive relationship with
job performance), we have to conclude that there was no significant main effect of intrinsic
performance), there was also no significant main effect of job effort on job performance (b =
.083, p = .265). Therefore, hypothesis 3 also has to be rejected. Sobel test
A Sobel test was conducted to test the significance of the mediation effect. The Sobel test statistic revealed that there was no significant mediation effect (Z = 1.21, p = 0.23). This followed logically from the results of the individual main effects: because the relationship between job effort and performance was not significant, there was no possibility that a mediation effect could exist. Concluding, hypothesis 4 (The mediator job effort will be
positively related to the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance) was
also rejected.
--- Insert table 2 about here ---
Discussion and Conclusion
Summary of results
As indicated in the results section, neither a significant main effect of intrinsic
motivation on job performance, nor a significant main effect of job effort on job performance has been found. Therefore, hypotheses 1 and 3 were rejected. As a consequence, intrinsic motivation does not mediate job performance, thereby rejecting hypothesis 4. Hypothesis 2 could be accepted; we can assume that there is a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and job effort.
Theoretical implications
First, and surprisingly, this research did not find any empirical evidence for the
They both stated that motivation was a condition for job performance and found empirical evidence that when motivation increased, job performance increased as well. A possible explanation for the non-significant effect of intrinsic motivation on job performance could be that in previous research extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is measured simultaneously, instead of looking at just intrinsic motivation. Research of Darolia, Kumari and Darolia (2010) also showed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were of significant importance when predicting effort and job performance and that there is an interplay between these types of motivation. Since extrinsic motivation was not measured, this could indicate that intrinsic motivation alone does not account for the effects found in earlier research. Next to this explanation, a theoretical and methodological explanation comes to mind. When employees do what is necessary to correctly perform their tasks, they will receive a high score on job performance. Extra activities beyond the job description or, for example, organizational citizenship behavior, are not measured in the present research. Intrinsic motivation has influence on performance that goes beyond the basic job description. Since this was not measured, this could explain why the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance could not be confirmed by this research.
Third, the findings of Churchill and Ford (1977), Wheeler, Harris and Sablynski (2012), Christen, Iyer and Soberman (2006) and Katerberg and Blau (1983) cannot be confirmed with this research. They found that greater effort ultimately leads to more job performance. An explanation for not finding this effect could be that an increase in job effort may lead to valuable secondary activities instead of an increase in ‘basic’ job performance, which was measured in this research. Since we did not measure secondary activities or citizenship behavior, we have no insights in these variables.
Last, previous research of Walker, Churchill and Ford (1977) found that intrinsic motivation is positively related to effort and effort is positively related to job performance, thereby suggesting a mediation effect of effort in the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance. In the current study, no mediation effect has been found and this can be explained by the fact that the main effects were not significant as described above.
Managerial implications
Managers have to be aware of the positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and job effort. They need to give sufficient attention to task significance and skill variety, which increases intrinsic motivation (Lazaer & Gibbs, 2009). Making employees’ salaries more dependent on their performance also increases intrinsic motivation (Michaelson, 2005). By increasing the intrinsic motivation of employees, a manager directly increases the job effort employees put in their work.
highly intrinsically motivated employees is to change the tasks, let employees rotate across tasks and give employees more autonomy when performing his/her duties. More task variety, significance and autonomy increase the amount of intrinsic motivation (Lazear & Gibbs, 2009). Another approach is to provide training to managers, to make sure that they know how to create highly motivated employees.
Limitations and future directions
Although the current study has valuable contributions to the field of research, there are some noteworthy limitations to further elaborate. First of all, the study’s design was cross-sectional, which means that the variables were measured at one point in time. Therefore, we do not know anything about the possible causal relationship between intrinsic motivation and job effort or of any causal inferences among the other variables. A possibility for future research would be to use a longitudinal design, to be able to draw conclusions on causality.
Moreover, looking at the generalizability of this research, we have to keep in mind that the companies were selected from the private network of the researchers and the companies do not cover all industries or types of organizations. Therefore, caution is advised when generalizing these results to other companies or industries. Future research should include more different industries and it would be interesting to make a comparison between different industries or even different countries.
Looking at the selection process of subordinates, supervisors could only judge ten employees and otherwise had to rate the first ten employees according to alphabetical order. Since one supervisor had to fill in the same questionnaire ten times, the effects of rater bias could occur. Rater bias is a major problem when managers rate employees using rating scales; when using rating scales, it is likely that biases come into play (
overcome the effects of rate bias, managers will have to be made aware of their possible evaluation biases, so they can try to eliminate them. On top of that, the more precise,
objective and measurable criteria used, the less likely it is that bias will contaminate employee ratings.
This research tried to expose the influence of intrinsic motivation on job effort and job performance. However, according to Musselwhite (2011) and Mottaz (1985), higher intrinsic motivation mostly leads to an increase in job satisfaction and in turn increases job
performance. Thus, an interesting direction for future research can be to use job satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between intrinsic motivation and job performance. Measuring both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is another future direction. Previous research of
Darolia, Kumari and Darolia (2010) showed that, when predicting effort and job performance, both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were of significant importance. There is interplay between these two types of motivation and to create a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of motivation, they should both be measured.
Last, changing the dependent variable to ‘extra role behavior’, such as creativity or organizational citizenship behavior could be another interesting new course for research. As elaborated above, intrinsic motivation may lead to extra role behavior and valuable secondary activities. This model could provide new insights and complement this research.
Conclusion
Confirming earlier research, this research provided a significant positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and job effort. Managerial focus on increasing intrinsic
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TABLE 1
Descriptive statistics and correlations
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 1. Gender1 1.23 .42 2. Age 42.38 1.18 -.12* 3. Intrinsic motivation 4.04 .70 .08 -.05 0.92 4. Job Effort 4.00 .64 .05 .00 .54*** 0.87 5. Job Performance 3.96 .68 .01 -.03 .00 .09 0.87 1
Dummy coded, 1 = male, 2 = female * p < .10
** p < .05 *** p < .01
TABLE 2
Results of regression analysis
Job Effort Job Performance
Predictors 1 Control variables Gender1 .00 (.09) .01 (.12) .01 (.12) .02 (.12) Age .00 (.00) -.00 (.00) -.00 (.00) -.00 (.00) 2 Main effects Intrinsic Motivation .49 (.05)*** .00 (.07) -.05 (.08) Job Effort .08 (.07) .11 (.09) R2 .29 .00 .01 .01 1
Dummy coded, 1 = male, 2 = female * p < .10
** p < .05 *** p < .01
