Motivation and Emotion, VoL 15, No. 1, 1991

Motivation in Work Settings: Reflections on the Core of Organizational Research

Robert A. Baron I

Rensselaer Polytechnic hTstitute

Organizational research is diverse; how could it be otherwise in a field that seeks to understand virtually all aspects of behavior in organizational set- tings? Topics falling within the broad sweep of organizational research, therefore, range from those with a strong psychological or "micro" focus (e.g., work-related attitudes, communication, prosocial behavior, influence, decision making) through those with an equally strong sociological or "macro" emphasis (e.g., organizational design, organizational change, or- ganizational culture, organization/environmental interfaces).

Despite this diversity, however, organizational research does not con- sist of a jumbled assortment of unrelated research efforts. On the contrary, it is characterized by a shared set of assumptions, common methods, and guiding theoretical frameworks (Daft, 1983; Whetten, 1989). And - - at least in my v i e w - it does have a core: a relatively coherent set of issues that most, if not all, researchers would identify as lying close to the heart of the field.

Among these, motivation is certainly one of the most central. More papers, chapters, and books have been written about motivation and it has been the subject of more theo r i e s - - and theoretical cont roversy- - than any other single topic. Thus, a strong case can be made for the view that motivation - - t h e internal processes that activate, guide, and maintain behav- ior (especially goat-directed behavior) - - is one of the most pivotal concerns of modern organizational research.

It seems totally fitting, therefore, that an entire issue of this journal should be devoted to the topic of motivation in work settings. Please note:

IAddress all correspondence to Robert A. Baron, Department of Managerial Policy and Organization, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180-3590.

0146-7239[91/0300-0001506.50/0 © 1991 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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The title of this special issue is Motivation in Work Settings rather than simply "Work Motivation." This reflects the fact that work m o t i v a t i o n - motivation to exert effort on specific tasks or j o b s - - i s only part of the total story where research on work-related motivation is concerned. This point is clearly illustrated by the papers that follow. All are concerned with motivation, but they examine this topic from many perspectives other than that of work motivation itself.

Having made this point, it seems appropriate to offer a few comments about the papers themselves. All have been prepared by established experts in the investigation of work-related motivation - - colleagues whose current research and theorizing are to be found at the expanding boundaries of knowledge about this crucial topic. Collectively, then, these articles provide an eloquent exposition of what, precisely, current research on motivation in work settings is all about. Since the papers in this issue do fall at or near the current frontiers, all readers may not be fully conversant with the issues and questions they address. The purpose of this introductory paper, therefore, is to provide a framework which will aid in interpretation of these papers. More specifically, it is designed to provide an overview of their individual contributions and their relationship to the broader context of ongoing organizational research.

Goal Theory and Conttvl Theory: Contrasting- But Not Necessarily Contradictory- Perspectives on Work Motivation

Many different theories have been proposed to account for work mo- tivation, and especially to explain why individuals often exert significant and sustained effort in performing various tasks. Among these frameworks, two have probably generated more research than any others: goal-setting theory (Locke & Latham, 1990) and control theory (Klein, 1989). The core of each theory is simple but compelling. Goal theory (as it is often known) stems from the eminently reasonable suggestion that human action--and specifically performance on work-related t a sks - - i s regulated by conscious goals (Ryan, 1970). In other words, according to goal theory, individuals work hard and expend effort on various tasks because, by doing so, they expect to attain important goals.

In contrast, the central assumptions of control theory involve the op- eration of a negative feedback loop, in which current behavior and outcomes are compared to a standard - - a valued goal or outcome. Detection of dis- crepancies between current behavior or outcomes and desired ones leads to corrective actions, and motivated behavior is self-regulated through this basic mechanism.

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At first glance, these theories do not appear to be incompatible. How- ever, as the papers in this issue by Locke and by Klein indicate, there are important points of d i s a g r e e m e n t - or at least c o n t r o v e r s y - between them. Locke criticizes control theory on several grounds noting, for exam- ple, that the theory as originally formulated was too mechanistic (e.g., it devoted insufficient attention to cognitive processes) to provide an accurate account of human behavior. And modern revisions of goal theory, he con- tends, have incorporated so many assumptions derived from other theories, including goal-setting theory, that the core of control theory itself has all but vanished.

In a spirited response to such criticisms, Klein notes that control the- ory, in its modern form, takes full account of the processes to which Locke refers a n d - moreover--offers a unique and distinctive perspective on work motivation. Readers must, of course, weigh the arguments and coun- terarguments for themselves. Together, though, these two papers demon- strate how the thrust-and-parry of competing theoretical frameworks can help to hone the logic and proposals of each. In addition, the descriptions of these important, rival frameworks provided by Locke and Klein offer an excellent overview of the increasingly sophisticated nature of both perspectives.

Affect and Motivation: Effects on Performance, Self-Efficacy, Task, and Goal Choice

Do shifts in a f f ec t - changes in relatively mild positive and negative feelings or moods--influence motivation? Both informal observation and research findings suggest that this may be the case (e.g., Isen & Baron, 1991). Motivation seems to rise at times when people feel elated, but to decrease when they feel mildly depressed or unhappy. Turning the rela- tionship around, in order to consider the impact of performance feedback on affect, Carver and Scheier (1990) have recently suggested that progress toward desired goals can generate both positive and negative affect. If the rate of progress toward the goals is perceived as inadequate, negative affect is generated. If it is perceived as satisfactory, positive affect may result. These suggestions, in turn, derive from a control theory perspective on motivation.

These intriguing i d e a s - plus several others concerning the relation- ship between affect and mot iva t ion- -a re examined by Saavedra and Earley in the experiment reported later on in this issue. To induce general or non-task-related affect they exposed participants to funny or anxiety- generating films; to induce specific or task-related affect, they provided

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these persons with information suggesting that they were or were not achieving desired performance goals, and were or were not progressing to- wards these goals at an adequate rate. Results indicated that both general and specific affect exerted a significant influence on several aspects of par- ticipants' behavior. For example, individuals experiencing either film- generated or task-generated positive affect performed better and expressed higher self-efficacy than those experiencing film-generated negative affect. Conversely, rate-of-progress feedback influenced reported affect in the pre- dicted manner. Together, the results obtained by Saavedra and Earley in- dicate that positive and negative affect c a n - - a n d often d o - - p l a y an important role with respect to work-related motivation. These findings help to build conceptual bridges between research on motivation and the in- creasing volume of research on the organizational impact of affective states (e.g., Burke, Brief, George, Roberson, & Webster, 1989).

Personality and Motivation: Type A 's, Goal Setting and Personal Control

That individuals differ with respect to work-related motivation is ob- vious. Moreover, such differences have long been a topic of investigation in organizational research and related fields. Perhaps the most famous re- search on this topic has focused on achievement motivation - - the desire to meet standards of excellence or surpass the performance of other persons (McClelland, 1985). More recently, however, attention has been focused on another aspect of personality that may also be related to motivation: the Type A-Type B behavior dimension (Jenkins, Zyzanski, & Rosenman, 1979). Persons classified as Type A have been found to possess a greater need for personal control than those classified as Type B (Burger, 1985), and also seem to express stronger commitment to self-set goals (Hollenbeck & Klein, 1987).

Reasoning from such findings, Racicot, Day, and Lord conducted a study designed to investigate two hypotheses: (1) Type A's will demonstrate higher goal acceptance, expectancy of success, goal commitment, and task performance than Type B's, and (2) such differences will be greater under conditions where individuals can set their own goals and task strategies than under conditions where they cannot. The results of their investigation, reported later on in this issue, offered substantial support for these pre- dictions. Across task strategy and goal-setting conditions, Type A's did ex- press greater goal acceptance, greater goal commitment, and higher expectancies of success than Type B's. In addition, differences between Type A's were significant only when participants could choose their own

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goals and task strategies; such differences were not significant in the as- signed goal-assigned strategy condition.

Additional findings indicated that in some respects, the combination of assigned goals and personal freedom to choose task strategies was the most damaging with respect to motivation. Both Type A's and Type B's reported lowest goal acceptance when allowed to choose their own strategy in reaching an assigned goal. This finding suggests that when individuals are given assigned goals or standards, it is important that they also receive guidance in terms of strategies for meeting these goals. In the absence of such assistance, goal a c c e p t a n c e - and so, ultimately, task p e r f o r m a n c e - may suffer. Together, the results reported by Racicot, Day, and Lord pro- vide valuable insights into the potential role of one important individual difference factor in several aspects of work motivation.

Motivation and Performance Appraisals: Looking Good Through One's Subordinates

Performance appraisal is a key process in many organizations (Heneman, Schwab, Fossum, & Dyer, 1989; Landy & Farr, 1983). And this is far from surprising; after all, key organizational rewards such as raises, promotions, and desirable work assignments are often contingent upon the outcomes of yearly or semi-annual appraisals. It is now widely recognized that appraisers are far from totally accurate assessors of past performance. On the contrary, the ratings they assign are influenced by a wide range of cognitive processes and by many potential forms of bias relating to these processes such as leniency effects, similar-to-me effects, attributional errors, memory distortions, and even liking or disliking for the persons being evalu- ated (DeNisi, Cafferty, & Meglino, 1984). Interestingly, however, motiva- tional processes have not often been examined in this context. This is somewhat surprising, for it seems quite natural that appraisers' motives might well play a key role in the ratings they ultimately assign.

Recognition of this important fact lies behind the research reported by Greenberg later on in this issue. Briefly, he reasoned that performance appraisals may sometimes be influenced by appraisers' desires to look good - - t o enhance their own self-image or to produce favorable impressions on others. They can accomplish such goals by assigning inflated evaluations to subordinates they have directly supervised. After all, if these persons receive high ratings, the appraisers may "bask in the reflected glory" of subordinates' accomplishments.

The results of Greenberg's study offer support for this reasoning. Participants did in fact assign higher performance ratings to employees they

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directly counseled about their work than to ones with whom they had no contact or merely social (non-work-related) contact. Moreover, this pattern was observed regardless of whether appraisers expected to be evaluated by an authority figure themselves. This latter finding suggests that appraisers' tendencies to inflate their evaluations of persons they supervise stems pri- marily from motivation to enhance their own self-image rather than from motivation to make favorable impressions on others. Greenberg's study forcefully illustrates an important fact: Motivational processes play an im- portant role in many aspects of organizational behavior aside from task performance. Attention to this fact can enhance our understanding of many topics that might, at first glance, seem unrelated to motivation.

Motivation and Turnover: A Cognitive Model

Voluntary t u r n o v e r - instances in which employees leave their jobs by personal choice- -has tong been a topic of major interest in organ- izational research. When rates of voluntary turnover rise, organizations often experience considerable costs. New employees must be recruited and trained, and indirect negative effects such as reduced satisfaction among remaining personnel, must be countered. Existing models of vol- untary turnover emphasize the role of satisfaction and commitment as predictors of voluntary turnover (Horn, Griffeth, & Sellaro, 1984; Mobley, 1977). But even with the addition of other variables, these models have not had great success in predicting such turnover (Morita, Lee, & Mowday, 1989).

It is in the context of such findings that Lee and Mitchell offer a new approach - - one they turn an unfolding model. This model, in turn, is based on a perspective known as image theoJy (Beach & Mitchell, 1990). Image theory suggests that decisions such as remaining in one's job or seeking another position are strongly determined by individuals' images (cognitive representations) concerning their own values, their agendas for the future, and plans for achieving these personal goals. Decision options that seem consistent with personal values, agendas, and plans are favored over ones that seem inconsistent with such cognitions.

The unfoldb g model applies image theory to the task of predicting voluntary turnover from factors such as satisfaction, commitment, and labor markets. It does so by considering four potential decision paths, each in- volving a different set of conditions. For example, one such decision path involves a shock to the system (some event that jars an individual into men- tal deliberations about a future course of action), and a search of memory that yields a match between the present situation and ones experienced in

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the past. A temporary employee who dislikes working at night and who refuses to work the "graveyard shift" provides one example of this decision path. By way of contrast, consider another decision p a t h - one involving no shock to the system. Here, an individual doing production work might finally become so bored with the monotony of her or his job that this person decides to search for another job. No sudden event has initiated this de- cision process, but it occurs nonetheless.

The crux of the unfolding model is that the factor mentioned above --satisfaction, commitment, and labor market considerat ions- will prove differentially successful in predicting voluntary turnover in each of the four decision paths. In other words, depending on the specific conditions faced by an individual in her or his mental deliberations, these factors will, or will not, be helpful in predicting rates of voluntary turnover. It is fitting that the paper by Lee and Mitchell appears last in this special issue, for the emphasis on cognitive factors in their model is indicative of where cur- rent research and theorizing on motivation appears to be moving.

Motivation in Work Setting." Some Concluding Comments

By now it should be apparent to even a casual reader that the papers contained in this special issue are indeed highly diverse in content, scope, and purpose. Yet, beneath these differences one can discern several basic, unifying themes:

1. All adopt a soph i s t i ca ted , mu l t i f a ce t ed approach to understanding human motivation; efforts to analyze motivational processes in terms of a small number of isolated concepts are indeed a thing of the past.

2. All are heavily influenced by the growing knowledge base of cognitive science; in this respect, the "cognitive revolution" begun in psychology during the 1970s and 1980s has had a very valuable effect on organizational research.

3. All represent the constant, enriching interplay, in organizational research, between theory and practice, between basic knowledge and application.

Looking back over these papers, the intriguing questions they address, and the enlightening answers they offer, it is difficult to be anything but optimistic about the current state of research on work-related motivation and its potential for future progress. We certainly don't, as yet, have all the answers, but there seems to be every reason to conclude that we are moving in useful directions and making visible headway. In short, as our

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own theories clearly tell us, hard work, invested over extended periods of time, really does pay off!

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Burger, J. M. (1985). Desire for control and achievement-related behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1520-1533.

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