Managing Employee Motivation: Exploring the Connections Between Managers’ Enforcement Actions, Employee Perceptions, and Employee Intrinsic Motivation

ABSTRACT

A number of studies show that the use of external interventions such as command systems and economic incentives can decrease employee intrinsic motivation. Our knowledge of why the size of “the hidden cost of rewards” differs among organizations is, however, still sparse. In this article, we analyze whether local managers—the primary enforcers of external interventions—affect how employees perceive a command system and thereby affect employee intrinsic motivation. Using a multilevel dataset of 1,190 teachers and 32 school principals, we test whether principals’ use of “hard,” “mixed,” or “soft” actions to enforce a command system (obligatory teacher-produced student plans) is associated with teacher intrinsic motivation. Results show that teachers experiencing “hard” enforcement actions have lower intrinsic motivation than teachers experiencing “soft” enforcement actions. As expected by motivation crowding theory, part of this association is mediated by teachers’ student plan requirement perception. These findings support the motivation crowding argument that employee intrinsic motivation depend on the employees’ need for self-determination.

Notes

Motivation crowding theory expects the effect of external interventions (incentive and command systems) on intrinsic motivation and ultimately performance to be moderated by employee perceptions. As this study focuses on the importance of principal enforcement for teacher intrinsic motivation for a given command system (obligatory student plans) and not on the effect of this command system, we keep the intervention constant (all schools are subject to the same command system). Given that the command system does not vary, the relationship between manager enforcement and intrinsic motivation can be modeled as mediated by employee perceptions. We will, throughout the article, describe the relationship between enforcement and intrinsic motivation as mediated by employee perceptions. However, the authors acknowledge that this terminology is only appropriate when there is no variation in the external intervention.

While the authors recognize that managers may use different enforcement towards different teachers as hypothesized by Leader–Member Exchange Theory (Schriesheim et al. 1999), this study, like a number of other studies on managerial behavior or leadership (see, e.g., Bass 1990; Fernandez 2005), focuses on managers’ overall behavior in order to study organizational differences in employee perceptions and intrinsic motivation.

Only one school chose to do nothing to ensure that teachers used the student plans. Results do not change if this school is left out of the analyses.

Most of the principals choose both of the two hard actions. We redid the regressions to check whether significant changes could be found between schools choosing both hard actions and schools choosing only one. However, no significant changes could be identified.

If a combination of “soft” and “hard” enforcement actions is associated with a more supportive employee perception and higher intrinsic motivation than either “hard” of “soft” actions independently, as suggested by the two-factor theory (Herzberg 1959), our model will thus identify such a relationship.

The command system “National tests” made it mandatory to use standardized IT tests in public schools in order for teachers to better follow the progress of students and better plan teaching according to the needs of the student. With the command system “Common goals,” national end goals for each subject in public schools were specified.

Given the higher cost for principals of using “mixed” or “hard” enforcement actions, principals may also choose “soft” enforcement actions when they are indifferent to whether or not student plans are implemented. If “soft” enforcement actions lead to lower teacher compliance with the intentions behind student plans, our results could be explained by the fact that teachers experiencing “soft” enforcement actions comply less with student plans and their motivation is thus less affected by the command system. As a new study shows that “softer” enforcement actions do not lead to lower teacher compliance with student plans, we, however, do not consider this alternative explanation of the results as probable (Mikkelsen 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Falk Mikkelsen

Maria Falk Mikkelsen ([email protected]) is a PhD fellow at the Department of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University and at SFI–The Danish National Centre for Social Research. Her research focuses on motivation and performance of public employees and on effects of management.

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University. His research interests include leadership, motivation, behavior, and performance of public employees. He is currently part of the LEAP project.

Lotte Bøgh Andersen

Lotte Bøgh Andersen ([email protected]) is professor at the Department of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University and at the Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government Research. Her research interests include leadership, motivation, behavior and performance of public employees, and she has also contributed to research concerning economic incentives and motivation crowding theory. She is currently project leader for the LEAP project (LEadership And Performance—an experimental leadership project; see www.leap-project.dk).