Intrinsic Motivation and Employee Attitudes: Role of Managerial Trustworthiness, Goal Directedness, and Extrinsic Reward Expectancy

Motivation scholars have argued that intrinsic motivation is an important driver of employee attitudes. This research tests the influence of intrinsic motivation on employee attitudes and explores three factors conditioning the effects of intrinsic motivation: managerial trustworthiness, goal directedness, and extrinsic reward expectancy. The analysis demonstrates that intrinsic motivation is substantively associated with both employee satisfaction and turnover intention. It also reveals that the three conditional factors interact with intrinsic motivation. Managerial trustworthiness and goal directedness increase the leverage of intrinsic motivation on employee satisfaction, whereas extrinsic rewards expectancy decreases the leverage. With respect to turnover intention, the factors directly influence it rather than affect it indirectly through intrinsic motivation. The implications of the results for theory and managerial strategies for employee motivation are discussed.