A Longitudinal Investigation of the Changes in Work Motivation and Employees’ Psychological Health

Abstract

Organizations strive to motivate employees to thrive at work. However, employees’ motivation is likely to vary over a short period (e.g., a few months) to cope with the routine dynamics of organizations’ activities. These motivation dynamics covary with employees’ affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes in the workplace. Moreover, employees’ psychological health, a multidimensional concept focused on the individual’s well/ill-being simultaneously, changes over time. Using the integrated theoretical frameworks of self-determination theory (SDT) and the hierarchical model of self-determined motivation (H-SDT), this research sought to examine the motivational changes following the dual-path model. In particular, this work sought to unpack the temporal dynamics in employees’ subjective well/ill-beings predicted by the changes in basic needs satisfaction/frustration through autonomous/controlled motivation, while considering the characteristics of people’s general causality orientations (trait-level motivation). Over four months, longitudinal field data were collected from the employees in several private small businesses in the consumer product retail industry. Latent growth modeling (LGM) results supported the positive dual relations between the changes in employees’ psychological health and basic psychological needs satisfaction/frustration, but neither the changes of autonomous/controlled work motivation nor the indirect change paths via autonomous/controlled work motivation were significant. Finally, we discussed the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. Limitations and possible future research directions to further this line of research on the dynamic of work motivation were also summarized.