Employee Perceptions of the Work Environment, Motivational Outlooks, and Employee Work Intentions: An HR Practitioner’s Dream or Nightmare?

Reinforcement theory has inspired many types of human resource development (HRD) initiatives. Despite their widespread use, reinforcement-focused programs, designed to control the outcome of behavior through external rewards, have proven expensive and cumbersome to manage and have an alarmingly low rate of return on investment. There is a critical need to better understand motivation in work environments as well as to explore more efficacious forms of motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic simultaneously. Self-determination theory (SDT) is concerned with forward influence, independent choice, and the degree to which behavior is internalized as self-determined. Sources of employee motivation are influenced by employee perceptions of the work environment as well as behavioral outcomes. The most optimal forms of motivation are believed to originate from internal regulation of basic psychological needs rather than external forms of motivation such as those central to reinforcement-focused theory and practice. We question which forms of motivation are most optimal for influencing employee behavior in the workplace, including long-held traditions of reinforcement-grounded programming, and present new models for understanding the role of motivation in HRD. Results of this study focus the conversation on SDT and explore specific implications for practice