Literature Review: The Impact of Intrinsic Motivation on Employees

This literature review examines the concept of intrinsic motivation, focusing on its impact on employee performance within an organizational context. It begins by defining motivation and intrinsic motivation, emphasizing the role of internal rewards and self-satisfaction in driving behavior. The review synthesizes various perspectives from Livingston and Sadoff, Menges and Grant, and others, highlighting the benefits of intrinsic motivation, such as reduced labor costs, increased creativity, and greater employee control. The review also acknowledges potential drawbacks, such as the need for supplementary rewards and the importance of considering factors like competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The review references several scholarly articles and journals to support its claims, including the work of Garon-Carrier and Tremblay, and Kaiser and Arnold. The conclusion underscores the significance of intrinsic motivation in fostering employee engagement and achieving organizational goals.

LITERATURE REVIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Literature review..............................................................................................................................1
Motivation...................................................................................................................................1
Concept of intrinsic motivation...................................................................................................1
Benefits is intrinsic motivation...................................................................................................2
Some example of intrinsic motivation........................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Motivation is the process where the individual energy and desire is stimulated by some
internal and external factors so they can be committed and interested regularly to any subject,
job or role in order to make potential efforts to achieve the goal. For this literature review,
intrinsic motivation has been selected to highlight the effect of intrinsic motivation on the
performance of employee in the organisation. Intrinsic motivation is the process by which the
behaviour of the individual is driven by the internal rewards of the company.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Motivation
According to the view of Livingston and Sadoff, (2016) Motivation is the word which
derived from the word motive which state wants, needs and desires. It is the way where the
emotion of people is stimulated into action in order to attain the goal. There are several factors
which stimulates the behaviour of individual such as need of money, recognition, success,
team work, job satisfaction etc. The important function of the management of any organisation
is to create the ability and willingness in all the workers so that they can perform in the
effective and efficient way with their abilities. So, it is the role of the leader to generate
interest in the employees for the work so that they can complete all the task in the motivated
way. Motivation is done when the employee fell for the need, that need is created in
motivation and then that helps to satisfy the need of employee and company. On he other hand
of Gottfried and Plank, (2016) have stated that Motive is the impulse which help the person to
act in the effective manner. Motivation is the internal procedure that makes the individual to
move towards the particular goal. It is like intelligence which cannot be observed but can be
observed by noticing the individual behaviour. There are several theories which are given by
the various authors such as Maslow's need hierarchy, drive reduction theory etc. which help
then to satisfy their desire
Concept of Intrinsic Motivation
According to the view of Menges and Grant, (2017) intrinsic motivation is the
motivation which is derived from the internal rewards, in simple words it can be said that
intrinsic motivation is arrived when the individual is engaged in the behaviour because it is
naturally satisfying them. It is implimented when there is no act of external rewards or the
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individual is enjoying the opportunity or operation which he or she is engaged in where they
like to explore and learn more in order to grab the opportunity. In the contradicting to the view
of Schwartz and David, (2017) intrinsic motivation is the process of doing the action because
the people love to do that activity. A simple example of which communicate the meaning is
when the research is conducted by the researcher of the school students who are participating
in the sports activities. He has taken the interview of every students and asked them why they
are involved in the sports. 30% of the students said that they have taken part because they
want to gain popularity, getting scholarship or gaining the muscle but 70% of the students said
that they play sports because they enjoy while playing and with that they are getting
satisfaction. So that 70% think that sports are cool so this is the example of intrinsic
motivation.
According to the view of Mekler and Opwis, (2017) intrinsic motivation is the
stimulation that derives the people to change or adopt the behaviour for her or his own
fulfilment and satisfaction, it is generally self-applied and made from the direct relationship
between the situation and individual. On the other hand Steg and Keizer, (2016) have stated
that intrinsic motivation is gained from the internal reward, it is the intangible reward for the
sense of attainment, satisfaction, achievement and recognition. As it is intangible the example
is being given as if the person is doing something and getting knowledge by helping other
people and through that he is getting motivation then it is called as the intrinsic reward which
arises by doing some behaviour and activity.
According to the view of Kulkarni and Tenenbaum, (2016) Intrinsic motivation is the
process when the individual is motivated by the internal factors such as self-satisfaction,
fulfilment of personal need etc. and they oppose to the external cause such as extrinsic
motivation. It is done so that the individual can draw fun from it because they believe that the
activity is good and it is right for him to do. It is being believed that intrinsic is more effective
and stronger than the extrinsic motivation. In the contradicting view of Deci and Ryan (2017)
there are three main factors that leads to the intrinsic motivation that are competence that
succeed the people that what they do, relatedness which help him to get connected with others
and Autonomy that is ability to control over their life.
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Benefits of Intrinsic Motivation
According to the view of Garon‐Carrier and Tremblay, (2016) One of the most
effective advantage of intrinsic motivation is, it reduces the labour cost, for the managers it
takes less time to motivate the employees which are intrinsically motivated so the managers
will have to focus on those activities which is more productive. The organisation will not need
more supervisor to monitor and motivate the workers and this will reduce the labour cost of
company. The intrinsically motivated employees will try to resolve all the problems at their
own level and take new projects at their own which will also reduce training and hiring cost.
In the contradicting view of Van Yperen and De Jonge, (2016) all the intrinsically motivated
will have creative mind and they will plan more innovative strategies as they need not to be
motivated from the external forces. The employees who have career development plan and
personal accomplishment are having more innovative contribution and add more value to
satisfy their needs and give meaning to the organisation,
According to the view of Thøgersen-Ntoumani and Shaw, (2016) intrinsic motivation
will allow the employee to have large degree to control over the operation of the business,
they will not require close supervision which help them to perform in highly effective manner.
They will let all the managers to work in the freely environment where all the employees will
take the decision for their subject matter. This environment will motivate other employees of
the organisation and to enjoy their work as well as not to feel as burden. In the contradicting
view of Augustyniak and DiCarlo, (2017) In the intrinsic motivation, financial benefits is not
provided so the employees know their personal limits. They get encourage from the non-
monetary benefits which help them to reduce more expectation from the organisation. With
this there is some disadvantage also, that is the company will not put large effort to create the
motivation, and in some circumstances the employees need motivation from the supervisor, at
that situation the morale of worker will reduce and they will not able to work in the effective
manner.
According to the view of Gravel and Reissing, (2016) the people who are intrinsically
motivated will always participate in several events and programs and give their best result for
achieving their personal as well as organisational goals and objective. Thus, the intrinsic
motivation will create a win-win situation for himself and company, this type of motivation
are more focused on sharing the desire which helps the employees to work and give effective
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contribution to the firm's purpose. In the contradicting view of Kaiser and Arnold, (2017) with
the increase in intrinsic motivation, organisation also need to have other rewards such as
incentives, fringe benefits, bonus etc. so that when so ever they need support from the
organisation.
According to the view of Livingston and Sadoff, (2016) the best example of intrinsic
motivation is in the today's world is, in the organisation most of the employee are asked to
manage themselves so that they can use their experience and intelligence with in related
activities in order to fulfil all the objective of organisation. By this way all the employees get
motivation and add value to solve the problem, improvise to meet different circumstances to
cater the needs and wants of the customers. On the other hand Gottfried and Plank, (2016)
have stated that there are three values of the intrinsic rewards which serve the best example of
intrinsic motivation that are high, low and medium range, high range is the rewards which are
more engaging and emerging. Middle range it includes those rewards which serve positive
energy in the individual, people start thinking in the logical way and have fair amount of
choice, in this there are some decisions which does not make sense to them but they do that
activities in pretty well manner, they make progress but not that much way at which they
want. Low range is the dissatisfied reward which initiate negative behaviour in the individual,
they start feeling, that the work which they are doing is meaningless and worthless and they
are not able to perform the activities in the proper and fruitful manner.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Augustyniak, R. A. and DiCarlo, S. E., 2017. Low intrinsic motivation but not GRIT is predictive
of low performing medical students. The FASEB Journal. 31(1 Supplement). pp.576-
46.
Garon‐Carrier, G and Tremblay, R. E., 2016. Intrinsic motivation and achievement in mathematics
in elementary school: A longitudinal investigation of their association. Child
development. 87(1). pp.165-175.
Gottfried, A. K and Plank, R. E., 2016. Inside Sales Force and Gender: Mediating effects of
intrinsic motivation on sales controls and performance.
Gravel, E. E. and Reissing, E. D., 2016. “Doing it” for the right reasons: Validation of a
measurement of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation for sexual
relationships. Personality and Individual Differences. 92. pp.164-173.
Kaiser, F. G. and Arnold, O., 2017. Self-determined, enduring, ecologically sustainable ways of
life: attitude as a measure of individuals’ intrinsic motivation. In Handbook of
Environmental Psychology and Quality of Life Research. Springer International
Publishing.
Kulkarni, T. D. and Tenenbaum, J., 2016. Hierarchical deep reinforcement learning: Integrating
temporal abstraction and intrinsic motivation. In Advances in Neural Information
Processing Systems (pp. 3675-3683).
Livingston, J. A and Sadoff, S., 2016. Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Intrinsic
Motivation.
Mekler, E. D. and Opwis, K., 2017. Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification
elements on intrinsic motivation and performance. Computers in Human Behavior. 71.
pp.525-534.
Menges, J. I. and Grant, A. M., 2017. When job performance is all relative: how family motivation
energizes effort, and compensates for intrinsic motivation. Academy of Management
Journal. 60(2). pp.695-719.
Schwartz, B. and David, T., 2017. The Effect of Student-Led Conferencing at School and at Home
on Goal-Setting, Goal-Fulfilment, Effort, Achievement, Intrinsic Motivation, and
Satisfaction for Montessori Lower Elementary 3rd Year Students.
Steg, L. and Keizer, K., 2016. Intrinsic motivation, norms and environmental behaviour: the
dynamics of overarching goals. International Review of Environmental and Resource
Economics. 9(1–2). pp.179-207.
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Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C and Shaw, C. S., 2016. Intrinsic motivation in two exercise interventions:
Associations with fitness and body composition. Health Psychology. 35(2). PP.195.
Van Yperen, N. W. and De Jonge, K. M., 2016. Workers' intrinsic work motivation when job
demands are high: The role of need for autonomy and perceived opportunity for
blended working. Computers in Human Behavior. 60. pp.179-184.
Online
Intrinsic motivation, 2016. [Online] Available through:<https://www.verywell.com/what-is-
intrinsic-motivation-2795385>[Accessed on 13th September 2017]
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