Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A within-person approach to the relation between quality of task motivation, performance and job satisfaction in everyday working life

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Motivation and Emotion Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Research generally shows that autonomous forms of motivation are associated with higher performance and job satisfaction, whereas controlled forms of motivation are linked to worse outcomes. These relationships are largely based on between-persons data from cross-sectional studies or longitudinal studies with few measurement points. However, motivation quality, performance, and job satisfaction can vary considerably from day to day and from task to task. It is unclear whether and how these experiences and behaviors covary over time within individuals at work in daily life. The present study assessed this using a diary approach. With a default protocol of 30 working days, an ecological momentary assessment application prompted 19 white-collar workers five times a day to report their autonomous and controlled motivation for work tasks and their productivity and job satisfaction at the end of each day. Fourteen participants gathered sufficient data to compute within-person relations and individual networks. At the between-person level, results were somewhat in line with prior survey-based research, whereas results at the within-person level present more nuanced findings and demonstrate that these will not inherently align with previous between-person findings. Individual network analyses indicated considerable interindividual heterogeneity, especially in the relationships between motivation and job satisfaction. In conclusion, these findings point to significant variability in the observed relations between task-related motivation, performance and job satisfaction in everyday life, and highlight the added value of a within person approach and individual networks in addition to between-persons approaches. The implications of these findings for occupational wellbeing research are discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Autin, K. L., Herdt, M. E., Garcia, R. G., & Ezema, G. N. (2021). Basic psychological need satisfaction, autonomous motivation, and meaningful work: A self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Career Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/10690727211018647

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bakker, A. B. (2015). Towards a multilevel approach of employee well-being. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 24(6), 839–843.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bakker, A. B., & Oerlemans, W. G. (2019). Daily job crafting and momentary work engagement: A self-determination and self-regulation perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 112, 417–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Binnewies, C., Sonnentag, S., & Mojza, E. J. (2010). Recovery during the weekend and fluctuations in weekly job performance: A week-level study examining intra-individual relationships. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(2), 419–441.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borsboom, D., Cramer, A. O. J., Kievit, R. A., Scholten, A. Z., & Franić, S. (2009). The end of construct validity. In R. W. Lissitz (Ed.), The concept of validity: Revisions, new directions, and applications (pp. 135–170). IAP Information Age Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowling, N. A., Beehr, T. A., Wagner, S. H., & Libkuman, T. M. (2005). Adaptation-level theory, opponent process theory, and dispositions: An integrated approach to the stability of job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1044–1053.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bringmann, L. F., Hamaker, E. L., Vigo, D. E., Aubert, A., Borsboom, D., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2017). Changing dynamics: Time-varying autoregressive models using generalized additive modeling. Psychological Methods, 22(3), 409.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Carpini, J. A., Parker, S. K., & Griffin, M. A. (2017). A look back and a leap forward: A review and synthesis of the individual work performance literature. The Academy of Management Annals, 11(2), 825–885.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ceja, L., & Navarro, J. (2017). Redefining flow at work. In F. Clive & D. F. Antonella (Eds.), flow at work (pp. 81–105). Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cerasoli, C. P., Nicklin, J. M., & Ford, M. T. (2014). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 980.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cropanzano, R., James, K., & Citera, M. (1993). A goal hierarchy model of personality, motivation, and leadership. Research in Organizational Behavior, 15, 267–322.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalal, R. S., Alaybek, B., & Lievens, F. (2020). Within-person job performance variability over short timeframes: Theory, empirical research, and practice. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7, 421–449.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dalal, R. S., Bhave, D. P., & Fiset, J. (2014). Within-person variability in job performance: A theoretical review and research agenda. Journal of Management, 40(5), 1396–1436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Debusscher, J., Hofmans, J., & De Fruyt, F. (2016). Do personality states predict momentary task performance? The moderating role of personality variability. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 330–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12126

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-determination theory in work organizations: The state of a science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 19–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., & Halbesleben, J. R. (2015). Productive and counterproductive job crafting: A daily diary study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(4), 457.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Epskamp, S., Deserno, M.K., & Bringmann, L.F. (2019). mlVAR: Multi-Level Vector Autoregression. R package version 0.4.3. Retrieved February 4, 2019, from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=mlVAR

  • Epskamp, S., Waldorp, L. J., Mõttus, R., & Borsboom, D. (2018). The Gaussian graphical model in cross-sectional and time-series data. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 53(4), 453–480.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, A. J., Medaglia, J. D., & Jeronimus, B. F. (2018). Lack of group-to-individual generalizability is a threat to human subjects research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(27), E6106–E6115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gagné, M., Forest, J., Gilbert, M. H., Aubé, C., Morin, E., & Malorni, A. (2010). The motivation at work scale: Validation evidence in two languages. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 70(4), 628–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gagné, M., Forest, J., Vansteenkiste, M., Crevier-Braud, L., Van den Broeck, A., Aspeli, A. K., Bellerose, J., Benabou, C., Chemolli, E., Güntert, S. T., & Halvari, H. (2015). The multidimensional work motivation scale: Validation evidence in seven languages and nine countries. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 24(2), 178–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gollwitzer, P. (2012). Mindset theory of action phases. In P. Van Lange, A. Kruglanski, & E. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 526–545). London: SAGE.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hamaker, E. L. (2012). Why researchers should think “within-person”: A paradigmatic rationale. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 43–61). The Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamaker, E. L., & Wichers, M. (2017). No time like the present: Discovering the hidden dynamics in intensive longitudinal data. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1), 10–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasselman, F., & Bosman, A. M. (2020). Studying complex adaptive systems with internal states: a recurrence network approach to the analysis of multivariate time series data representing self-reports of human experience. Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, 6, 9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino, M. T. J., Knittle, K., Noone, C., Hasselman, F., & Hankonen, N. (2021). Studying behaviour change mechanisms under complexity. Behavioral Sciences, 11(5), 77. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11050077

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Howard, J. L., Gagné, M., & Morin, A. J. (2020). Putting the pieces together: Reviewing the structural conceptualization of motivation within SDT. Motivation and Emotion, 44(6), 846–861.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howard, J., Gagné, M., Morin, A. J., & Van den Broeck, A. (2016). Motivation profiles at work: A self-determination theory approach. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 95, 74–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ilies, R., Aw, S. S., & Pluut, H. (2015). Intraindividual models of employee well-being: What have we learned and where do we go from here? European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 24(6), 827–838.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ilies, R., & Judge, T. A. (2002). Understanding the dynamic relationships among personality, mood, and job satisfaction: A field experience sampling study. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89, 1119–1139. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-5978(02)00018-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ilies, R., & Judge, T. A. (2004). An experience-sampling measure of job satisfaction and its relationships with affectivity, mood at work, job beliefs, and general job satisfaction. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 13, 367–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320444000137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ilies, R., Scott, B. A., & Judge, T. A. (2006). The interactive effects of personal traits and experienced states on intraindividual patterns of citizenship behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 49(3), 561–575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Judge, T. A., Simon, L. S., Hurst, C., & Kelley, K. (2014). What I experienced yesterday is who I am today: Relationship of work motivations and behaviors to within-individual variation in the five-factor model of personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(2), 199–221.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kanfer, R., Frese, M., & Johnson, R. E. (2017). Motivation related to work: A century of progress. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 338.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kelty-Stephen, D. G., Palatinus, K., Saltzman, E., & Dixon, J. A. (2013). A tutorial on multifractality, cascades, and interactivity for empirical time series in ecological science. Ecological Psychology, 25(1), 1–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407413.2013.753804

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelty-Stephen, D. G., & Wallot, S. (2017). Multifractality versus (Mono-) fractality as evidence of nonlinear interactions across timescales: disentangling the belief in nonlinearity from the diagnosis of nonlinearity in empirical data. Ecological Psychology, 29(4), 259–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407413.2017.1368355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ketonen, E. E., Dietrich, J., Moeller, J., Salmela-Aro, K., & Lonka, K. (2018). The role of daily autonomous and controlled educational goals in students’ academic emotion states: An experience sampling method approach. Learning and Instruction, 53, 10–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krone, T., Albers, C. J., & Timmerman, M. E. (2016). Comparison of estimation procedures for multilevel AR(1) models. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00486

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Weibel, A., Dysvik, A., & Nerstad, C. G. (2017). Do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation relate differently to employee outcomes? Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 244–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levesque, C., & Brown, K. W. (2007). Mindfulness as a moderator of the effect of implicit motivational self-concept on day-to-day behavioral motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 31(4), 284–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (1998). The role of feasibility and desirability considerations in near and distant future decisions: A test of temporal construal theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 5–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 1297–1343). Rand McNally.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maul, A. (2017). Rethinking traditional methods of survey validation. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 15(2), 51–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merlo, K. L., Shaughnessy, S. P., & Weiss, H. M. (2018). Affective influences on within-person changes in work performance as mediated by attentional focus. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(1), 126–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milette, V., & Gagné, M. (2008). Designing volunteers’ tasks to maximize motivation, satisfaction and performance: The impact of job characteristics on the outcomes of volunteer involvement. Motivation and Emotion, 32(1), 11–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Navarro, J., & Arrieta, C. (2010). Chaos in human behavior: The case of work motivation. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 13(1), 244–256.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Navarro, J., & Rueff-Lopes, R. (2015). Healthy variability in organizational behavior: Empirical evidence and new steps for future research. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 19(4), 529–552.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ng, J. Y., Ntoumanis, N., Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C., Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M., Duda, J. L., & Williams, G. C. (2012). Self-determination theory applied to health contexts: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 325–340.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Otis, N., & Pelletier, L. G. (2005). A Motivational Model of Daily Hassles, Physical Symptoms, and Future Work Intentions Among Police Officers 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35(10), 2193–2214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ram, N., Brinberg, M., Pincus, A. L., & Conroy, D. E. (2017). The questionable ecological validity of ecological momentary assessment: Considerations for design and analysis. Research in Human Development, 14(3), 253–270.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Richer, S. F., Blanchard, C., & Vallerand, R. J. (2002). A motivational model of work turnover. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(10), 2089–2113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Scarpello, V., & Campbell, J. P. (1983). Job satisfaction: Are all the parts there? Personnel Psychology, 36, 577–600.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schelvis, R. M., Hengel, K. M. O., Wiezer, N. M., Blatter, B. M., van Genabeek, J. A., Bohlmeijer, E. T., & van der Beek, A. J. (2013). Design of the Bottom-up Innovation project-a participatory, primary preventive, organizational level intervention on work-related stress and well-being for workers in Dutch vocational education. BMC Public Health, 13(1), 760.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Shin, J., & Grant, A. M. (2019). Bored by interest: How intrinsic motivation in one task can reduce performance on other tasks. Academy of Management Journal, 62(2), 415–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spruijt-Metz, D., Nilsen, W., & Pavel, M. (2014). mHealth for behavior change and monitoring. In S. Adibi (Ed.), mHealth multidisciplinary verticals (pp. 141–154). CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Unsworth, K., Adriasola, E., Johnston-Billings, A., Dmitrieva, A., & Hodkiewicz, M. (2011). Goal hierarchy: Improving asset data quality by improving motivation. Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 96(11), 1474–1481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van den Broeck, A., Howard, J. L., Van Vaerenbergh, Y., Leroy, H., & Gagné, M. (2021). Beyond intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: A meta-analysis on self-determination theory’s multidimensional conceptualization of work motivation. Organizational Psychology Review, 11(3), 240–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van den Broeck, A., Lens, W., De Witte, H., & Van Coillie, H. (2013). Unraveling the importance of the quantity and the quality of workers’ motivation for well-being: A person-centered perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 82(1), 69–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vansteenkiste, M., Neyrinck, B., Niemiec, C. P., Soenens, B., De Witte, H., & Van den Broeck, A. (2007). On the relations among work value orientations, psychological need satisfaction and job outcomes: A self-determination theory approach. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80(2), 251–277.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Nelli Hankonen

    Present address: Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Training and Performance Innovations, The Netherlands, Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Kampweg 55, 3769 DE, Soesterberg, The Netherlands

    Koen Hogenelst

  2. Department of Public Health, Coronel Institute of Occupational Health, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Roos Schelvis

  3. Department of Risk Analysis for Products in Development, The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Tanja Krone

  4. Faculty of Business and Law, Future of Work Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

    Marylene Gagné

  5. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Matti Heino, Keegan Knittle & Nelli Hankonen

  6. Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

    Matti Heino

Authors
  1. Koen Hogenelst
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roos Schelvis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tanja Krone
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Marylene Gagné
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Matti Heino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Keegan Knittle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Nelli Hankonen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Koen Hogenelst.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 23 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hogenelst, K., Schelvis, R., Krone, T. et al. A within-person approach to the relation between quality of task motivation, performance and job satisfaction in everyday working life. Motiv Emot 46, 588–600 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-022-09962-1

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-022-09962-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation