University of Twente Student Theses
Supporting intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers within teams: Distributed leadership and a climate for informal learning as social conditions for facilitating competence and relatedness satisfaction
Hirschler, Tim (2013) Supporting intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers within teams: Distributed leadership and a climate for informal learning as social conditions for facilitating competence and relatedness satisfaction.
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| Abstract: | Problem – As the importance of knowledge creation and its continuous application to work keeps rising, the field of HRD must accomodate this process of knowledge productivity. A key variable contributing to knowledge productivity is employees’ intrinsic motivation. Purpose – The purpose of this study is to link the social contextual variables of distributed leadership and climate for informal learning to the satisfaction of basic motivational needs of competence and relatedness within knowledge intensive teams. Method – Motivational needs are operationalized through the self-determination theory and measured with a survey. Distributed leadership is operationalized using a novel social network approach and an 8-item scale measuring climate for informal learning is developed. Multilevel and regression analysis of data from a sample of 163 child welfare workers in 21 teams from a Dutch child welfare organization is used to test the hypotheses. Findings – Significant main effects were found of individual’s relative social influence within the team’s network on satisfaction of the need for competence. In addition, main effects were found of the equality of social influence of team members, team network density and climate for informal learning on the satisfaction of the need for relatedness. Team level effects on competence were not found. Contribution – The main findings show that distributed leadership and a positive climate for informal learning may prove fruitful in supporting intrinsic motivation. In addition, this study yields new operationalizations for these two constructs and is sensitive to effects of the team level because of the multilevel approach. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Educational Science and Technology MSc (60023) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64275 |
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