‘Et tu, Brute?’ Managers Respond More Negatively When Employees with High Intrinsic Motivation Decline Additional Work

Abstract: The research on the perception of intrinsically motivated workers, workers who find their work to be their own inherent reward, suggests that people associate intrinsic motivation (IM) with saying “Yes!” to more work. What are the perceptions of intrinsically motivated people when they say “no”? With three studies, I show that managers assume compliance with employees with high (vs. low) IM and assign more work to them. When employees with high IM did not meet the expectation (i.e., not complying with the task assignment), managers judged them harsher. This research advances intrinsic motivation literature by demonstrating that managers use intrinsic motivation as a cue when estimating the likelihood of compliance, and when their expectations are not met, they impose harsher judgement on their employees when they are higher (vs. lower) in intrinsic motivation.

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