Reflections on the 2023 AMR Decade Award: Revisions and Extensions of the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior

We are gratified by the response to our 2013 article introducing the theory of purposeful work behavior (TPWB; Barrick, Mount & Li, 2013). This reflective essay expands the TPWB by incorporating recent research on personal attributes and workplace characteristics that motivate purposeful goal striving. We clarify that personality traits, career interests, and personal values represent key internal motivational forces, while job design, leadership styles, and organizational culture reflect critical external motivational forces jointly influencing purposeful goal strivings. A central revision specifies whether personal attributes and workplace characteristics interact in a substitutive or synergistic pattern, depending on whether the purposeful striving is self-driven (achievement, status) or other-driven (communion, autonomy). We describe how experienced meaningfulness uniquely manifests across the four motivational pathways, leading to differentiable attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Additionally, we recognize feedback processes whereby goal progress reinforces future purposeful striving and experienced meaningfulness. The updated TPWB explains how personal and workplace motivational forces can attenuate each other’s effects or act as substitutes in driving purposeful goal pursuit. It also accounts for situations where these forces interact synergistically, amplifying purposeful goal striving. In turn, this energizes purposeful work behavior through experienced meaningfulness, enabling individuals to “do well” behaviorally and “feel well” attitudinally.