THE EFFECT OF GENDER BELIEFS ON SELF-DETERMINED MOTIVATION AS MEASURED BY ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIORS AND WORKPLACE DEVIANT BEHAVIORS

Employees are gauged by their motivation to complete their required job responsibilities, as losses in motivation can result in losses to organizations. Understanding motivation is necessary to achieving beneficial organizational outcomes such as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) while reducing detrimental employee outcomes such as workplace deviant behaviors (WDBs). To this end, the present study analyzes motivation not through a dichotomy of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but through a spectrum of self-determination for its relationship to employee behaviors. Gender is a potential moderator that can have important moderating effects between motivation and subsequent outcomes in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to examine how contemporary self-ascribed gender beliefs related to employee motivation and the subsequent beneficial and detrimental outcomes that employees can experience within the context of the workplace. A self-report survey was administered to and collected from 221 participants. A reliability analysis was performed and found good internal reliability for all items within each measure. Two hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the extent to which gender beliefs moderate the relationship between self-determined motivation and either OCBs or WDBs. Results support hypothesis 1, that SMD level predicts OCBs. However, no other hypotheses were supported. The lack of findings creates opportunities for future research to speculate as to whether there were flaws in the methodology, theory, or other aspects of the present study. Future research should also consider exploring the effect of gender beliefs on self-determined motivation in relation to other workplace outcomes such as workplace productivity and turnover intentions. Such research may yield more significant findings and establish a more complete understanding of the relationship between motivation, gender beliefs, and the workplace.