Can Task Motivation Backfire? The Roles of Perceived Task Interdependence and Interaction Avoidance

The extant literature on task motivation has generally demonstrated its beneficial effects on workplace outcomes. Although some evidence has raised concerns about the potential link between task motivation and maladaptive behaviors, this line of work has been grounded in an intrapersonal perspective that focuses on employees’ internal regulation. Guided by motivated information processing theory, we adopt an interpersonal perspective to examine how task motivation may, under certain conditions, lead to interaction avoidance, a maladaptive workplace behavior with downstream implications for job performance. We theorize that, when perceiving a lower level of task interdependence, employees with higher task motivation are more likely to engage in interaction avoidance. This avoidance, in turn, is negatively related to job performance. Across an online experiment with a U.S. sample, a field experiment with a Chinese sample, and a survey with a Chinese sample, our hypotheses are supported. This research builds a more balanced understanding of how task motivation influences employee behavior and performance. In practice, managers should actively channel the effort of highly task-motivated employees to ensure their motivation translates into effectiveness rather than counterproductive avoidance.