Different Determinants of Task Persistence and Growth Satisfaction: Affective Responses to Perfor Mance, Planning and Job Characteristics

We question the assumption that short term motivation and longer term professional growth satisfaction are functions of the same factors. Task persistence, a key index of motivation, is shown to be an inverse function of depression in response to setbacks, a positive function of planning and is independent of job scope and context satisfaction. Growth satisfaction is a positive function of work success, elation in response to success, job scope and context satisfaction. Subjects are 130 salespersons. The findings question a basic tenet of job enrichment theory; namely, that motivation is a function of job design, and supports the proposition that individual differences in affective responses to perfor Mance predict unique variance in motivation and growth.

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