Autonomous motivation : a structured literature review and research implication for the business environment

Abstract

Autonomous motivation is a psychological factor that is important to employee performance and creativity. Although existent literature delves on this construct, there are limited studies that have revealed the drivers of autonomous motivation. In this explorative research a structured literature review is conducted to synthesize and interpret different scholarly views about this multi-disciplinary autonomous motivation phenomenon. In this framing, self-determination theory anchored the study with particular focus on the autonomy element. Importantly, this study was aimed at understanding what drives autonomous motivation. As such, a journal driven approach was applied to gather relevant articles to support the study. In addition, purposive sampling over the 18 months period of this qualitative study led to the identification of 55 articles forming the sample. An inductive thematic analysis was performed to interpret the data. Interestingly, findings revealed that autonomous motivation was driven by intrapersonal factors. There were four enablers (i.e., task factors, organisational factors, social factors and team factors)that stimulated the intrapersonal factors leading to autonomous motivation. Although these enablers were identified as themes in the study, they were enablers in triggering autonomous motivation. Importantly, the environment was embedded in all the enablers and subsequently led to the intrapersonal factors driving autonomous motivation. This study contributes to self-determination theory and practice by highlighting the role of intrapersonal factors in driving autonomous motivation. Importantly, the key proposition from this study is that autonomous motivation is driven by intrapersonal factors that are induced by social and organisational enablers. As such, determining these enablers assists in understanding employee motivation, performance and creativity. In this view, this study expands the self-determination theory by emphasising the intrapersonal factors that support the autonomy component.