Journal of Education and Work Organisational

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Organisational learning and employees' intrinsic motivation a

Richard Remedios & Nick Boreham

a

a

Institute of Education, University of Stirling , Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland Published online: 22 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Richard Remedios & Nick Boreham (2004) Organisational learning and employees' intrinsic motivation, Journal of Education and Work, 17:2, 219-235, DOI: 10.1080/13639080410001677419 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639080410001677419

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Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2004

Organisational Learning and Employees’ Intrinsic Motivation RICHARD REMEDIOS & NICK BOREHAM

Downloaded by [Northcentral University] at 13:49 10 October 2014

Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland

This study examined the effects of organisational learning initiatives on employee motivation. Four initiatives consistent with theories of organisational learning were a priori ranked in terms of concepts that underpin intrinsic-motivation theory. Eighteen employees in a UK petrochemical company were interviewed to ascertain their experiences of these new working initiatives and the frequency of these experiences were categorised in terms of positive, neutral or negative motivational satisfaction. It was hypothesised that employees would make significantly more positive statements relative to neutral or negative ones; this hypothesis was supported. It was also hypothesised that the a priori ranking would significantly correspond with the actual ranking of positive and negative statements. This hypothesis was supported for the positive statements but not the negative statements. It was also hypothesised that employees would make significantly more statements about autonomy than competence. This hypothesis was not supported; instead, employees made (non-significantly) more statements about competence. The findings are discussed in terms of the effects of learning organisations on employee motivation. The theoretical implications for knowledge sharing and knowledge enhancement are discussed. ABSTRACT

Introduction The aim of this study was to examine the effects of changing working practices on employees’ intrinsic motivation. Organisational learning theorists have frequently argued that organisational learning is beneficial to employees because it increases feelings of inclusiveness and autonomy (e.g. Agyris & Schon, 1978, 1996; Senge, 1990; Pedler et al., 1991). However, little evidence exists to either refute or support this claim. One possible reason for this is that motivation is a difficult concept to operationalise and thus researchers have been able to theorise but not test the hypothesised relationship. One concept of motivation that has received considerable attention over the past 30 years is intrinsic motivation (Deci, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985). This concept has been robustly operationalised and therefore provides a useful measuring instrument for empirically assessing the relationship between organisational learning and employee motivation. Organisational learning is claimed to promote knowledge sharing and knowledge enhancement in the workplace. Thus if the new working practices motivate employees, they should be more willing to ISSN 1363-9080 print; 1469-9435 online/04/020219-17  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/13639080410001677419

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learn from one another. Based on the findings from our study, we examined the validity of this claim.


The Learning Organisation (LO) Pedler et al. (1991, p. 2) suggest that interest in LOs began in earnest with the publication of Argyris and Schon’s (1978) work which was the first to speculate on the conditions necessary for an organisation to call itself one which learns. Since then, other theorists have added to these speculations (e.g. Senge, 1990; Garvin, 1993; Argyris & Schon, 1996; Goh, 1998). A consistent theme to emerge in these discussions is how power is transferred from the company to its employees. For example, Goh (1998) suggests that learning organisations should be able to ‘transfer knowledge across organisational boundaries’, Garvin (1993) states that ‘a learning organisation is an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights’ (p. 80) and Pedler et al. (1991) suggest that ‘The learning company is an organisation that facilitates the learning of all its members’ (p. 1). All of these conceptions emphasise that a necessary feature for an organisation to label itself a learning one is that mechanisms are put in place to optimise the transfer of knowledge between all levels of employees. A consequence of these mechanisms is the creation of environments where employees recognise that their ideas will be acknowledged, discussed and can influence subsequent working procedures. As Senge (1990, p. 13) suggests, ‘A learning organisation is a place where people are continually discovering how they create their reality. And how they can change it.’ In short, devolving responsibility to the workers and involving them in the decision-making processes is very much the ethos of the LO. Learning organisation theorists therefore speculate that organisations should provide opportunities for knowledge to be shared throughout the company and that by empowering employees with knowledge and responsibility, this should result in a more motivated and content workforce. The reason why involving workers in decision making is considered so crucial seems to lie in the belief that individuals value autonomy. For example, when Senge (1990) writes: ‘Without personal mastery, people are so steeped in the reactive mindset (“someone/something else is creating my problems”) that they are deeply threatened by the systems perspective’ (p. 12), he seems to suggest that individuals prefer situations where they, rather than someone else, makes the decisions. Similarly, Pedler et al. (1991) suggest that the dream is to create organisations ‘which are capable of adapting, changing, developing and transforming themselves in response to the needs, wishes and aspirations of people, inside and outside’ (p. 1). Again, the emphasis seems to be on involving employees in decision making and change. Intrinsic Motivation Theory Although speculative, Senge’s and Pedler et al.’s ideas map well onto the wellresearched area of intrinsic motivation. This field developed from several strands of


Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 221 research and theory. For example, White (1959) proposed a theory notion of ‘effectance motivation’ where he suggested that individuals were motivated when they felt they were having an effect on the environment. In a similar fashion, deCharms (1968) developed his theory of personal causation where he suggested that individuals were likely to be most motivated when they felt they were the authors of their own actions. Deci’s (1975) theory of intrinsic motivation stated that when individuals feel autonomous, they are more likely to persist with tasks and report high interest and enjoyment. Subsequent evidence supported this theory both inside the laboratory (Swann & Pittman, 1977; Zuckerman et al., 1978; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999) and outside of it (e.g. Lepper et al., 1993). Indeed, the evidence over the past 25 years has consistently shown that individuals who perceive their behaviours to be more under their own control than externally regulated consistently report more interest and enjoyment in such tasks, and persist or report a willingness to persist in such tasks in the future (see Deci et al., 1999 for review). On the face of it, it would seem that employees in learning organisations should positively experience working initiatives that support autonomy. However, in the workplace, with autonomy comes responsibility and with responsibility comes a pressure to respond to that responsibility. A second feature of intrinsic-motivation theory is the concept of competence. Building on White’s (1959) concept of effectance motivation, Deci (1975) suggested that this effectance could be operationalised in terms of competence, that is, individuals would be more motivated when they felt themselves to be competent. In support of this speculation, Deci’s early studies showed that groups showed higher levels of interest and enjoyment and persisted at tasks longer when they received positive feedback relative to groups who received no or negative feedback (Deci, 1971, 1972; see also Vallerand, 1983; Vallerand & Reid, 1984). Over the past 20 years, researchers have investigated the caveats to the positive effects of perceived competence but even the most recent process models continue to support the importance of feeling competent as a significant predictor of intrinsic motivation (e.g. see Barron & Harackiewicz, 2000 for a review). Simultaneous to the development of intrinsic motivation theory was the development of achievement motivation theory. As part of this theory, Nicholls (1984) suggested that in all achievement settings—i.e. whenever a task was announced or perceived to be one of skill—individuals would strive to present themselves to others as having high ability (i.e. competent). Other researchers in the field suggested that different situations could influence the goals that individuals pursued. For example, when individuals perceived a situation to be pressurising them to perform (e.g. being told one is going to be evaluated), they would adopt a performance-focus, that is, an attitude whereby they would optimise their chances of performing well (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). However, if the situation was less pressurising, then individuals would seek to master tasks, that is, to learn as much about these tasks but not necessarily perform well at them (Diener & Dweck, 1978, 1980). For example, Harackiewicz et al. (1984) found that participants who played a pinball game and were told they were to be evaluated enjoyed the game less than participants who were not told they were to be evaluated. To summarise, evidence has consistently

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shown that task contexts are significant initial predictors of subsequent motivation (e.g. Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1994, 1996; Elliot & Church, 1997; Elliot & Thrash, 2002). Thus, while autonomy in the workplace allows individuals to make decisions for themselves, it is also possible that this added responsibility may undermine motivation through the processes of pressuring employees to perform well.


The Current Research The following study examined the motivational responses of 18 employees in a learning company to four different ways of structuring work so that it becomes a process of organisational learning. In the study, based on the speculations from organisational learning theorists (e.g. Senge, 1990; Pedler et al., 1991) and evidence from the intrinsic motivation literature, the four different practices were ranked a priori in terms of their motivational properties. It was hypothesised that practices that best theoretically supported autonomy and de-emphasised performance would be experienced most positively by the employees. The research adopted a hypothesis-testing paradigm where hypotheses were derived using two sources of information. The theoretical framework for the independent variables was informed by the organisational learning theorists who provided the conceptual framework for identifying working practices that are likely to promote positive experiences (e.g. Senge, 1990; Pedler et al., 1991). The evidence from the intrinsic and achievement motivation literature provided the theoretical framework for the mechanisms (e.g. autonomy, perceived competence and task orientation) that influence the dependent variables (i.e. intrinsic motivation). Analysis involved a mixed methodology whereby narratives obtained from employees by in-depth interviewing were translated into categories (of positive, neutral and negative motivational experiences) and frequency counts were taken for each of these categories. Appropriate non-parametric statistical analyses were then conducted to determine whether there were any differences in motivational experiences depending on the type of working practice.

Background to the Study The study formed part of the three-year European Framework V research project ORGLEARN. In this project, the practice of organisational learning in petrochemical companies in four European countries (Italy, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom) were investigated qualitatively and quantitatively (see Fischer & Ro¨ben, 2001, 2002, and especially Boreham & Morgan, 2002, pp. 141–143). As well as studying these practices by observation and key-informant interviews, employees were interviewed to elicit their personal accounts of how the practice of organisational learning had impacted on them personally. The data for this specific study refers to interviews with 18 employees in a petrochemical company in the UK


Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 223 (Company U) (see Boreham & Morgan, 2002, pp. 95–101). To enhance knowledge sharing and continuous improvement throughout the whole organisation, Company U had implemented a series of organisational learning initiatives. Employees were asked specifically about four of these: the Systematic Approach, Procedures and Competence Development Methodology, Tasks and Targets, and Benchmarking. The following is a summary of these working practices and their potential motivational impact. The Systematic Approach (SA) is an initiative whereby employees are encouraged to work independently in teams to solve problems encountered in the workplace, corresponding to the method of ‘organisational enquiry’ described by Senge (1990). It can be initiated by any employee whenever an incident occurs or an employee encounters a difficulty with a procedural protocol. When this happens, the employee calls a meeting with all employees involved in the task or situation concerned. In this meeting, the employees identify the source of the problem and agree a new set of procedures. The introduction of SA was intended to replace the following of fixed procedures by a more pro-active and participatory approach, so that if employees felt that there was a problem, they would be empowered to try and solve it. In this sense, SA seems to promote a mastery-approach to problems. Boreham and Morgan (2002, p. 97) quote an interviewee from the study who stated: ‘The systematic approach has made a lot of people more aware of how you go about getting something done if there’s a problem, rather than whinge about it … You tend to do something about it.’ Diener and Dweck (1978) found that when individuals adopted a mastery approach towards tasks, they were more likely to persist in the face of failure. Conversely, individuals who felt under pressure to perform adopted what they labelled a ‘helpless’ approach, that is, believing they could not alter the outcome and/or desisting from the task. Because the systematic approach specifically promotes a mastery-orientation towards problems, it was hypothesised that it would be experienced positively. The Procedures and Competence Development Methodology (PCDM) initiative was brought in to engage process operators in writing the standard operating procedures which specify how major tasks are to be carried out, e.g. shutting down a part of the plant. Previously the standard operating procedures had been written by refinery technologists, who were senior staff not involved in day-to-day operations. Initially, PCDM was brought in to facilitate rewriting of the safety procedures but the initiative was later extended to potentially all working practices and given a strong orientation to competence building. Boreham and Morgan (2002, p. 97) state that the most innovatory aspect of this initiative is that the procedures are written by the operators or the people who actually carry out the jobs (i.e. as opposed to the management). The methodology for PCDM is highly structured and the initiative is triggered by a systematic review of hazardous operations, although whenever an incident occurs or any employee recognises an error in a procedural protocol, the relevant operation can also be included. When this happens, a PCDM facilitator arranges for a meeting with all employees involved in the processing of that task. In this meeting, the employees compare different ways of performing the task in question, agree best practice and formulate a new set of procedures. While the


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PCDM procedure appears similar to the SA, the crucial difference (in terms of motivation) is how stringently PCDM protocols are applied, both in the development of the procedures, and in forcing compliance in working practices thereafter. Once a specific operating procedure has been adopted, it then becomes potentially a disciplinary matter not to follow it. Thus while the initiative does encourage employees to use their own initiative, the stringency of application of the protocols may potentially undermine motivation. Tasks and Targets (TAT) was an initiative which the line manager set each employee a range of individual objectives in addition to his or her regular duties (e.g. promoting safe practice in a particular field of activity across the site). These targets were linked to pay so that the more targets the employee reached the more they were paid, although the sums involved were relatively minor. In motivational terms, there are potentially two competing arguments. On one hand, the targets could be considered performance targets because the mere presence of them may place a pressure on employees to achieve them (Nicholls, 1984). However, evidence has also shown that when individuals perceive their chances of success to be high, then performance targets do not produce high anxiety relative to when individuals perceive their chances of success to be low (see Feather, 1959, 1961, 1966). Assuming the acquisition of the targets are within the capability of the employee, then while the targets may themselves be pressurising, the confidence in attaining them may counter the negative effects of the pressure. An additional and important caveat to the effect of targets is how personally valued they are. The literature on the importance of task-valuation is vast but, broadly, performance tasks that are not valued are less likely to undermine motivation (see Jacobs & Eccles, 2000 pp. 408– 415 for a review). Benchmarking is the practice whereby Company U matches its performance against industry standards internationally. The possible consequences of this practice are connected to the concept of competence: if the employees reach the targets, this will be positive feedback, but if they do not, the feedback will be negative. A priori, it was known that company U used these benchmarks to determine how well they were doing, but that given the nature of global competition they were often judged inferior to competitor companies. In this sense, this initiative would be most likely to undermine motivation. To summarise the above, Table I shows the theoretical links between the concepts of autonomy, competence and task orientation. The table shows that the SA is hypothesised to produce the most positive motivational experiences because individuals are unlikely to feel pressure to perform well and that it is highly likely that problems will be solved. While PCDM has a similar methodology, there is the possibility that the stringency with which these procedures are applied may undermine autonomy. For TAT, although these targets may be negotiated to some extent, the potentially demotivating aspects are that individuals may feel some pressure to attain their targets. The least motivating initiative is hypothesised to be Benchmarking because the global industry norm against which the employees’ performance is matched is highly competitive and employees are likely to feel pressure to achieve targets which cannot realistically be met.

Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 225 TABLE I. Motivational ranking of Company U initiatives based on the intrinsic motivation concepts of autonomy and task orientation Comments on personal autonomy

Comments on competence and task orientation

SA

High autonomy because individuals decide between themselves the best courses of action.

What targets there are will usually be resolved in the group so, in this sense, individuals will probably experience positive feedback. No personal pressure to perform well.

1

PCDM

High autonomy because individuals decide between themselves the best courses of action. However, system is stringent, which may undermine autonomy.

What targets there are will usually be resolved in the group so individuals will probably experience positive feedback. No personal pressure to perform well. There is pressure to follow the procedures once they are adopted.

2

TAT

Autonomy is likely to be determined by the degree that individuals agree with the tasks and targets set for them. Many of these are imposed and only some are through genuine consultation. Autonomy is moderate.

If tasks are within individual capabilities, likely to experience positive feedback. Pressure to perform is high but if tasks are considered within individual capabilities, orientation is unlikely to be experienced as threatening.

3

Benchmarking

No control.

High likelihood of failure. High pressure to perform well.

4


Company initiative

Motivational rank

The Relationship between Intrinsic Motivation and Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Enhancement So far, we have mapped organisational learning initiatives onto intrinsic motivation, but we have yet to make the link between intrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing. What evidence exists to suggest that a motivated workforce will engage in knowledge sharing? One of the operationalisations of intrinsic motivation is the amount of time individuals spend at a task in the absence of any external reason to do so (Deci, 1975). Remedios (2000) has extended this operationalisation to a concept he labels ‘pseudo persistence’. Pseudo persistence is the amount of time individuals state they would spend on an activity in the future (Remedios et al., in press) or the number of additional problems they would attempt if they had time (Remedios, 2000). In other words, when individuals are intrinsically motivated by an activity, they are likely to engage with that activity in the future. Our claim is that


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by identifying how much enjoyment (in terms of positive statements) employees report towards the various initiatives, then this also reflects the likelihood they will engage with or pay attention to those initiatives in the future. Given that SA and PCDM are knowledge-sharing activities, high frequencies of positive statements would suggest that employees are more likely to use those activities in the future. For example, if an employee observes a non-optimal practice, their decision to address it via SA or PCDM may depend on how compelled or motivated they are to go through those sets of procedures. Reluctance to do so will result in their personal perception and the knowledge that could be generated by SA or PCDM not being shared. The same case can be made for TAT. TAT is an initiative where individuals take on extra tasks that inevitably improve their knowledge of the business as a whole. If employees are not motivated to take on these targets, then they will lose the opportunity to learn. By examining employee motivation, we are able to assess employees’ future likelihood of using the new working practices. Because these working practices are opportunities to share knowledge and learn, then motivating employees to use them in the first place is desirable and probably essential. Hypotheses The broad research question we examined was to assess employee motivation as a whole. Because the SA, PCDM and TAT were broadly autonomy supportive, it was hypothesised a priori that workers would make significantly more positive statements than neutral or negative statements. The second aim of the analysis was to assess whether our a priori ranking for the various initiatives matched the actual rankings of positive and negative statements. The third aim of the analysis was to examine whether, overall, statements were largely based on autonomy rather than competence. Methods Participants 18 employees at Company U were randomly selected to take part in this study. Average working time at the company was 24.8 years and although ages were not recorded, most employees had been at Company U since they had left school at 16 or 18. Design and Procedure The methods used to answer the research question mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In the first stage of the analysis, two researchers from the ORGLEARN research team conducted semi-structured interviews with employees. Although several topics were covered, four specific questions in the interviews related directly to the four working initiatives—e.g. ‘Company U has introduced the Systematic Approach/PCDM/Tasks and Targets/Benchmarking, can you tell a little about your experiences with these methods?’ All employees signed a consent form

Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 227


to allow the interviews to be taped and agreed that the results could be published anonymously. The statements from the interview transcripts were grouped by initiative—i.e. SA, PCDM etc.—and classified in terms of whether they represented a positive, negative or neutral experience. These statements represented the measure of motivational satisfaction. Statements were also categorised as either regarding autonomy or competence. All statements were included in the analysis even though this meant that if one participant made several responses to an initiative, all these responses were included in the final tally. The frequency of each response was entered into a grid. These frequency scores were then analysed using the appropriate nonparametric statistical tests to determine whether there were significant differences in employees’ motivational responses to the various initiatives. Results Motivational Satisfaction Motivational statements towards the different working initiatives were first categorised as positive, neutral and negative. The total number of statements was 71 and the breakdown by training initiative appears in Table II. Table II shows that similar numbers of statements were made about each of the training initiatives. The first research question we addressed was whether or not employees made significantly more positive statements about the initiatives relative to neutral or negative statements. Using the totals as frequencies, a chi-squared analysis revealed the difference in the frequency of the three statements to be highly significant (2(2) ⫽ 11.61, p ⬍ .005) [1]. We next examined the difference between the number of positive statements and firstly neutral statements (2(1) ⫽ 9.31, p ⬍ .005) and negative statements (2 (1) ⫽ 5.78, p ⬍ .05). Both were significant. Table II also shows that our hypothesised ranking of the four initiatives by positive statements matched the ranks of the actual number of positive statements. To examine this statistically, because our sample size was so small, we used Kendall’s -b procedure. Although there was a 100% match across ranks, with only n ⫽ 4 this relationship was (just) significant (r ⫽ 1, p ⬍ .05). For the negative statements, as expected, the SA yielded the fewest negative statements. However, there were as many negative statements about PCDM as there were about Benchmarking.

TABLE II. Number of positive, neutral and negative statements made about the training initiatives employed by Company U

Positive Neutral Negative Totals

SA

PCDM

TAT

Benchmarking

Totals

14 3 1 18

10 5 5 20

9 4 7 20

4 3 6 13

37 15 19

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R. Remedios & N. Boreham TABLE III. Motivational category by training initiative

Autonomy Competence Totals

SA

PCDM

TAT

Benchmarking

Totals

3 1 4

3 1 4

4 5 9

1 8 9

11 15


Unsurprisingly, the relationship between negative statements and ranks was not statistically significant. Motivational Category We also wanted to examine what types of statements employees were making about the initiatives. Our hypothesis was that organisational learning should create greater feelings of autonomy so this should be reflected in the nature of employees’ statements. Disappointingly few statements were observed (n ⫽ 26) and the breakdown of these appears in Table III. This table shows that, contrary to our hypothesis, there were more statements about competence than autonomy, although the difference was not significant. Discussion In terms of the four a priori hypotheses, the results revealed the following. First, in line with the hypothesis, employees did make significantly more positive statements about their working practices relative to neutral and negative statements. Second, the hypothesised ranking by working initiative for positive statements was supported but the hypothesised ranking for the negative statements was not. Third, for the comments about autonomy and competence, contrary to expectations, there were more comments made about competence than autonomy but this difference was not significant. We deal with each of these findings in turn. Relationship between Motivation and Training Initiatives Our broad aim was to examine motivation and in this regard the results supported a conclusion that employees were generally content with the new initiatives. Inspection of the various comments reveals that while employees frequently commented on the amount of work some of these initiatives had generated (e.g. ‘Its increasing the work because we’ve gone the other way now, we’re trying to make everything PCDM’ [Employee (E) 9]), their closing comments were generally of the type ‘it is better than it used to be’ (e.g. ‘Whereas I think now more things do actually, you know when people say they will do it, they will do it’ [E6]). However, it is questionable whether just commenting positively on a working initiative equates to being motivated by it; it is not unreasonable to suggest that one could identify the benefits of an activity or procedure without necessarily being


Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 229 motivated by it. Analysis of the statements suggest that employees were making statements of intention, that is, they were talking about an activity not just as something they have used in the past and enjoyed/valued, but something they will use in the future and are happy to do so. To support this claim, it is perhaps useful to compare the generally positive statements with the negative ones made about the Benchmarking—e.g. ‘but we seem to be getting up there now, only to have them change the rules and now we are back on bottom again, or they look at it a different way’ (E8); ‘You do get a bit fed up of listening about Benchmarking, because they just seem to move the goalposts to suit whatever they want. It’s a Benchmark. That’s the way it comes over to me’ (E3). Note that with these statements, there is still the intention to meet the company’s objectives of using the practice of Benchmarking, but employees seem resentful of having to do so. Thus while they are operationally compelled to use the practice, motivationally, the attitude is more of ‘because we have to’ rather than ‘because we believe it is a good system.’ Recall that Remedios (2000) has suggested that one of the operationalisations of intrinsic motivation is the amount of time individuals spend at a task, defined as pseudo persistence as this reflects the amount of time individuals state they will spend on an activity in the future. We suggest that statement regarding SA and PCDM were of this type, whereas the ones for Benchmarking were not. Motivational Responses by Working Initiative The second set of hypotheses concerned the a priori ranking of the organisational learning initiatives by positive and negative statements. For the positive statements, this hypothesis was supported. However, a review of the actual number of positive statements by rank reveals that the number of positive statements between PCDM and TAT was very similar. Also, the hypothesis for the negative statements was not supported and this was largely because TAT received the highest number of negative statements. Another way to examine these rankings would be to consider the ratio of positive to negative statements. This would result in the following: SA (13/2 ⫽ 6.5) TAT (10/7 ⫽ .7), PCDM (9/5 ⫽ 1.8) and Benchmarking (4/5 ⫽ .8). Viewed in this way, the SA remains by far the most positively received initiative, with PCDM second and TAT becoming as popular as Benchmarking. Thus it is not so much that the SA was received positively, it was more that both PCDM and TAT were experienced negatively as well as positively. An analysis of the negative statements helps to clarify what problems employees had with these initiatives. With PCDM, while there was the acceptance that it was good, there was also the exasperation that everything had to go through the process of PCDM (‘You could have PCDM for going to the toilet, so it’s lost its edge because it’s everything’. [E9]). It was not that it was a bad procedure, it was just that employees’ perceptions of this initiative was not always something they ‘wanted to do’ but seemed to be something they ‘had to do’. In this sense, PCDM was experienced, from time to time, as an external chore. This is in line with one of our speculations as we suggested that the stringent procedures for implementing PCDM might have undermined autonomy.


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The same explanation applies to TAT. While employees accepted that these goals helped give direction, what was problematic was that these goals were really goals the company had to give employees and employees had to accept (‘But … targets is slightly different, I think people see those just a burden’ [E6].) Thus employees did not always personally feel they owned their goals; instead, these goals were imposed by the company and while the employees agreed their goals, they did so out of compulsion rather than personal desire (‘I don’t feel personally driven by Tasks and Targets. Maybe that’s wrong and I should be more driven by them’ [E16]). We identified a priori the potential importance of task-valuation as a predictor of intrinsic motivation and this may help to explain some of the negativity towards this initiative. Also, for the employees in our study, many were at the top of their salary scale so that bonuses made little difference to their overall pay. In addition, their day-to-day routines were onerous and so finding time to attend to extra tasks was difficult. Company U recognised this and at appraisal, while employees may not have received their bonuses, they were also not reprimanded for not achieving their TAT if they provided good operational reasons. In short, the incentives for some employees to achieve their targets seemed insufficient to motivate them. With reference to the initiative of Benchmarking, as hypothesised, employees generally disliked this practice (it was the only initiative to receive more negative than positive comments). Analysis of the types of statements made reflect the feeling that comparing Company U to an international standard was not a fair comparison (e.g. ‘The problem is, you’ve got some people don’t set up the benchmarking … as a true target you should meet or a true reflection of the way you should be going’ [E4]). Employees felt that Company U was improving and that comparing them to companies with more advanced technology was unfair (e.g. ‘We’re stretched now. How are we ever going to get to Division 1? Are these guys playing with the same ball, by the same rules?’ [E5]). In motivational terms, negative feedback has consistently been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation (e.g. Deci, 1971, 1972) except when that feedback is perceived as diagnostic towards resolving a problem (Sansone, 1986). Benchmarking is not a diagnostic tool, it is just a league table and in this sense, because Company U were not top of the league in terms of international standards, they were in effect consistently exposed to negative feedback. As mentioned in the introduction, Dweck and Leggett (1988) have shown that individuals who believe that it is not in their power to resolve a problem can adopt a helpless approach to problems and simply ignore or avoid them (see also Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1994). Some employees felt this way about the targets (e.g. ‘it creates frustration because people think “It doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t matter what changes they make, we’re always Division 2, Division 3. We never get to the top of the league” [E5]). Targets can be motivating when they are manageable but unmanageable targets are likely to invoke a helplessness response, or at least, demotivate individuals. Thus, while employees made some positive comments (e.g. ‘it’s good to a certain degree; it keeps you aware, it keeps you on your toes, if you like’ [E2]; ‘I think it does. It gives you something to aim at. There are positives and negatives. I think there are probably more positives in it in that it does give you something to aim at’ [E5]; ‘So it forces you, and it has improved our systems

Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 231 enormously I think. I am all for it. As long as you’re not doing them eleven months of the year you’re being audited’ [E6]), the prevalent response was negative and these responses seem to be located in the pressure Benchmarking put on employees to perform.


Alternative Explanations Our motivational analysis suggests that, in general, the working initiatives designed to promote organisational learning did motivate employees. However, it could be argued that the employees we interviewed were those left after a considerable downsizing exercise by Company U and thus it would only be reasonable to expect them to praise the new initiatives. This objection would be valid if there were very few negative statements but, as we have indicated, this was not the case. In addition, employees were not uniformly satisfied with the different initiatives; our analysis suggests a clear discrimination between the SA and the other working initiatives. One possible way to assess the effects of being selected to remain at Company U would have been to also interview a selection of former employees who had also experienced the different new working initiatives but, even using this procedure, difference between the groups could be accounted for on the basis that the nonselected group were unnecessarily negative. A second potential problem is whether the sample size is adequate to derive general conclusions. We believe it is. First, such sample sizes are consistent with qualitative research where single cases often provide the basis for generalisation, especially in the now-expanding field of organisational learning. In addition, the semi-structured interviews lasted from 30 minutes to one hour and so participants were given plenty of opportunity to comment both positively and negatively about the working practices. It was emphasised to employees that their responses would remain anonymous and the researchers signed confidentiality clauses to confirm this. Participants were also made aware that the research was for a European-wide project and was therefore not company initiated. It is always prudent to assess the probability of type I errors either when data is qualitative or quantitative, but we suggest that the positive and discriminative comments made by participants in this study were generalisable reflections of the impact of the various working initiatives. Implications for Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Enhancement in the Workplace So far, our fine-grained analysis has concentrated on the motivational implications of introducing new working practices consistent with theories of organisational learning. But how does this bear on knowledge sharing and knowledge enhancement in the workplace? Earlier in this article we suggested that the importance of motivation was that it was the precondition to engagement with the various organisational learning initiatives and that low motivation to get involved with these initiatives reduced the likelihood of knowledge being shared and the employee learning by using them. Organisational learning theorists emphasise the importance of providing mecha-


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nisms by which knowledge can be transferred (e.g. Senge, 1990; Argyris & Schon, 1996) but our study suggests that the way in which these working initiatives are implemented may crucially impact on whether the initiative is taken up by employees. For example, Company U’s implementation of TAT fulfills the organisational-learning criteria of ‘providing opportunities to learn’ (e.g. Watkins & Marsick, 1996; Fischer & Ro¨ben, 2002), but clearly some of the employees we interviewed were not motivated to take up these opportunities. Our analysis identified two possible sources: the lack of sanctions if targets were not fulfilled, and how much personal value employees attributed to achieving their targets. It is difficult to suggest a way that Company U could have motivated employees in this respect. Employees satisfied with their levels of earnings are likely to take a cost–benefit approach to deciding whether to pursue their targets and decide the effort is not worthwhile. In response, the company could apply sanctions for not achieving targets, but this solution may antagonise rather than motivate employees. The ‘problem’ Company U may be facing is that their workforce is generally financially content. Understanding this employees profile may allow the company to rethink the way targets are set, or whether, in this specific case, they need to be set at all. The number and nature of the positive comments made about the SA suggests that promoting knowledge sharing using this approach was both popular and accepted. But why did this procedure prove to be more popular than PCDM? Our analysis suggests that the answer lay in the amount of procedural stages involved in PCDM. Employees praised PCDM almost as much as SA—i.e. the difference in number of positive statements between the two initiatives was non-significant—but what our analysis suggests is that the implementation of the PCDM seems to have been applied, at times, too dogmatically. We suggest that this difference probably reflects the degree of ‘want to’ versus ‘have to’ emphasis on the two initiatives. Originally, intrinsic motivation theorists set motivation along a continuum with extrinsic motivation (‘I’m only doing this because I have to’) at one end and intrinsic motivation (‘I’m doing this because I want to’) at the other (Deci, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985). Later, this view was adapted to reflect that most human motivation sits somewhere along rather than at the ends of this continuum (Rigby et al., 1992; see also Kelman, 1958). We suggest that the degree of ‘want to’ versus ‘have to’ played an important role in determining our employee responses, and, we suspect, their motivation to use these procedures in the future. However, what is clear is that employees seemed comfortable with the SA and PCDM approaches and enjoyed disseminating and releasing their knowledge to others. In addition, they also valued the information they received from other employees. In this sense, both these working initiatives were valuable in contributing to the knowledge-sharing capacity of the company. However, in similar fashion to TAT, removing some of the autonomy the PCDM procedure afforded compromised the potential success of these initiatives. Again, we suggest that it was not the initiative that undermined autonomy, but how it was implemented. The initiative of Benchmarking was the least positively received initiative. One of the criterions for judging a learning organisation adopted by the ORGLEARN project is that ‘Learning from the environment is encouraged and systematically


Organisational Learning and Intrinsic Motivation 233 evaluated’ (see Boreham & Morgan, 2002, p. 101). Boreham and Morgan (2002) reported that ‘Management are learning about the company’s performance through extensive benchmarking’ (p. 101). What our analysis suggests is that while management were able to assess the performance of company using an international benchmark, the effect this was having on employees was generally negative. We hypothesised that this initiative had considerable propensity to put employees under pressure and this was borne out in our subsequent analysis. Moreover, employees did not feel that the comparison was particularly fair and, as mentioned earlier, often adopted a helpless approach to these industry targets. What this suggests is that one person’s learning may not always be beneficial to another person in the same company. Learning systems are not always independent and companies need to consider how the different systems may interact with other learning initiatives. Again, companies need to make a cost–benefit decision: in this case, was the cost of achieving more information beneficial to the workforce overall? Our analysis suggests that at the motivational level, for Company U, it probably was not.

Conclusions Our analysis of the SA, PCDM, TAT and Benchmarking suggest that these initiatives did promote knowledge sharing and learning but that the degree to which these outcomes were likely were underpinned by the way the initiatives were presented. Intrinsic motivation theory has provided a considerable literature that has identified the fragility of human experience in terms of feelings of autonomy and competence. Aligning these findings with operational procedures should help to ensure continuing employee motivation and concomitant benefits to knowledge sharing and learning. Note [1]

Because some cell totals were less than 5, we could not conduct chi-squared analysis to examine the interaction between initiative and motivational satisfaction.

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