the history of intrinsic™
Intrinsic™ is a new and improved measure of motivational drivers . It is a revised version of the Motivational Styles Questionnaire (MSQ), developed by Dr Roland Tarleton in the early 1990s.
Intrinsic™ aims to define individuals’ ideal roles from a motivational point of view in order to evaluate the way in which and extent to which they will make use of their ability and personality in a particular work situation. It represents the ‘will do’ as opposed to the ‘can do’ factor in performance potential and the approach was developed from consideration of people’s reasons for choosing particular jobs and careers, and observation of individual differences in academic and career striving.
Intrinsic™ has been developed against the background of many different approaches to motivation theory from the 20th Century. Some examples are:
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Murray (1938), Explorations in Personality
According to Murray (1938), motivational ‘needs’ can be classified as latent (lying dormant within the individual) or manifest (active, having influence on behaviour), and it is exposure to appropriate ‘environment triggers’ that causes latent needs to become manifest ones.
People at work should be assessed to discover whether they are highest in need for Achievement, Power, Affiliation, or other needs, so they can be placed in an environment which will present the appropriate ‘triggers’ to fire up their individual needs and produce maximum effect on their performance.
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Maslow (1943), Theory of Motivation
Maslow’s Theory of Motivation includes the ‘hierarchy of needs’, where at the peak ‘self-actualisation’ is proposed as a state all individuals strive to achieve. Maslow defines this in terms of ‘being all you can be’.
More recently, other theorists have suggested that ‘being all you want to be’ better accounts for individual differences in the tendency to strive and in the context of intrinsic motivation, ‘being where you want to be’ impacts as having very real meaning especially for those who are not where they want to be.
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McClelland & Atkinson (1953), The Achievement Motive
In the lead up to the publication of this landmark text, it was found that predictions about future behaviour could only be made if scores on need for achievement were combined with scores on a measure of ‘test anxiety’ or fear of failure. This is the basis for the concept of ‘resultant achievement motivation’ (RAM) from the 1970s. High RAM individuals strive for personal success, doing the best job possible and seeking out new challenges.
Low RAM individuals are more orientated towards avoiding operational failure, doing whatever is necessary to get the job done then moving straight on to the next job, and generally consolidating their position rather than seeking out new challenges. This is the basis of the General Orientation scale on Intrinsic™.
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Vroom (1964) and Porter & Lawler (1968), A Model of Work Motivation
Vroom’s (1964) valence-expectancy theory explained effort as a function of the value of the reward to the individual and perceived probability that exerting effort would actually lead to gaining the reward. This model was expanded by Porter and Lawler (1968) to show that whether the effort exerted results in actual performance in the job also depends on the individual’s ‘ability and traits’ and ‘role perceptions’ (having a clear idea about what it is they are required to do).
Porter and Lawler’s model also makes clear that thinking about job satisfaction as being gained through the performance of the job makes more sense than presuming that satisfied workers will be productive.