Browsing by Author "Klockars, Stella"

To handle the pressure and maintain healthy mental wellbeing, employees would benefit from knowing how to manage their work motivation. Autonomously motivated employees do their job because they enjoy it or because of its personal importance. The self-determination theory states that employees, who are autonomously motivated experience positive outcomes, beneficial for both individuals and organizations. In order to be optimally motivated, the psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness must be satisfied. Previously, the self-determination theory has mostly focused on how social agents (e.g. managers) can create environments that satisfy these needs. However, employees themselves can also use techniques to self-manage their motivation, such as self-kindness or goal setting. The aims of this thesis are to examine how employees from a public sector organization describe how they manage their work motivation. Moreover, problems in which participants describe using 11 self-motivational techniques are examined. This study uses data from a six-week observational study, where 18 participants responded to brief mobile questionnaires five times during workdays. At the end of the study, individual interviews took place, which will be analysed with thematic analysis. The most frequently used techniques among the participants were goal setting, supporting others and obtaining support. Next, by interpreting different situations for which self-motivational techniques were used, I identified eight themes concerning problems: self-doubt, negative mindset, boring tasks, inability to change tasks, managing chaos, feeling stuck, need of social interaction and negative social interruptions. One technique could be used for solving different problems. The results of the research question, on how the participants describe their use of the techniques, show three main themes: self-management choice guided by self-concept, effects of study participation, and interconnectedness, and five sub-themes. The results show that the participants’ ways of managing their motivation were affected by e.g. their self- concept, their work role and the study participation. Moreover, in some cases, the participants did not separate between self-motivational techniques and regular work behaviour and that some aspects of the techniques led to uncertainty, such as how the participants had interpreted having used them and whether it was done consciously or not. In conclusion, the results shed light on how these techniques have been used and understood, which might have implications for how future research can study how employees can manage their own motivation. This study is among the first qualitative studies to investigate how people use self-enactable techniques to improve their quality of work motivation.