How supervisors can support employees' needs and motivation? an experimental study based on SDT

Abstract

Supervisors and managers have an increasingly significant role in employees' motivation. The applied framework in this field research was the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). In this way, it was assessed that whether supervisors can be trained in order to support employees’ basic psychological needs including autonomy, relatedness, and competence. As a result, their need satisfaction and autonomous motivation were promoted, at the same time, the controlled motivation and amotivation were reduced. The training was provided to 15 supervisors then employees' need satisfaction, amotivation, controlled motivation, and autonomous motivation were investigated, pre- and post-intrvention. Performing a multilevel regression analysis revealed that employees in the intervention group showed an increment in autonomous motivation and need satisfaction, as well as a significant reduction in amotivation than those of the control group. Furthermore, increasing autonomous motivation and decreasing amotivation were moderated via increasing need satisfaction. An added value has been provided for the mentioned theory on need satisfaction by the current study. It was also indicated that a relatively brief intervention for supervisors may affect creating employees need support, and autonomous motivation increment, and amotivation reduction.