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The present research examines the effect of incentivizing both outcome and driver measures of SPMS on middle managers' proactivity in influencing the strategy formulation process. A case-based experiment was conducted among 74 full-time employees. The results suggest that when incentives are linked to both outcome and driver measures of SPMS, compared with when they are outcome-based and not linked to the SPMS, managers are more proactive in communicating strategy-related issues to top management. In addition, this effect of SPMS-based incentives on middle managers' proactivity is mediated by their autonomous extrinsic motivation to achieve strategic goals. The results are in general consistent with postulates of the self-determination theory of motivation. This chapter also has practical implication. Specifically, recent evidence suggests that most SPMS adopters fail to validate causal business models underlying their formulated strategies (Ittner, 2008; Ittner & Larcker, 2003, 2005). Middle managers' proactive strategic behavior may be one means to prompt top management to inspect formulated strategies and their underlying business models.

Cognitive evaluation theory (CET; Deci, 1975), SDT's first mini-theory, was built from research on the dynamic interplay between external events (e.g., rewards, choice) and people's task interest or enjoyment – that is, intrinsic motivation (IM). At the time, this research was quite controversial, as operant theory (Skinner, 1971) had dominated the psychological landscape. The central assumption of operant theory was that reinforcement contingencies in the environment control behavior, which precluded the existence of inherently satisfying activities performed for non-separable outcomes. During this time, Deci proposed that people – by nature – possess intrinsic motivation (IM), which can manifest as engagement in curiosity-based behaviors, discovery of new perspectives, and seeking out optimal challenges (see also Harlow, 1953; White, 1959). IM thus represents a manifestation of the organismic growth tendency and is readily observed in infants' and toddlers' exploratory behavior and play. Operationally, an intrinsically motivated activity is performed for its own sake – that is, the behavior is experienced as inherently satisfying. From an attributional perspective (deCharms, 1968), such behaviors have an internal perceived locus of causality, as people perceive their behavior as emanating from their sense of self, rather than from experiences of control or coercion.

We examine how input- (vs. output-) based performance evaluation and incentive intensity impact employees’ autonomous motivation, thereby influence their proactive work behaviors.

We collected survey responses from 309 employees of different firms. Multi-group Structural Equation Modeling analyses were used to analyze the data.

Input-based evaluation had a positive effect on autonomous motivation and proactive work behaviors when task uncertainty was high, but a negative effect when it was low. Autonomous motivation had a positive effect on proactive work behaviors.

Our results on the moderating effect of task uncertainty provide insights into inconsistencies in earlier studies. Moreover, applying self-determination theory of motivation to incentive research can provide some insights into why sometimes, incentives can negatively affect performance.

The study of proactive work behaviors is important because despite their necessity in the fast-changing business environment, they are relatively unexplored in the incentive literature. Proactivity is especially important for tasks that are high in uncertainty because the exact tasks to achieve those goals are hard to specify.

We investigate the effect of performance management system on proactive work behaviors, mediated by autonomous motivation and moderated by task uncertainty.

Team performance frequently is not reached because of motivation losses. The individual identified motivation best fits in team contexts. However, management control systems research has mainly focused on the external motivation. This chapter analyses how identified motivation and team performance can be enhanced through the interactive use of management control systems and the team identity.

An experimental study is conducted among 144 postgraduate students. We manipulate the interactive use of management control systems and the team identity. We controlled its effects on team members’ motivation and performance.

The results show an indirect effect of the interactive control systems on team performance via team members’ identified motivation. Furthermore, the effect of team identity on team performance is also mediated by the identified motivation.

Managers can increase employees’ motivation by using the control information interactively. Controls focused on socialisation processes and shared values best fit with collaborative environments.

The results provide empirical support for the recent calls about the effect of interactive control systems at individual levels. Despite the considerable attention to the relation between the design of management control systems and team performance, this chapter provides empirical evidence of the positive relation between the style of use of management control systems and individual behaviour in team-based settings.

Over the last decades, the accounting and control literature has featured much studying of and debate about the role and designing of incentives. Over the last year or so, the debate over incentives and bonuses has become a much more public one, as illustrated by the current public furor over bankers' bonuses and frequent calls to limit them and/or tax them more heavily. The public nature of the debate is new, but the emotional intensity is not; an intense emotionality has often characterized discussions of these subjects in print, as recently illustrated by a controversy between supporters and opponents of goal setting published in Academy of Management Perspectives.

This chapter tries to structure the debate by defining – and clarifying the interactions between – key components of the debate. I then review some – by no means all – of the evidence available in three streams of research: goal setting, self-determination theory, and economics. A surprisingly large number of commonalities emerge from this review. I then revisit in light of this review two accountability models I had introduced at a previous conference as well a forthcoming field study of the sophisticated approach developed by a successful multinational corporation.

Our ongoing program of research works with teachers to help them become more autonomy supportive during instruction and hence more able to promote students’ classroom motivation and engagement.

We have published five experimentally based, longitudinally designed, teacher-focused intervention studies that have tested the effectiveness and educational benefits of an autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP).

Findings show that (1) teachers can learn how to become more autonomy supportive and less controlling toward students, (2) students of the teachers who participate in ASIP report greater psychological need satisfaction and lesser need frustration, (3) these same students report and behaviorally display a wide range of important educational benefits, such as greater classroom engagement, (4) teachers benefit as much from giving autonomy support as their students do from receiving it as teachers show large postintervention gains in outcomes such as teaching efficacy and job satisfaction, and (5) these ASIP-induced benefits are long lasting as teachers use the ASIP experience as a professional developmental opportunity to upgrade the quality of their motivating style.

Our ASIP helps teachers learn how to better support their students’ autonomy during instruction. The value of this teaching skill can be seen in teachers’ and students’ enhanced classroom experience and functioning.

Empirical findings have repeatedly demonstrated that students’ motivation decreases over the course of secondary education. This decline in learning motivation is one of the top challenges nowadays and is relevant for policy, as well as research and practice. Taking this educational challenge into account, the chapter targets the following questions: (1) Is a multicomponent, two-year intervention (combined student/teacher versus student-only intervention group) effective regarding the self-determined motivation and academic self-concept in mathematics of at-risk students? (2) How effective is the intervention for students with and without a migration background? And more generally: (3) Does the motivation (including students’ academic self-concept as a motivational self-belief) differ between students with and without a migration background at three different time points (beginning of Grade 7, end of Grades 7 and 8)? The results indicate that the intrinsic motivation of the combined intervention group could be fostered in the first intervention year. No significant treatment effect could be detected for the student-only group. In line with prior research, students with a migration background demonstrated higher levels of autonomous and controlled forms of motivation. However, students with and without a migration background did not develop differently across the two years. Implications for intervention research addressing adolescents’ self-determined motivation are discussed.

At the core of SDT is the postulation of three basic psychological needs, that is, the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these three needs is said to be of utmost importance in its own right as it contributes to people’s functioning. Moreover, need satisfaction forms the basis for the development of more optimal forms of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, internalization) and contributes to individual differences in people’s general motivational orientation, called general causality orientations, and differences in values that also affect how we live and thrive.

This chapter presents empirical evidence on the effects of attributional retraining (AR), a motivation-enhancing treatment that can offset maladaptive explanatory mind-sets arising from adverse learning experiences. The evidence shows that AR is effective for assisting college students to adapt to competitive and challenging achievement settings.

This chapter describes the characteristics of AR protocols and details three primary advances in studying AR efficacy in terms of achievement performance, psychosocial outcomes, and processes that mediate AR-performance linkages. The psychological mechanisms that underpin AR effects on motivation and performance are outlined from the perspective of Weiner’s (1974, 1986, 2012) attribution theory.

Laboratory and field studies show that AR treatments are potent interventions that have short-term and long-lasting psychosocial, motivation, and performance benefits in achievement settings. Students who participate in AR programs are better off than their no-AR counterparts not just in their cognitive and affective prospects, but they also outperform their no-AR peers in class tests, course grades, and grade-point-averages, and are more persistent in terms of course credits and graduation rates.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on treatment interventions in achievement settings by documenting key advances in the development of AR protocols and by identifying the next steps critical to moving the literature forward. Further progress in understanding AR efficacy will rest on examining the analysis of complex attributional thinking, the mediation of AR treatment effects, and the boundary conditions that moderate AR treatment efficacy.

A vast and comprehensive body of research highlights the importance of motivation for academic outcomes. More recently, researchers and educators are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of motivation for social and emotional outcomes. In the current chapter, it is argued that motivation is a core component of social and emotional competence because such competence must be actively and willfully applied to have a positive impact on the individual and those around them. Motivation is essential for this application. In this chapter, three well-known motivation constructs are presented as playing a role in promoting positive social and emotional outcomes: social goals, growth mindsets, and autonomous motivation. Then, attention is narrowed down to an in-depth consideration of autonomous motivation and its role in a recently developed conceptual model that articulates the instructional, motivational, and behavioral factors and processes implicated in social and emotional development (Collie, 2020). The conceptual model highlights that instructional practices promote students' perceptions (of autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and, in turn, their autonomous motivation and enactment of socially and emotionally competent behaviors. The chapter concludes with implications for practice and research.