Motivating ‘Institutionalized Stars’ and ‘Apathetic Employees'

The current research extends the Blau and Boal (1987) frame of the interaction between organizational commitment and job involvement, in examining motivational aspects. As in the case of turnover, organizational commitment and job involvement significantly interacted to predict the work-effort level of employees. Employees were classified into institutionalized stars and apathetic employees, along with the dimensions of organizational commitment and job involvement. Results show that institutionalized stars are more motivated by perceptions of intrinsic motivation (measured by the Motivating Potential Score) than are apathetic employees. Regarding extrinsic motivation, apathetic employees are found to be motivated by layoff perception, while institutionalized stars showed negative reactions to the perception. Regarding organizational justice, no differential effect was found between procedural and distributive justice. Implications of the results and discussions are included.