We question the assumption that short term motivation and longer term professional growth satisfaction are functions of the same factors. Task persistence, a key index of motivation, is shown to be an inverse function of depression in response to setbacks, a positive function of planning and is independent of job scope and context satisfaction. Growth satisfaction is a positive function of work success, elation in response to success, job scope and context satisfaction. Subjects are 130 salespersons. The findings question a basic tenet of job enrichment theory; namely, that motivation is a function of job design, and supports the proposition that individual differences in affective responses to perfor Mance predict unique variance in motivation and growth.
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