Can non-profit employees’ internal desires to work be quantified? Validating the Intrinsic Work Motivation Scale

Abstract

Intrinsic work motivation concerns the execution of work tasks as a result of such activities being deemed inherently interesting, enjoyable, and meaningful by the employee performing them. Such motivation is of particular importance to employees of non-profit organisations, whose motives often stem from altruistic values as opposed to monetary gain. Limited quantitative measuring instruments exist that have been validated and found to be reliable to measure intrinsic work motivation. This exploratory study aimed to develop and validate such a measuring instrument (the Intrinsic Work Motivation Scale) using 486 non-profit responders from Australia, South Africa, and the United States. It made use of reliability testing, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and Pearson’s product moment correlations to achieve this aim. The results indicate that the Intrinsic Work Motivation Scale is reliable and possesses construct, convergent, and discriminant validity. Factor analysis indicated that the Intrinsic Work Motivation Scale comprises three factors, namely, personal connection to one’s work, personal desire to make a difference, and personal desire to perform. Intrinsic motivation was found to correlate positively with work engagement and salary satisfaction and negatively with intention to quit. It is recommended that this instrument be utilised in further studies outside of the non-profit sector, to determine the relevance of intrinsic work motivation within differing employment contexts.