| Traditionally, work design and motivating were regarded as two different management functions, which were seldom related with each other. In knowledge economy, competition is very fierce in the market and human capital has become one of the most fundamental capitals for enterprises. Consequently, work design begins to play significant roles in motivating employees. Besides designing reasonable salary and reward systems, enterprises begin to elicit and sustain employees’intrinsic motivation through optimal work design. Although the Work Characteristics Model has been proposed, work design theories were established mainly by summing up management expertise, which lacked a solid theoretical foundation and neglected to discuss the basic psychological needs of employees. In this sense, Self-determination Theory (SDT) can provide important theoretical guidances for the managerial practice of work design. According to SDT, individuals have three innate psychological needs, which are autonomy, competence and relatedness respectively. Importantly, satisfaction of these needs, especially autonomy and competence, will have a fundemantal impact on intrinsic motivation.As a mainstream motivation theory, SDT has achieved widespread recognition from scholars in various domains. In 2005, a paper titled "Self-determination and work motivation" was published on Journal of Organizational Behavior, which is one of the top-tier management journals. Since then, more management scholars got to know SDT and began to apply this theory into management studies. It is a pity that Chinese management scholars are still not familiar enough with this theory up to now, and few empirical studies have been conducted based on this theory. In the current study, we try to establish the link between work design and SDT. In a series of experimental studies, effects of various work characteristics on one’s intrinsic motivation are directly examined. These work characteristics, from the provision of task choice, the setting of task difficulty to the designing of feedback mechanism, are all closely related to the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs.In existing management and psychology studies, intrinsic motivation was mainly measured by two approaches, which are free choice and self-report. Although both measurements reflect the intrinsic motivation to a certain extent, adopting these approaches, one’s intrinsic motivation in accomplishing a certain task cannot be measured or quantified in a direct and proper manner. Thus, besides measuring one’s intrinsic motivation through these approaches, we will probe other feasible approaches in order to measure one’s intrinsic motivation more objectively.In 2006, the interdisciplinary research field of Neuromanagement was put forward, which incorporates Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology perspectives into Management studies. Resorting to cognitive neuroscience approaches, researchers get to inquire into cognitive mechanisms underlying one’s decision making processes and observed behaviors. Intrinsic motivation is an important psychological state, which allows Neuromanagement to come into full play in measuring its level. As a mainstream neuroscientific technique, Event-related Potential (ERP) has a rather high time precision. Thus, this technique can well be adopted to examine the complex motivational process. The motivational process can be divided into several sub-stages, and corresponding electrophysiological indicators can be adopted to objectively measure one’s intrinsic motivation during tasks.In work design, the provision of task choice may well satisfy one’s basic psychological need of autonomy. Besides, compared with superior dificuly, moderate difficulty better facilitates one’s perceived competence. In Study 1, through a behavioral experiment, we examined the effects of task choice and task difficulty on one’s intrinsic motivation during tasks. In addition, we paid special attention to an individual difference factor, which is one’s self-determination propensity. In this study, we resorted to classical behavioral indicators of self-report and free choice to measure one’s intrinsic motivation.Based on empirical findings from Study 1, we adopted the ERP approach to examine the effect of task choice on one’s intrinsic motivation. Considering the specific experimental paradigm being developed and characteristics of the experimental task being adopted, the motivational process was divided into the cue processing stage, the outcome anticipation stage and the outcome evaluation stage, and we measured one’s intrinsic motivation through the three ERP components of Cue-FRN, Outcome-SPN and d-FRN respectively.In work design, the specific feedback mechanism being developed and adopted has a major influence on one’s perceived competence. Thus, in Study 3, the role of feedback mechanism in influencing one’s intrinsic motivation was examined in an ERP experiment. The motivational process was divided into cue processing, task preparation and performance monitoring stages, and we resorted to Cue-FRN, Task-SPN and ERN to examine one’s intrinsic motivation in respective stages.Three basic conclusions were arrived at based on empirical findings. Firstly, work characteristics closely related to the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs are found to significantly influence one’s intrinsic motivation. Through the provision of choice, the setting of moderate difficulty and the development of a reasonable feedback mechanism, one’s intrinsic motivation can be fully facilitated. Besides feeling more self-determined, one also feels more competent in doing the chosen task. Task difficulty matching one’s capacity gives rise to strengthened perceived competence, while developing an appropriate feedback mechanism is critical for establishing and upholding one’s perceived competence.A second major conclusion is that one’s self-determination propensity will influence the effect of task choice in boosting one’s intrinsic motivation. For a person who actively pursuits self-determination and always acts in a self-determined manner, the positive effect of choice on intrinsic motivation would be enormous, which suggests that it is important to fully consider individual differences in work design. Another major finding is that the complex motivational process can be divided into five sub-stages, and corresponding ERP components can be adopted to measure one’s intrinsic motivation during tasks in a more objective manner.This is an exploratory study that adopts a cognitive neuroscience approach to examine one’s intrinsic motivation. Considerable contributions have been made to both Management and Cognitive Neuroscience. To begin with, the current study takes a comparatively novel perspective of work design, and an important link between work design and SDT has been established. Specifically, SDT provides a fundamental theoretical foundation and empirical evidences for work design with a psychology orientation. In addition, applying the cognitive neuroscience approach to examine one’s intrinsic motivation well complements classical self-report and free choice approaches. A cognitive processing model of the complex motivational process was proposed and two ERP experimental paradigms were developed, which can be adopted and extended to further examine other influencing factors of intrinsic motivation. To conclude, this is among the first neuroscientific investigations of SDT, which provides firsthand empirical evidences in support of this theory.
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