Self-determined Job Motivation And Its Mechanism

The employment circumstances of the graduates have gained people's attention for years. And the motivation is one of the most important factors for the graduates to obtain employment. Based on the self-determination theory and self-efficacy theory, this essay tries to study the self-determined motivation of obtaining employment of the graduates that are looking for a job, and to explore the self-efficacy of those graduates and the positive and negative emotional support, informational support they receive, and what kind of the influence the self-efficacy and these support would have on their self-determined motivation, which help to figure out the ways and means to help the graduates to get employed.The questionnaire results of the new graduates from four famous universities in Shanghai show that these graduates have strong autonomous motivation and external motivation without any differences between the sexes, among the degree levels, majors, and where they came from. And the self-efficacy has significant positive correlation with the self-determination motivation, which means the graduates with stronger self-efficacy have more autonomous motivation. And the positive emotional support the graduates received also has significant positive correlation with the self-determination motivation and the self-efficacy, on the contrary, the negative emotional support has negative correlation with the self-determination motivation and the self-efficacy. And informational support has significant positive correlation with the self-determination motivation and the self-efficacy as well. The data analysis suggests self-determined theory is capable of explain the facts of the employment, and the students can be motivated by positive emotional support and informational support. Therefore, in order to help the students to get employed, the campus career information service needs further improvement. And the students need more career education and instruction.