Research On Influencing Factors Of Virtual Team Members’ Motivations

Virtual team has a rich history since the late of20th century, but which is still relatively laggingbehind in management practice. With the advent of the era of human performance, the research topics inthe recent ten years gradually transform passive management strategies, such as performance, cooperationand conflict management to initiative management strategies such as transformational leadership,self-directed training management research field, therefore exploring how to motivate and release thepotential of employees from a humanistic perspective would become the future research trend.Self-determination theory is contemporary important motivation theory in the perspective of positivepsychology, which indicates that individuals have the innate growth needs and potential on birth and wouldconstitute intrinsic motivation to complete the task if they can satisfy the basic psychological needs.The study selects self-efficacy, team-reward allocation, work autonomy and task interdependence asindependent variables from three aspects including individual difference, work characteristics and workenvironment. These independent variables are related to the core three basic psychological needs in theself-determination theory. In addition, the study selects competence need, relatedness need, autonomy need,explicit intrinsic motivation and implicit intrinsic motivation as the dependent variables. The researchthrough experiment to manipulates independent variables and discusses effects of the above factors onintrinsic motivation. Our experiment’s design is2(self-efficacy)*2(team-based reward allocation)*2(workautonomy)*2(task interdependence), and the conclusions are as follows.(1) Results indicate the significant interactions effects among self-efficacy, team-based rewardallocation and work autonomy on the virtual team members’ competence needs. Specifically, Whether high or low work autonomy, high self-efficacy individuals can meet more competence need relative to lowself-efficacy individuals in equity team-based reward allocation relative to equality team-based allocation.In the high work autonomy working condition, Low self-efficacy individuals can meet less competenceneeds in equity team-based reward allocation relative to equality team-based reward allocation. In theequity team-based reward allocation working condition, Low self-efficacy individual can meet lesscompetence need in high work autonomy relative to low work autonomy working condition.(2) Results indicate significant interactions effects between self-efficacy and team-based rewardallocation on the virtual team members’ relatedness needs. Specifically, high self-efficacy individuals meetmore relatedness needs relative to low self-efficacy in equity team-based reward allocation environment.(3) Results indicate the main effects of task interdependence and work autonomy are significant.Specifically, individual can meet more autonomy need relatively in low task interdependence or high workautonomy environments. The main effect of task interdependence on autonomy needs reflects the Chinesecollectivism spirit. Under the condition of high task interdependence, due to Chinese collectivism spirit thebehaviors and decision-makings of individuals are more vulnerable to the influence of other groupmembers.(4) Results indicate the significant interaction effects between self-efficacy, team-based rewardallocation, work autonomy and task interdependence on the virtual team members’ explicit motivation.First, explicit intrinsic motivations exist significant differences between high self-efficacy individuals andlow self-efficacy individuals in the following conditions:①High self-efficacy individuals have higherexplicit motivation relative to low self-efficacy individuals in equity team-based reward allocation, lowtask interdependence and high work autonomy environments.②High self-efficacy individuals have higherexplicit motivation relative to low self-efficacy individual in equity team-based reward allocation, low task interdependence and low work autonomy environments.③Low self-efficacy individuals relative to highself-efficacy individuals have higher explicit motivation in equality team-based reward environment, hightask interdependence and low work autonomy environments. Then, high self-efficacy individuals’ explicitintrinsic motivations exist significant differences in the following conditions to complete the task:④Underthe working conditions of high autonomy, equity team-based reward allocation, low task interdependencerelative to high task interdependence, high self-efficacy individuals can have higher explicit intrinsicmotivation.⑤Under the working conditions of low autonomy, equality team-based reward allocation, lowtask interdependence relative to high task interdependence, high self-efficacy individuals can have higherexplicit intrinsic motivation.⑥Under the working conditions of low autonomy, high task interdependence,equality team-based reward allocation relative to equality team-based reward allocation, high self-efficacyindividuals can have higher explicit intrinsic motivation.⑦Under the working conditions of high taskinterdependence, equality team-based reward allocation, high work autonomy relative to low workautonomy, high self-efficacy individuals can have higher explicit intrinsic motivation. Lastly, lowself-efficacy individuals’ explicit intrinsic motivations exist significant differences in the followingcondition to complete the task.⑧Under the working conditions of low task interdependence, high workautonomy, equality team-based reward allocation relative to equity team-based reward allocation, lowself-efficacy individuals have higher explicit intrinsic motivation. Based on the Combination conditions ofvarious variables as independent variables and the explicit intrinsic motivation for the dependent variable,the conclusion of F test showed significant difference and also verify the conclusions of the simple effectanalysis.(5) The relevant index between implicit and explicit motivation is low and notsignificant. In addition, results indicate the significant main effect of self-efficacy and significant interactions effect between self-efficacy and team-based reward allocation on thevirtual team members’ implicit motivations. Specifically, high self-efficacy have higherimplicit motivation than low self-efficacy individual and high self-efficacy have higherimplicit motivation than low self-efficacy individual in equity team-based rewardenvironment.