Johtajien identiteettipohjainen johtamismotivaatio vankempaa kuin asiantuntijoilla

Motivation to Lead's relationship to remaining and entering a leadership position

Toropainen Laura, Auvinen Elina, Rantanen Johanna, Feldt Taru - University of Jyväskylä  

The aim of the four-year longitudinal study was to investigate how Motivation to Lead (MTL; Chan & Drasgow, 2001) and demographics (e.g., age, gender, occupational background) differ in career transition groups, namely remaining or entering a leadership or professional position. Altogether 447 highly educated professionals were involved in this study. They were professors, university researchers and teachers, business school graduates, and academic engineers and architects. The average age of the participants was 46 years (range 25-64) and 53% of the participants were women.

Motivation to Lead (MTL) is "an individual-differences construct that affects a leader's or leader-to-be's decisions to assume leadership training, roles, and responsibilities" (Chan & Drasgow, 2001, 482). It was measured with a shortened 9-item version of the scale MTL-9 (Auvinen et al., 2020). The dimensions of MTL are presented below. 

• Affective-Identity (AI-MTL) • Intrinsic motivation • Leading out of joy 
• Social-Normative (SN-MTL) • Extrinsic motivation • Leading out of duty 
• Non-Calculative (NC-MTL) • Altruism • Leading out of general willingess despite the costs of leadership position

The results of MANCOVA showed that: • Those who entered a leadership or professional position or remained in a leadership position experienced stronger AI-MTL than to those who remained in a professional position during follow-up period • Those who remained in a leadership position experienced stronger overall MTL than those who remained in a professional profession during follow-up period • The levels of SN-MTL, NC-MTL and overall MTL decrease at statistically significant levels during follow-up period.