ABSTRACT
The field of work motivation has long recognized the potential role of stable individual differences as determinants of motivational tendencies and behavior (e.g., Atkinson, 1957; McClelland, 1951; Murray, 1938). Although research on these individual differences slowed significantly from the late 1960s to the early 1980s (Hough & Schneider, 1996), the past two decades have witnessed a flurry of empirical and conceptual work on the identification and examination of individual differences that demonstrate meaningful relationships with motivated behavior, including goal orientation (e.g., Payne, Youngcourt, & Beaubien, 2007), regulatory focus (Higgins, 1999), the trait of conscientiousness from the Big Five representation of personality (e.g., Barrick, Mount, & Strauss, 1993), and motivational traits (Kanfer & Heggestad, 1997). Given this research interest, the goal of this chapter is to synthesize the accumulated evidence for three of the more promising individual difference frameworks (goal orientation, regulatory focus, motivational traits), while also providing an assessment of the limitations within these research literatures and offering suggestions for advancing our understanding of how individual differences influence work motivation.
