Invited Reaction: Investigating the Influences of Core Self-Evaluations, Job Autonomy, and Intrinsic Motivation on In-Role Job Performance

The authors of this featured article (Joo, Jeung, & Yoon, 2010) respond to calls for further examination of how individual differences and workplace environment jointly impact organizational behavior. The authors integrate social psychology and management research to examine employee behavior and its relation to human resource development. Specifically, the authors seek to explicate how personality and job context influence individual performance. The authors suggest intrinsically motivated employees are valuable assets who are able to accomplish necessary tasks without consuming considerable organizational resources (e.g., supervisory time, attention, etc.). Because the performance of intrinsically motivated employees ultimately benefits the organization, human resource professionals should understand and support antecedents that empower their most capable employees. The authors investigate two factors that may contribute to intrinsic motivation, self-concept (i.e., core self-evaluations), and job context (i.e., autonomy). They also discuss potential implications of their findings. The authors integrate a review of extant literature, utilize generally accepted methodologies, identify threats to the validity of the study's conclusions, reflect on possible limitations of the project, and present potential areas for future research. In this invited reaction, the author discusses a few concerns that may diminish the impact of the featured article's potential contribution. Specifically, issues arise in terms of the theoretical development of the hypotheses as well as the methodological execution that empirically tests them.