An examination of MARFORRES purchase cardholder and approving official self-motivation

Abstract

The focus of this research was to evaluate the intrinsic task motivation or "the positively valued experiences (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) that cardholders and approving officials within the Marine Forces Reserve obtain from performance of the duties associated with the purchase card program. The researcher sought to determine the prevalence of several contributors to intrinsic task motivation and how they affect performance and task satisfaction. The research includes an examination of Government, DoD, and DoN micropurchase program background and procedures with particular emphasis on the purchase card program at MARFORRES. This program background combined with a review of intrinsic motivation literature was used to devise and test a model of cardholder and approving official intrinsic task motivation. A survey was designed to evaluate this model and data were gathered from a sample of 114 cardholders and approving officials from MARFORRES. The results of the research indicate that task criticality, task competence, feedback, and autonomy were contributors to intrinsic task motivation. Autonomy was found to have the strongest relationship with motivation as well as quality of task performance and individual task satisfaction. Recommendations regarding training and streamlining purchase card activities are provided as an aid to decisionmaking in purchase card program management.