Of Motives and Management: A Measured Monograph

It has been established that specific implicit motive profiles predict job performance and career progression. However, it has not been a topic of examination to distinguish the role implicit motives play in developing certain leadership behaviors that, in turn, lead to job performance and success. My hypotheses were that, firstly, the ownership structure of organizations will play a distinct role in establishing the implicit motives that lead to managerial progression and, secondly, implicit motives will better predict long-term (general) leadership behaviors whereas explicit motives will better predict situation-specific leadership behaviors. In Study 1 the effects of three types of organizations as well as the effects of executive level/responsibility on the implicit motive profiles of managers were assessed. The types of organizations were family-owned and -led, foreign-owned and family-led, as well as publicly-owned and -led after previous family ownership. Data collection took place between the years 2004 and 2010. It could be demonstrated that an organization's ownership structure was significantly correlated with the implicit motives of managers, while executive level/responsibility was not. In Study 2 implicit and explicit motives were tested as predictors of competency scores in three separate cases. Case 1 consisted of data from one pharmaceutical company based in Spain; Case 2 encompassed data from 13 different companies in several industries and countries; and Case 3 included data for one global services and technology company with headquarters in the US. Data were collected between the years 2002 and 2010. The results yielded were inconsistent across cases. Unexpectedly, both implicit and explicit motives were predictive of competency scores. Beside the main effects, interaction effects of implicit motives and congruity between implicit and explicit motives were considered. I also included implicit motives of the CEO, as scored in the letter to the shareholder, as well as the congruence of manager implicit motives with CEO implicit motives into these analyses. Effects of these variables were also inconsistent across cases. Study 3 extended previous investigations to explore the effects of implicit and explicit motives as well as leadership styles on organizational climate. Organizational climate was observed from two perspectives: actual climate as perceived by subordinates and ideal climate as desired by managers. Based on management data collected in the years 2000 through 2008 for four companies in the agriculture, mining, telecommunications and transportation sectors, findings indicated that only leadership styles consistently accounted for changes in organizational climate. However, ideal desired climate could also be partially explained by managers’ explicit motives in some cases. As expected, implicit motives did not predict organizational climate in any of the analyses