The Future of Work: How Job-Related Temporal Discounting Shapes Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

Due to the ongoing labour shortage, it is increasingly important for organizations to retain and nurture employees. As rewards are directly linked to work motivation, understanding how employees evaluate job-related rewards is crucial. People often prefer smaller, sooner rewards over later, larger rewards, a phenomenon known as temporal discounting (TD). This thesis explores the relationship between job-related temporal discounting (JRTD) and intrinsic work motivation (IWM), and whether this relationship is moderated by occupational future time perspective (OFTP) and organisational identification (OI). It was expected that individuals who prefer immediate rewards would report higher IWM (hypothesis 1), and that this effect would be weaker for those with high OFTP or strong OI (hypotheses 2 and 3). Data were collected through an online survey (N = 295) and analysed using multiple regression. Unexpectedly, a preference for immediate rewards was associated with lower IWM. However, individuals with high OFTP or OI still reported high IWM even when choosing immediate rewards, supporting hypotheses 2 and 3, but only for promotion-related rewards (JRTDpromo). These findings suggest that not all job-related rewards are viewed the same, differing on certainty, symbolism and goal orientation. For organizations, this highlights the importance of offering larger, later rewards and fostering OFTP and OI in the workplace. This study is the first to examine JRTD in relation to IWM, offering a new perspective on temporal discounting in organizational settings.