30 Chapter8 The Motivation to Work to the concept of "energizing"an individual It was assumed that unless incentives were avail. able,an individual would remain passive. There is not much support for that view of motivation.Current motivational discussions revolve around the concept of direction more than that of simple energy enhancement.All people,unless ill or impaired,will expend energy in one way or another.The same prin- ciples that apply to work motivation will apply to the motivation to do things other than work In some senses,the employer is always compet- ing with other forces for the time and attention "What do you think...should we get started of the employee.Some employers might con. on that motivation research or not? sider a workaholic to be a"win"because the person devotes inordinate energy to work. The nonworkaholic employee feels tension between competing forces:work on the one hand,and family,leisure,school,and healthy activities on the other.A consideration of work motivation in a vacuum is a meaningless exercise.Work motivation can only have meaning within the context of a rich and complex life in which there are forces competing with the workplace for time and effort.We will consider the challenge of this work-life bal- ance in detail in both the next chapter and Chapter 10 when we consider stress. Motivation and Personality As we saw in Chapter 3.I-O psychologists generally agree that personality can be divided into dimensions such as agreeableness,conscientiousness,and so forth.We also saw that personal- ity can be a predictor of work performance and possibly even occupational choice.Since we know that motivation can also affect work performance,it is reasonable to consider what,if any,connections may exist between personality and work motivation.Judge and llies(2002) completed a meta-analysis on exactly that topic.They examined the relationship between measures of the Big Five personality traits and various indicators of motivation from several current motivational theories.These indicators included the number and difficulty of goals set by an individual,belief on the part of the individual that hard work would lead to rewards,and belief on the part of the individual in his or her ability to perform a task or job.Judge and llies found 65 studies and 105 correlation coefficients that could be included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that strong and consistent relationships do exist between personality characteristicsand performance motivation.Neuroticism was consistently negatively related to performance motivation (recall that the positive end of the neuroticism scale is emo- tional stability).In contrast,conscientiousness was positively related to all indicators of performance motivation.Put another way.conscientious and emotionally stable individu- als set more challenging goals,were more likely to believe that hard work would lead to rewards,and were more confident in their ability to accomplish a task or job. Research evidence continues to accumulate linking personality to motivation.Ng. Sorenson.and Eby (2006)conducted a meta-analysis of the relationships between locus of Leoes of comtrel The ertent control and motivation.Locus of control (LOC)refers to the extent to which an individual 每hch aniedadud ue明 views events as resulting from his or her own actions (an internal LOC)or from outside causes (an external LOC).People with an internal LOC believe that they can control their 00erm线市业0us色 environments;people with an external LOC believe that they are at the mercy of external environments with little ability to influence outcomes.The researchers'meta-analysis showed a clear and positive connection between an internal LOC and work motivation.The point here is not that people with an internal LOCare in better objective circumstances for affecting