Motivation and Care Dimensions in Caring Labor: Implications for Nurses’ Well-being and Employment Outcomes

• In Event: 582 - Regular Session. For Love and Money: Emotions and Economics in Caring Labor

Abstract

The familial ideal of caregiving is the dominant model of conceptualizing care even in formal care settings, which strongly emphasizes the importance of prosocial motivation. At the same time, the technical requirements to provide care as a nurse and extrinsic rewards (e.g., wages) have increased, which may encourage individuals who have intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to pursue care work. The goal of the current study is to explore whether prosocial, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation have differential relationships with worker outcomes. Put more broadly, we aim to understand whether an individual's source of motivation is related to a person’s well-being and employment decisions. To address these aims, we draw on a sample of 765 nurses in a large and diverse health system in the United States. Our findings suggest that nurses who have high intrinsic and extrinsic motivation actually have better health and employment outcomes (less likely to say that they will leave, lower burnout, fewer physical symptoms), while those with high prosocial motivation are more likely to report job burnout. Our findings suggest that the gendered expectation that nurses will be highly motived by altruistic, maternal motivations does not result in greater commitment to one’s employer, and indeed, it actually appears to increase job burnout. Our findings have implications for how "good" care is conceptualized in formal caregiving settings.

Authors

• Janette S. Dill, University of Akron

• Rebecca J. Erickson, University of Akron

• James Diefendorff, University of Akron