Personal Goals and Organizational Goals

Certain people appear to be motivated and engaged in achieving an aspirational purpose or personal goal such that it aligns their efforts, their thinking, and their decision making. The contemporary research on the topics of purpose, company vision, motivation and engagement is prolific. Duffy and Dik referenced approximately 40 recent studies on the topic of purpose and calling and the connection to work-related and general well-being. Also, there are numerous practitioner books on using purpose, calling, and vision to reach the heart of an employee, such as Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace.

Yet, even if individuals are externally motivated by a company's vision and are working in a stimulating environment, they are still unlikely to experience the intrinsic motivation, engagement, and fulfillment that comes from working toward the accomplishment of one's own personal ambition. Consider that often, at work, one is coached to comply with someone else's vision; working hard to be the underling their boss wants them to be in order to contribute to the goals of the organization. Instead of advancing toward one's personal definition of who they want to become, their ideal self, employees are working toward an "ought self," or the understanding of what one should be based on someone else's vision. Through the development of the self-determination theory and the need for competency and autonomy, Deci and Ryan contributed to understanding motivation in the social context; explaining that experiencing motivation and engagement by embracing someone else's vision may very well work for a while. Boyatzis and Akrivou advanced the understanding by discovering that one can be perfectly content working toward someone else's goal or objectives until one realizes that their personal dreams are being compromised because this "ought self" does not match their ideal self. This awakening leads to feelings of betrayal and frustration for having wasted energy pursuing the dreams and expectations of others. This creates what Boyatzis called negative emotional attractors (NEA) which have an adverse effect on motivation and engagement.

This study is timely for businesses because employee commitment to the organization, connection to its purpose and engagement at work are all cited as major motivators of people staying in a company. From the individual's perspective, it has long been identified in the literature that the work one does is significant to a person's sense of meaning and identity. In Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace, the editors pull from work all the way back to Adler in 1931 and Erikson in 1963 to support their statement that, "Along with love, play, and community, work at its best offers a core context for construction of self and contributing to society in ways heartfelt, personally meaningful and socially relevant". Yet, there is limited empirical support for the role one's personal ambitions play in the symbiotic relationship to a company's higher purpose vision.