Towards a holistic understanding of human motivation: core values―the entrance to people's commitment?

摘要

In the paper, the concepts of core values and core competencies have been defined by relating these concepts to human needs. Core values were related to the satisfaction of human's spiritual needs, and core competencies were related to the satisfaction of human mental and psychological needs. In the paper it was also argued that the existing theories or frameworks for understanding human motivation and commitment have 'ignored' the so-called spiritual dimension of satisfying human needs (the personal core values). However, the empirical findings presented in this paper show a strong indication for the hypothesis that this excluded dimension is the most important dimension for understanding people's loyalties and commitments. The Trinity Model is suggested in order to capture this dimension along with the other two already identified dimensions. The suggested Trinity Model does not contain situation-based motivation processes. There are many useful theoretical models, in which the focus is both on the processes and the different key variables, together with the interactions between these different variables. It is our view that process-oriented situation-oriented and content theories are needed to capture the complex phenomena of human motivation. They will cover different aspects of human motivation. In this relationship, it should also be mentioned that in our view, the major parts of the so-called process and contingency theories are not treating the spiritual human dimension explicitly, as was the case with the content theories. Folding the spiritual dimension into the framework of process and contingency theories can be a future research area. The identified interrelationships between different variables in Fig. 2 can be useful inputs to the further development of such process model(s).