Do motivations to join the organization influence job performance? An application of the cognitive schemas theory to call center employees

We develop a framework for uncovering mental reasoning to join an organizations, and more generally for understanding motivational representations of individual decisions in this regard. The research investigates the reasons of 167 people for joining a call center. The laddering methodology, based on the elicitation of motives and justifications for one’s motives, is used to uncover members’ cognitive schemas consisting of a structure of interconnected motives organized hierarchically. A heuristic summary of motives and their interrelationships (i.e., a cognitive map) was also derived. Finally, the study demonstrates how elicited motives and chains of motives are efficacious in explaining job performance