Significance of Monitoring and Control for Employees’ Felt Trust, Motivation, and Mastery

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to investigate the importance of monitoring and employee control for employees’ felt trust, as well as felt trust as a mediating variable between monitoring and control, intrinsic motivation and mastery. A random sample of 3015 Norwegian employees was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Monitoring was negatively related to employees’ felt trust, while employees’ control over decisions was related to higher felt trust. In turn, felt trust was related to employees’ intrinsic motivation and experience of mastery. Felt trust also partially mediated the relationship between employee control and intrinsic motivation, employee control and mastery, and entirely mediated the relationship between monitoring and intrinsic motivation and monitoring and mastery. The findings highlight the importance of felt trust for theory related to the workplace: Our findings support that employees are less intrinsically motivated if they are monitored because they feel less trusted.