Investigating the Linkage between Intrinsic Motivation and Project Team Satisfaction in Undergraduate Agricultural Leadership Students

Abstract

Organizations have increased the amount of work that is completed by project teams over the past several decades. This trend is projected to continue into the foreseeable future. In response to this trend, the academic community has increased the number of project team based learning experiences for students in classes. The challenge has been that students do not always enjoy team projects; frequently students express a lack of satisfaction with the project as well as the project team. The aim of this research is to empower agricultural education faculty to make better pedagogical decisions regarding agricultural leadership student project teams based on student intrinsic motivation leading to increased team satisfaction. No empirical research exists evaluating the importance of individual intrinsic motivation on project team satisfaction within an academic agricultural leadership setting. The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate agricultural leadership students’ intrinsic motivation to complete a project influenced their project team satisfaction. Intrinsic motivation explained 49% of the variance in project team satisfaction scores. An implication of this finding is that to improve levels of satisfaction it is important to ensure the project is personally meaningful to the individual, thus increasing their intrinsic motivation.