Does organizational reciprocity improve employees’ motivation? The mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction

While the effect of organizational reciprocity on employees’ attitudes and behaviors has received much attention, the relationships between different forms of reciprocity and the quality of motivation remain largely unexplored. Building on social exchange theory and self-determination theory, we test a theoretical model integrating reciprocity and motivation based on survey data from 753 professional employees across China. We find that generalized and balanced reciprocity positively affect autonomous motivation and controlled motivation respectively, whereas negative reciprocity adversely influences both forms of motivation. Additionally, basic psychological need satisfaction mediates the associations between generalized reciprocity and autonomous motivation, and between negative reciprocity and autonomous motivation. Further, autonomy support is found to moderate the relationship between generalized reciprocity and basic psychological need satisfaction, and between negative reciprocity and basic psychological need satisfaction. Our findings thus suggest that different forms of reciprocity are integrally associated with two types of motivation.