What Employees Mean When They Say “I Love My Job”
UIC Business research reveals that workplace enthusiasm is often driven by prosocial motives—helping others and building relationships—rather than self-promotion.
What It Really Means When Employees Say “I Love My Job”
A growing body of workplace advice encourages people to “love what they do.” Yet an important question has received surprisingly little attention in management research:
Why do employees choose to express that love for their work to others?
A study forthcoming in Academy of Management Discoveries by Katherine (Kat) Bae, assistant professor of management at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Mijeong Kwon of Rice University explores this question by examining what the authors call intrinsic motivation display—employees’ deliberate efforts to communicate their enthusiasm and enjoyment for their work to others in the workplace.
While previous research has focused largely on how observers react to expressed passion or enthusiasm, this study shifts the focus to the expresser’s perspective, exploring why employees intentionally make their intrinsic motivation visible in the first place.
Studying Motivation as a Social Behavior
To examine the phenomenon, the researchers collected qualitative and quantitative data from 215 full-time employees across multiple industries in the United States.
Participants described real moments when they intentionally expressed their enthusiasm for their work. In total, they reported over 500 distinct instances of intrinsic motivation display. To analyze these descriptions, the researchers used natural language processing (NLP) techniques to systematically identify patterns in employees’ explanations of:
- why they expressed motivation
- how they expressed it
- when and to whom they did so
- what outcomes they perceived afterward
This approach provided one of the most comprehensive empirical examinations of intrinsic motivation as a social behavior shaped by workplace interactions rather than merely an internal psychological state.
Two Motives Behind Displaying Passion
One of the study’s most striking findings is that employees’ expressions of enthusiasm are driven by two distinct types of motives.
Instrumental motives
Consistent with prior research, some employees expressed intrinsic motivation for strategic reasons, such as:
- making a good impression
- signaling competence or dedication
- gaining clients or promotions
Prosocial motives
However, the researchers found that prosocial motives were even more common. Many employees said they expressed enthusiasm in order to:
- inspire coworkers
- build relationships
- encourage team commitment
- show support or gratitude
In other words, employees often express passion for their work not to benefit themselves, but to benefit others. This discovery challenges the dominant assumption that visible enthusiasm at work is primarily strategic or self-serving.
Why It Matters
The findings highlight an overlooked social dimension of motivation. By showing that employees frequently express enthusiasm to benefit others—not just themselves—the research suggests that visible passion can help shape workplace relationships, team dynamics, and organizational culture.
More broadly, the study offers a nuanced understanding of motivation in organizations—not just as an individual experience, but as a shared, socially meaningful behavior.
About the Journal
Academy of Management Discoveries is part of the Academy of Management journal portfolio, one of the most prestigious families of journals in management and organizational research. The journal publishes phenomenon-driven empirical research that opens new theoretical directions for scholarship and practice. It has an impact factor of 4.8 (2024) and a five-year impact factor of 6.2, with an Article Influence Score of 3.08, reflecting the journal’s scholarly impact.
About the Author
Katherine K. Bae, assistant professor of management at UIC Business, studies workplace motivation and employee behavior. She has been invited to present her research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Stevens Institute of Technology. She was also invited to join the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, a leading outlet in organizational research, where board members play a key role in evaluating new scholarship and shaping the field’s direction.