Relations of leadership empowerment behavior and job enrichment with career satisfaction: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation

Career is defined as a set of jobs that a person takes during his life. Employee satisfaction of his career has some positive outcomes such as higher performance and commitment. It seems that leadership empowerment behavior like subordinates` participation in decision making and autonomy assignment and also job enrichment can result in career satisfaction. Given the importance of career satisfaction consequences for organizations, the current research was conducted with the aim to investigate the relationship between of leadership empowerment behavior and job enrichment and career satisfaction. Intrinsic motivation was considered as a mediating variable in this relationship. The research sample included 438 personnel of Iran Polyacryl companies who completed the following research instruments: The Career Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ), the Job Enrichment Questionnaire (JEQ), the Leadership Empowerment Behavior Questionnaire (LEQ) and the Intrinsic Motivation Questionnaire (IMQ). Results indicated that intrinsic motivation plays a partial mediation role in the relationship between leadership empowerment behavior (participation in decision making and job autonomy) and job enrichment with career satisfaction. According to the findings, organizations should enrich employee jobs. Also, leaders and supervisors should increase employee participation in decisions and give them autonomy. This behavior may increase employees` intrinsic motivation by empowering them and finally result in an increase in career satisfaction.