Expectations, Self-Determination, Reward-Seeking Behaviour and Well-Being in Malta’s Financial Services Sector

Despite the vast research on the productive aspect of rewards, little is known on how the changes in employees’ behaviour, made to enhance their chances of achieving a reward, influence employee well-being. Previous work has failed to address the process of reward-seeking behaviour from an employee’s point of view as the focus was on the motivational aspect of rewards. This thesis uses the case of Malta’s financial institutions to examine the relationship between reward-seeking behaviour from bonuses and promotions and employee well-being by drawing on expectancy theory and self-determination theory. To achieve its aims, this study adopts a qualitative approach, wherein 42 semi-structured interviews with employees and four interviews with human resources managers are conducted at financial institutions in Malta – two of which are small and medium-sized enterprises and one is a large-sized institution. Memos and diary notes are also used to complement the data collected from the semi-structured interviews. Overall, the results strongly support the idea that while almost everyone values rewards, employees differ in their willingness to engage in reward-seeking behaviour and its influence on well-being. This thesis contributes to knowledge through the development of a theoretical model – the four quadrant reward-seeking behaviour – well-being model. This typology based model classifies employees into four main categories, namely, highly motivated, apathetic, work-life balanced and work-life imbalanced. This two by two matrix also led to another model that depicts reward-seeking behaviour and well-being as a non-sequential process. The findings have practical implications for human resources practitioners as they now have the capacity to visualise the actual employee mix according to the categories of the model and act on any significant gaps.