Motivation Science
© 2020 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 6, No. 3, 201–202
ISSN: 2333-8113
LEGACIES IN MOTIVATION SCIENCE—HEINZ HECKHAUSEN
Motivation and Volition at Work
Hugo M. Kehr
Technical University of Munich
This short article illustrates from the author’s personal experiences how Heckhausen’s empirical and
conceptual work on the phases of the action process, implicit motives, intrinsic motivation and flow,
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
volitional action regulation, and motivational self-management became influential for these research
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
areas in applied settings and for practical applications.
Keywords: Heinz Heckhausen, motivation, volition, work
Back in 1993, a research group on knowledge and action was
about to be launched at the University of Munich. So, I asked my
PhD supervisor, Lutz von Rosenstiel, if I could be of any help in
writing the proposal. He gave me a long look. I had just started my
PhD, and, what made it worse, I was not even a psychology major.
But then he broke the silence and asked: “How about motivation
and leadership?” I eagerly answered “Yes,” despite the fact that I
had never worked on motivation before. So he gave me what he
considered “the bible” of motivation research—the second edition
of Heckhausen’s seminal monograph Motivation und Handeln
(Heckhausen, 1989). I read it from cover to cover and excerpted it
to about 100 hand-written pages in nearly microscopic lettering,
and then I read it again. This lay the foundation for my future work
on motivation and volition at work.
Right away, I was intrigued by the Rubicon model (Heckhausen
& Gollwitzer, 1987), which conceptualizes motivation and volition
as two different mindsets of the action process. I found that this
sequential approach to volition is not antagonistic to— but can be
nicely combined with—a so-called “imperative concept of voli-
tion” (Sokolowski, 1997), the notion that volition is needed either
to act against one’s motivation or when one lacks sufficient mo-
tivation. This led to the conflict-oriented process model of moti-
vation and volition (Kehr, 1999).
In his earlier work, Heckhausen advanced the understanding of
implicit motives, especially with respect to the achievement mo-
tive, and he was the first to clearly differentiate and develop
content analysis procedures for the assessment of the two compo-
nents of the achievement motive: hope of success and fear of
failure (Heckhausen, 1963). Furthermore, Heckhausen’s (1989;
Chapter 15) analysis of different approaches to intrinsic motivation
is still very instructive. I adopted his view that intrinsic motivation
results from “thematic congruence” (Gleichthematik) between
This work was partially enabled by Templeton Rlg. Trust (TRT 0119)
granted to the author.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to X Hugo
M. Kehr, TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich,
Arcisstraße 21, D-80333 Munich, Germany. E-mail: kehr@tum.de
201
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mot0000168
goal and activity, from engaging in an activity as an end in itself.
This notion fits nicely with McClelland’s view that implicit mo-
tives are aroused by factors intrinsic to the activity, whereas
explicit motives are aroused by factors extrinsic to the activity
(Koestner, Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991). In effect, Heckhaus-
en’s theorizing on implicit motives and intrinsic motivation fueled
the proposition that intrinsic motivation results when implicit
motives are aroused, as long as there are no competing cognitive
preferences stemming from explicit motives or goals (Kehr,
2004b). Heckhausen (1989) also theorized about flow, and, in line
with Csikszentmihalyi (1999), he conceptualized flow as a special
case of intrinsic motivation. Rheinberg and his colleagues further
elaborated on flow and developed the flow short scale (Rheinberg,
Vollmeyer, & Engeser, 2003), which permitted the assessment of
flow in workplace and other applied settings. For instance,
Schattke, Brandstätter, Taylor, and Kehr (2014) used this scale in
sport climbing and found that flow arises when intrinsic motiva-
tion is combined with adequate subjective abilities, confirming a
key proposition of the compensatory model of work motivation
and volition (Kehr, 2004b).
Heckhausen also advanced the analysis of volitional strategies. In
an unpublished article, he theorized about specific volitional strategies
(that he called “metamotivational processes”; Heckhausen, 1984) for
different action phases. He combined his research efforts with Kuhl’s
(e.g., Heckhausen & Kuhl, 1985) on volitional action regulation,
which later fed into the volitional components inventory (Kuhl &
Fuhrmann, 1998), which permitted the empirical study of volitional
processes in a workplace setting (Kehr, 2004a).
Finally, Heckhausen was also pioneering in motivational inter-
vention (Heckhausen & Krug, 1982). Whereas he was skeptical
about the notion that a person’s implicit motives can be changed
by training, he did advance what he called “motivation psycho-
logical self-management” (motivationspsychologisches Sebstman-
agement; Heckhausen, 1984, p. 6), a cognitive training program
consisting of goal-setting, coping, and self-motivation, which in-
spired self-management training (SMT; Kehr & Rosenstiel, 2006)
as well as the leadership by motivation management training
program (Kehr & Rawolle, 2013).
 202 KEHR

To wrap up, Heckhausen’s empirical and conceptual work on
the phases of the action process, implicit motives, intrinsic moti-
vation and flow, volitional action regulation, and motivational
self-management were immensely helpful both for advancing
these research areas in applied settings and for practical applica-
tions. Today, I am indeed very happy that I began my academic
career by reading “the bible” (Heckhausen, 1989).
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