"Want to" versus "have to": intrinsic and extrinsic motivators as predictors of compliance behavior intention

“Useless”, “money burning”, or “black holes”, that is how media and professionals describe compliance practices, today. Practitioners are fed up with control systems, codes of conducts and systems for compliance management that are increasing in sizes but not in effectiveness. In order to help practitioners clarify what actually makes employees comply with their compliance program, this study examines intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of 119 employees from procurement and sales. We contribute to the existing motivation literature testing the self-determination theory in low and high hierarchical levels. Our findings show that intrinsic motivators are more strongly positively related to compliance intention on higher hierarchical levels than on lower ones. However, employees from higher hierarchies show overall less compliance intention than employees from lower hierarchies.