Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Self-determination can be thought of as the meeting place between freedom and ability in behavior. Thus, an individual who has a high amount of self-determination has the opportunity to experience countless behavioral and situational outcomes. Self-determination has been described as the ability to choose and conduct one’s own behavior (Deci, Connell, and Ryan,1989). Behavior choices can differ as numerously as the factors that drive them. Cokley (2017) defined racial identity as a social construct which may be formed by any group of individuals who have classified themselves as a part of a specific social collection. Research has shown a variety of behavioral motivations when addressed to self-determination that are unique to each racial identity (Flores et al, 2011). A survey was created to identify several cognitive constructs in individuals who have had job experience. This survey was distributed among a class of research methods students to forward to their contacts. The purpose of this study is to review the differences of self-determination scores across racial identity within a sample of individuals who have work experience. It is hypothesized that self-determination is significantly different across racial identity. This consideration is significant because multiracial identity possibly may open the door to an increased amount of behavior options to choose from. An ANOVA test was run and rendered results that demonstrated that self-determination scores were significantly different across the racial identities of White/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic/Latino, and Multiracial identities. This study demonstrates a starting point into the relationship of racial identity and self-determination.