Support from managers and co-workers into different work contexts.

Recent studies have shown that not only managers can increase their subordinates’ work motivation by using an autonomy supportive leadership style; support from co-workers can even be more beneficial. Previous studies have not investigated if the impact of support is the same across different settings. In a vignette study, we manipulated the autonomy support (support vs. thwarting), the source (manager vs. co-worker) and the work context (office vs. restaurant). Participants were 383 (200 males; 178 females) U.S. workers who were recruited through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), an online contract labor portal. We found significant main effects for autonomy support and the work context but not for the source. More importantly, we found a significant three-way interaction, which indicated that informal contexts seem to invite a positive response to co-workers’ autonomy support whereas formal contexts seem to require managerial autonomy support to enhance intrinsic motivation.