Motivation theory has produced one of the most robust bodies of knowledge in organizational research, yet it has left a consequential question unaddressed: how do organizations perceive motivational conditions as they change, before those conditions consolidate into measurable decline? Engagement surveys, performance measures, and retention data share a constitutive limitation: they operate downstream of the pre-cognitive signal, detecting motivational conditions only after the window for low-cost intervention has already closed. This paper identifies the perceptual antecedent that the literature has not specified and proposes a construct to address it. Extending Self-Determination Theory, organizational sensing research, and the behavioral theory of organizational innovating, this paper proposes Motivational Signal Integrity (MSI) as the capacity of a system to detect, interpret, and act on signals of autonomy, competence, and relatedness before those conditions consolidate into measurable decline. MSI is grounded in the Einfühlung framework, which establishes that motivational conditions generate patterned pre-cognitive signals, registered in the bodies and behavior of organizational members, prior to conscious awareness or formal measurement. Three testable propositions are advanced: that high-MSI organizations detect motivational degradation in advance of any statistically significant change in conventional measures (detection precedence); that the detection window is a function of Einfühlung infrastructure strength (pre-cognitive sensitivity); and that MSI degradation precedes and predicts broader Organizational Flow Decay (cascade alignment). The practical consequence is precise: before motivation declines in measurable form, it becomes perceptually unavailable. MSI names the organizational capacity to close that gap, and specifies what that capacity requires, how it degrades, and what follows when it fails.
David S. Morgan (Thu,) studied this question.