Abstract This study aimed at inspecting problems surrounding the concept of motivation, discovering the ontological reasons behind them, providing a comprehensive definition for motivation, and introducing a new way around the controversies through a social theory of human motivated behavior. The new theory is built on Gilles Deleuze’s conceptualization of ontology and his definition of open systems, Robert Merton’s categorization of deviant behaviors, and the fact that behaviors with some preexisting goals and paths toward them precede the individuals. Based on this new social theory, every motivated behavior precedes the individuals who take them in terms of pre-established goals and paths toward them. This way, every motivated behavior in the initial stage could be of six types: structural, innovative, conforming, path-adopted, unmotived, and agentic. The new social theory does not reject the previous motivational theories and findings, but provides as open framework to actually apply them in real life situations.

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