Motivating people in companies: a systemic approach

Motivating people and teams to achieve common goals is a major preoccupation for any manager, whether in a private or public company, an administration or even a non-profit association. To encourage an employee to take action, the manager has the power of conviction and drive, his or her own charisma, as well as a certain number of means (remuneration, promotions, sanctions, etc.) made available to him or her by the organization. For him, the question is to discern the right lever to use to encourage, provoke, improve, regulate... To a large extent, managing is a matter of knowing the individual and his or her situation in his or her environment (physical, organizational, social, cultural...) in order to exert the right influence on him or her to motivate.

Yet the answer to this challenge, classically known in HRM (Human Resources Management) as the "motivation problem", is far from self-evident. In the first place, the word is a trap: a veritable catch-all, it designates the most dissimilar things, the worst and the best. Hence the vehement criticism it has received from certain researchers and academics. That's why, in a brief first paragraph, we thought it necessary to provide some much-needed clarification.

Secondly, for those (mostly American) authors who have taken the study of motivation seriously, the last half-century has seen the emergence of an immense literature. Each has attempted to understand the phenomenon from the analytical grid with which it is familiar: biological, psychological, psychoanalytical, sociological, anthropological, cognitivist, even philosophical. A comparative examination of the main explanatory models is therefore necessary. This will be the subject of 2 .

We will then have to draw from these models action methods that can actually be used by managers. This ambition is all the more justified given the fact that the theme of motivation is making a strong comeback on the corporate agenda. With the development of networked organizations, project-based structures, global flexibility, time-sharing, etc., motivating people and teams is becoming an increasingly complex and difficult operation, which cannot be left to recipes and approximations. And while there are many theories on the...