"Motivating Employees and Volunteers of International Organisations:

Do Values Matter?"

David Giauque (UNIL), Frédéric Varone (UNIGE), Simon Hug (UNIGE), Ursula Häfliger (UZH), and Simon Anderfuhren-Biget (UNIGE)


Working papers


Research Question and Theoretical Framework

International organizations (IOs) face particular challenges when it comes to their workforce which comprises permanent employees, interns and field volunteers. At the same time, the personnel comes from diverse cultural backgrounds and works mostly as an expatriate workforce in headquarters or in the field. Understanding what motivates this diverse workforce and how this affects outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance etc. is thus of considerable importance.


The present research project studies these motivations, their antecedents and consequences, by drawing on two strands of the literature, namely the work on Public Service Motivation (PSM) and on Volunteer Motivation (VM). Both strands start from the presumption that motivated employees are the cornerstone of all organizations, in the private, the public and the non-profit sectors, as work motivation is one crucial determinant of individual and organizational performance. Many paradigms and theories sought to answer the longstanding question: "What motivates employees?" This project tries to identify the combination of factors explaining why employees and volunteers of IOs show various levels of work motivation. In particular, it focuses on the impacts of values, considered here as “higher order drives”, on work motivation. The research question is: "To what extent does the fit between personal values and organizational values of an IO contribute to the work motivation of its employees and volunteers?"


There is empirical evidence from studies on public and third sector organizations demonstrating that paid and unpaid employees may be motivated by intrinsic motives (including altruistic motives) as well as extrinsic ones - such as career advancement. Values (individual, organizational, their fit and respective interactions) constitute the core of the study, as they are central to both PSM and VM perspectives. Similarly the Person-Organization Fit (P-O fit) perspective focuses on the matching of organizational and individual characteristics. PSM as well as VM relies on need theories of motivation stating that public employees or volunteers are driven by the fulfilment of higher-order needs, such as particular values. While lower-order needs are considered to be fairly universal, higher-order needs are socially defined and characterise what is culturally valued. Therefore, cultural diversity of workforces, that is inherent to IOs functions, will build, besides values, the second theoretical layer of this study.


International Organisations: A Laboratory for Value Studies

IOs are an interesting field of investigation for value studies because of their multicultural workforce and the often normative organizational goals. Furthermore, IOs are also of interest to management scholars because they are at the intersection of two promising research subfields of the discipline: “intercultural management” and "management of non-profit organizations". IOs face very specific challenges related to their work settings and the very specific division of tasks:

In other words, the specificities of such organizations are particularly well suited to this study. For instance, it is very likely that cultural diversity, but also differences in work settings, division of tasks, and employment status influence the expectations of employees towards their job and towards their organization. These diverse expectations may, therefore, also impact individuals’ value motivations and individual perception of organizational values. Hitherto, these aspects of IOs have received very little attention by international organisations scholars. Therefore, the scientific findings of this study will be translated into concrete recommendations to improve HRM practices and work motivation in IOs.


Research Methodology

Based on our cumulative experiences in conducting research projects, online-surveys are very efficient tool to collect data on attitudes, perceptions and values, in a work organisation setting. We develop, in cooperation with participating IOs, a questionnaire based on batteries of items that have proven to be adequate and reliable:


The quantitative data collected by the aforementioned mean, will be analysed with different statistical techniques. Finally, a last sequence will consist in interviewing employees in order to better interpret our quantitative data. Thus, this qualitative sequence will be conducted at the end of the quantitative sequence and largely depends on the results of our survey and on the extent to which these results must be clarified or not.


The selection of IOs will be made in order to generate the greatest variance along several criteria that characterise them and their workforces:


The project will be carried out with AHRMIO (association for HRM in IOs). It is an association composed of HR managers and specialists including 70 members' representatives of IOs, agreed to be our point of reference and our link with the research field.


Research Team

Motivation processes are related to structures and processes and power relations in organizations through social regulation and more individual processes. Thus, the composition of the research team is one of the strengths of the project. It guarantees a comprehensive understanding of motivation in IOs, as well as the interdisciplinary perspective.