Marylène Gagné: Motivated to succeed

Barbara Black

When Marylène Gagné speaks to an audience, she often starts by handing out little slips of paper and asking people to arrange them in groups. On each slip is written a reason we do our jobs.

There’s no right way to arrange the statements, but the exercise gets people thinking about different kinds of motivation in the workplace. There’s intrinsic pleasure. (“Because this job is very interesting.”) There’s extrinsic motivation, pure and simple. (“Because I get a pay cheque.”) But there’s motivation that falls between these two. (“I don’t want to fail. I would be disappointed in myself.”)

Gagné, who was awarded a Concordia University Research Award for 2007, thinks the application of motivation theory to the field of management is richer and more complex than was previously supposed. In a recent paper, she calls for more research, and intends to follow it up herself.

In June 2005, she published a paper with her PhD thesis supervisor, Edward L. Deci of the University of Rochester, N.Y., in the Journal of Organizational Behavior on “Self-determination theory and work motivation” that has already earned about 10 citations.

“We’re hearing from graduate students, organizational professors and practitioners. They all say it makes sense,” she said. Now she’s looking for the right conditions to do research in the field.

Self-determination theory was developed to differentiate extrinsic motivation into types that differ in their degree of autonomy. Many lab studies were done and the concept received widespread attention in education, health care and sport, but little in management. Gagné said that Deci, who was one of the developers of self-determination theory some 30 years ago, was cold-shouldered by the management researchers of the day.

However, when she finished her undergraduate degree in psychology at McGill, she went to Rochester to get her master’s in social psychology. She was attracted to work being done there on motivation theory by Richard Koestner — “I saw the light!” she recalled with a smile. She decided to do her doctorate in the field, but in the context of the workplace, and her first choice was Rochester.

To test self-determination theory, Gagné has built a scale similar to those slips of paper she uses in her lectures. She would conduct a survey based on the scale to measure employment wellbeing and fulfillment, and she would analyze performance based on a number of criteria, such as appraisals. Many factors would have to be analyzed, including the work climate, the managerial style, whether the work is designed to be interesting, and so on.

Asked why so many organizations still don’t train their managers, she said with a sigh that there are many reasons, including internal politics. However, she loves giving business students the basics in the hope that they’ll see the light, too.

She tells them, “You all want to move up, to succeed. To do that, you have to know how people function. It’s good to have a structure in mind, to start with an overview. In fact, it’s absolutely essential.”

University Research Awards also went to William Reimer, (Sociology and Anthropology), Sofiène Tahar, (Electrical & Computer Engineering) and Muthukumaran Packirisamy, (Mechanical & Industrial Engineering).