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Most research exploring motivation at work has taken a variable-centric approach, examining relationships between individual drives. Taking a person-centric approach can provide meaningful archetypes within multivariate data and addresses the point that different drives do not function in isolation from each other. Using latent class analysis, this research investigated whether there are patterns of different motivations in working population samples across five languages – English, French, Swedish, Chinese and Russian. Although previous research does looks at differences across the globe (eg. Hofstede’s work on cultural differences eg. 1983, and Bartram’s work using the OPQ, eg. 2013), differences in motivation, specifically in terms of motivational archetypes, has not been investigated.

Despite some variation in mean self-reported motivations between languages, the current research revealed five archetypes present in each language (N=527 – 1536). Three of these are not only stable across previous samples collected by the same authors, but are also stable across languages: high need for authority, wealth and autonomy with little concern for having a positive impact on the wider community; highly motivated by supporting and developing others whilst having a low need for wealth or recognition; motivation from affiliation with others, having fun at work and receiving recognition but placing little value on quality of service to customers. A fourth archetype of low need for learning or pioneering new ideas, and no interest personal growth or having an impact (although still fairly interested in the money) holds up across all languages except French. The final group varies across languages.

The results have implications for how multinational organisations seek to understand and engage their people, needing to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches and adapt to different needs. However, fairly stable archetypes across countries means that organisations can roll out similar recruitment processes or development interventions across global organisations, with small local adaptations to reflect the differences.