Examining motivational interviewing in career counselling from a motivational system theory perspective

Motivational interviewing (MI; Miller & Rollnick, 2013, Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.) is receiving increasing attention in the field of career counselling. This method has been proven effective to foster motivation in various contexts. However, MI lacks of theoretical foundations that could explain the underlying processes of such an efficacy. Conversely, motivational system theory (MST; M. E. Ford, 1992, Motivating humans: Goals, emotions and personal agency beliefs. London, UK: Sage.) is well integrated in career counselling and proposes theoretically-driven principles to motivate humans but offers little guidelines to realise them. In this article, the similarities between MI processes and MST principles are reviewed and MST is proposed as an interesting framework for understanding the impact of MI.