Highly qualified human resources are the key factor in the creation and diffusion of scientific and technological knowledge. Contemporary Romanian society must align with European and international standards in order to increase the quality of research and innovation and thus to further increase the level of professional competence of researchers. This paper presents an important aspect of the professional work of researchers, namely work satisfaction, with important effects at personal level and the level of organization in which activity is carried out. Correctly establishing the correlation between work satisfaction and individual personality variables can identify an increase of individual satisfaction and collective performance efficiency. In order to identify the existing experience in the European Union, the paper presents two case studies, namely: a cross-national study on the level of job satisfaction of the Portuguese higher education institutions and a methodology for studying the motivation for education founded on research of the opinions of cadets from the Vasil Levski National Military University, Bulgaria.