McClelland's Needs Theory of Motivation

● David C. McClelland has contributed to the understanding of motivation by identifying three types of basic motivating needs. He classifies them as the need for power, need for affiliation, and need for achievement. Considerable research has been done on methods of testing people with respect to these types of needs, and McClelland and his associates have done substantial research, especially on the need for achievement.
● All three drives-power, affiliation, and achievement-are of particular relevance to management, since all must be recognized to make an organized enterprise work well.
• Need for Power
McClelland and other researchers have found that people with a high need for power have a great concern with exercising influence and control. Such individuals generally are seeking positions of leadership; they are frequently good coversctionalists, though often argumentative; they are forceful, outspoken, hardheaded, and demanding; and they enjoy teching and public speaking.
• Need for Affiliation
People with a high need for affiliation usually derive pleasure from being loved and tend to avoid the pain of being rejected by social group. As individuals, they are likely to be concerned with maintaining pleasant social relationships, to enjoy a sense of intimacy and understanding, to be ready to console and help others in trouble, and to enjoy friendly interaction with others.
• Need for Achievement
People with a high need for achievement have an intense desire for succes and an equally intense fear of failure. They want to be challenged, and they set moderately difficult (but not impossible) goals for themselves. They take a realistic approach to risk; they are not likely to gamblers; but, rather, prefer to analyze and asses problems, assume personal responsibility for getting a job done, and like specific and prompt feedback on how they are doing. They tend to be restless, like to work long hours, do not worry unduly about failure if it does occur, and tend like to run their own shows.
● How McClelland's Approach Applies to Managers
• In research studies by McClelland and others, entrepreneurs-people who start and develop a business or some other enterprise-showed very high need-for-achievement and fairly high need-for-power drives but were quite low in their need for affiliation. Managers generally showed high on achievement and power and low on affiliation, but not as high or as low as entrepreneurs.
• McClelland found the pattern of achievement motivation clearest in people in small companies, with the president normally having very high achievement motivation. In large companies, what is quite interesting is that he found chief executives to be only average in achievement motivation and often stronger in power and affiliation drives. Managers in the upper-middle-level of management in such companies rated higher than their presidents in achievement motivation. Perhaps, as McClelland indicated, these scores are understandable. The chief executive has "arrived," while those below are striving to advance.
• The question is often raised as to whether all managers should are high on achievement motivation. People who do rate high tend to advance faster than those who do not. But because so much of managing requires other characteristics besides achievement drive, every company should probably have many managers who, while possessing fairly strong achievement motivation, also have a high need for affiliation. This latter need is important for working with people and for coordinating the efforts of individuals working in groups.
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Fundamentals of Management : Leading / Motivation [BBA 2305]