In the early 1940s, Abraham Maslow created his theory of needs (Anveet, 2013). This identified the basic needs that human beings have, in order of their importance: physiological needs, safety needs, and the needs for belonging, self-esteem and "self-actualization"
At 1961,In his book "The Achieving Society," David McClelland expanded on this study. He identified three motivators that he believed we all have: a need for achievement, a need for affiliation, and a need for power. People will have different characteristics depending on their dominant motivator (Arnold, 2013).
Figure 1.0 : McClelland’s theory of needs
McClelland says that, regardless of the gender, culture or age, we all have three motivating drivers, and one of these will be our dominant motivating driver. This dominant motivator is largely dependent on our culture and life experiences (Royle,2012).
Figure 2.0 : Characteristics of dominant motivator
(as cited by Mohommed, R , 2019).
Need for power: the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved. People who are strongly power-motivated are driven by the desire to influence, teach, or encourage others (Sumi, 2010) They enjoy work and place a high value on discipline (Brandan, 2018). However, they may take a zero-sum approach to group work—for one person to win, or succeed; another must lose, or fail. If channeled appropriately, though, this can positively support group goals and help others in the group feel competent about their work. According to Richard (2017) the need for power is concerned with making an impact on others, the desire to influence others, the urge to change people, and the desire to make a difference in life. People with a high need for power are people who like to be in control of people and events. These result in ultimate satisfaction to man.
Need for Achievement is the drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards, to strive to succeed. Achievement is the act of performing, obtaining, or accomplishing. People who are strongly achievement motivated are driven by the desire for mastery. They prefer working on tasks of moderate difficulty in which outcomes are the result of their effort rather than of luck. They value receiving on their work. Need for achievement is a behavior directed towards competition with a standard of excellence. McClelland found that people with a high need for achievement perform better than those with a moderate or low need for achievement, and noted regional, national differences in achievement motivation.
Need for Affiliation is the desire for friendly and interpersonal relationship. Jaja (2003) defined that affiliation is the relationship that results from combining one thing with another. People who are strongly affiliation-motivated are driven by the desire to create and maintain social relationships. They enjoy belonging to a group and want to feel loved and accepted. They may not make effective managers because they may worry too much about how others will feel about them. Similarly, Richard (2017) defines the need for affiliation as a desire to establish and maintain friendly and warm relations with other people.
Video 1.0 : How to use McClelland’s theory of needs at the work place
Video 1.0 is illustrate that how practically use the McClelland’s theory of needs in the organization.
The biggest challenge for any company is to constantly motivate its employees so that employees work hard which in turn will help the company in achieving its objectives. However, as per the Osemeke (2017), major disadvantages of the McClelland’s theory of needs is that this theory focuses on needs for achievement, power, and affiliation but ignore basic needs like food, shelter and safety which is primary needs and needs to be satisfied first before thinking about satisfying other needs.
References
Avneet, K., 2013. Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory : Applications and Criticisms. Global Journal of Management and Business Studies, 3(10), pp. 1061-1064.
Branden, J., 2018. MOTIVATION McClelland's Needs Theory. Forbes School of Business , 3(2), pp. 12-16.
Jaja, S. A., 2003. Praxis of work behaviour. 1 ed. Lagos: Pinnacle Publishers.
Osemeke, M., 2017. Critical Review and Comparism between Maslow, Herzberg and McClelland's Theory of Needs. FUNAI JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING,, 1(1), pp. 161-173..
Richard, E. B., 2017. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. IV ed. Cham: Springer.
Royle, M. T., 2012. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN McCLELLAND’S THEORY OF NEEDS, FEELING INDIVIDUALLY ACCOUNTABLE, AND INFORMAL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR OTHERS. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING RESEARCH, 5(1), pp. 21-29.
Sumi, J., 2010. Need for Growth, Achievement, Power and Affiliation Determinants of Psychological Empowerment. Global Business Review , 11(3), pp. 379-393.
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