MC CLELLAND’S THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT AND MOTIVATION

David McClelland has developed an achievement motivation theory. According to this theory, an individual’s need for achievement refers to the need for personal accomplishment. It is the drive excel, to strive for success and to achieve in relation to a set standards. People with high achievement motive like take calculated risks and want to win; they like to take on personal responsibility for solving problems and want to know how well they are doing. High achievers are not motivated by money; but instead employ money as a method of keeping sure of the achievements. Such people strive for personal achievement rather than the rewards of success. They want to do something better and more efficiently than has been done before.

Need for achievement is simply the desire to do well not so much for the sake of social recognition or prestige but for the sake of an inner feeling of personal accomplishment. It is the need for achievement that motivates people to take risk. People with high need for achievement behave in an entrepreneurial way. Need for achievement stimulates the behavior of a person to be an entrepreneur.

The following psychological factors contribute to an entrepreneurial

motivation:

1. Need for achievement through self- study, goal setting and interpersonal support.
2. Keen interest in situations involving moderate risk.
3. Desire for taking responsibility.
4. Concrete measures of task performance.
5. Anticipation of future responsibilities.
6. Energetic or novel instrumental activity
7. Organizational skills, etc.

Some societies produce a large percentage of people with high need for achievement. Entrepreneurship becomes the link between need achievement and economic growth.

 Mc Clelland considers the need for achievement to be most critical to a nation’s economic development. He held that a strong ‘inner spirit’ in individuals to attain is a measurable variable arising from a need, which the individual develops mainly in childhood and seeks to satisfy throughout his life. This ‘inner spirit’ which he called need for achievement, if higher, would produce more energetic entrepreneurs capable of generating rapid economic development. High need for achievement or ambition motivates an entrepreneur to take risks, work hard, find new things, save more, and reinvest the savings in industry and so on. The limited empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that need for achievement contributes to entrepreneurial success.

Mc Clelland rated the achievement motivation of different countries on the basis of ideas related to need for achievement contained in the children’s stories. This has come to be known as n-factor rating. He established a correlation between n- factor rating and the prosperity of the countries a generation ahead.

The criterion on n- factor rating was the inherent concern for achievement or non- induced achievement motivation.

Mc Clelland found that achievement motivation was lower among people under developed countries than among these of developed nations. Even in USA only about ten percent of the people were actually high achievers. It is the level of aspirations or ambitions that explains the lack of enterprise underdeveloped countries. Ambition is the level of all motives and aimless life a goal- less game. Ambitions motivate men, activate them, broaden their vision and make life meaningful. Ambition builds up achievement pressure in the individual and provides the base for Mc Clelland’s n- factor. Ambition is the lever of all motives. The initiative intentions of an individual are directed by his ambitions. It is the ambition electrifies man’s actions. Therefore, what matters are not merely the people are their aspirations and the means to achieve the goals? Therefore, it is the duty leaders and teachers to build up ambitions into the minds of the young people however ambitions differ greed and windfall. Greed results in disaster a windfall makes one speculator .Sometimes personal ambitions may come in way of family aspirations or national aspirations. Unfulfilled ambitions passed to the next generation who may chase the goal with redoubled effort and vigor

Thus, ambition nourishes achievement motivation and brings economic growth. The biggest obstacle to economic progress in countries like India is perhaps the limited ambition of people. The initiative of an individual is directed by his ambitions, which nourish the entrepreneurial spirit and bring about economic development. Hence, what matters are not merely the people and then talents but their aspirations? However, ambitions differ among individuals on the basis of environment in which they are born and brought up. Galbraith has also attributed the backwardness of many Asian and African countries to lack ambition.