Fakulti Pendidikan dan Pembangunan Manusia

Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI)

KPP6044: Motivasi dan Efikasi Kendiri

Lecturer: Dr. Velayudhan A/L P.K. Veeran

Assignment 1: Motivation Theory

(McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory)

Nama: Rozana Binti Reduan

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1.1 Introduction of McClelland Human Motivation Theory

David McClelland was an American psychologist who created a theory in year 1980s that
attempts to explain how the needs for achievement, power and affiliation affect the human
motivation and the actions of people. The McClelland Human Motivation Theory also
referred as “the three social motives” or “Acquired Need Theory”. According to McClelland
(1987), everyone is more strongly motivated by some needs and less strongly by other needs.
He also stated that everyone has all three of these motives but simply with a different relative
degree and the result of the needs is a unique mix that gives one its personality. Besides that,
he found that 80 percent of daily mental activity or cognition process could be related to these
three social motives (McClelland, 1987).

The Three Social Motives (McClelland, 1987) are described as:

a) Need for Achievement

Daft (2008) stated the need of Achievement is the desire to accomplish something
difficult, master complex tasks, attain a high standard of success and surpass others.
Therefore, the individual that seeks for the need of achievement will known as the one
who willing to challenge goals and realistic. McClelland, Atkinson, Clark and Lowell
(1958) defined the need for Achievement as success in any competition with some
standard of excellence. In this definition, the researchers describe that the individual
who willing to take the risk in order to achieve the goals may fail in any situation, but
the commitment and concentration on that will become satisfaction to them. In order
to be successful in terms of competition with some standard of excellence, the goal of
some individual is the commitment on achieving the goal. Besides that, the
competition with a standard of excellence was not notable when an individual was in
direct competition with someone else but that it can also be evident in the concern for

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 how well one individual perform a task, regardless of how someone else doing
(McClelland et al., 1958).

b) Need for Power

Lussier and Achua (2007) defined the need for Power as the unconscious concern for
influencing others and seeking positions of authority. It is described as the desire to
cause others to behave in they that would be show by the individual. Daft (2008)
defined the need for Power as the desire to control or influence others, have authority
over others and be responsible for others. The individual also tend to create an
effective performance in order to gain influence over others. Besides that, McClelland
(1961) defined the need for Power as a concern with the control of the means of
influencing a person. In this situation, the individual would like to compete with
others in order to achieve the goal and make every situation in the way of perfection.

c) .Need for Affiliation

Daft (2008) defined the need for Affiliation as the desire to form close personal
relationships, avoid conflict, and establish warm friendship. People with the need of
Affiliation seek social approval, companionship, and satisfying interpersonal
relationships. Besides that, McClelland (1961) stated that affiliation is establishing,
maintaining or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person. In this
aspect, the individual tend to make relationship to others in order to get more
companions in the society. The individual interpersonal skills must be good in the
way they seek for companionship. Lussier and Achua (2007) mentioned that the need
for Affiliation as the desire to form close personal relationships, avoid conflict and
establish warm friendship. The interaction between people makes the enhancement of
the need of Affiliation
In the dominant motivator of Achievement, the characteristic of the individual who
seek for achievement is the one who has strong need to set and accomplish challenging goals.
The individual has the inner motivation which enhances the strength of physical in terms of
stamina. Within this motivation, it would become a factor that leads someone to do anything
that beyond their belief. Besides that, the satisfaction to achieve the goal would make them
better and stronger though the goal is fail to attain. It becomes some inspirations and a way
that guide them to achieve another goal in their life. In other way, the individual also tend to

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take risks to accomplish their goals. In this aspect, they are willing to create strategies and
energy in order to make the goals success. They also like to receive regular feedback on their
progress and achievements. The mindset of the dominant motivator of Achievement is
openness to some critics or comments. That would become their guide way to enhance the
quality of their work to achieve the goals. In some cases, they can create a good performance
in any situation because of the multitasking personality that they have in themselves.
Furthermore, the dominant motivator in this need would like work alone rather that in team.
It is because they tend to believe in their own way and strategies rather that receive any
suggestion from other people (Komaki, 2003).
Otherwise, the dominant motivator for Affiliation is the individual who would not like
to take high risk or uncertainty. In this matter, they are only work in the situation that has
sharp mission and vision. The goal must have strategies that lead the dominant motivator to
work hard to get the better result. Besides that, the characteristic of the individual is preferred
to make collaboration over competitive. The collaboration within each other will come out
with different ideas and better strategies rather than work alone with the limit ideas. In this
way, they would perform in a better way because of a better collaboration itself. Moreover,
they wants to be liked, and will go often go along with whatever the teammates wants to do.
Each of the members would like to receive any suggestion to be match in the current ideas so
that it becomes intellectual ideas to solve the problem regarding goal matters. Work in a
group is a good choice for the dominant motivator of Affiliation because they tend to create
the awesome ideas when they collaborate within the teammates as exchange ideas or some
suggestion (Greenberg,1993).
Despite of this, the characteristic for dominant motivator of Power tends to control
and influence others. The performance of the dominant motivator is in the perfect way to
persuade others. Within this, the ideas would become easy to receive by other people and
make them to follow in a way they would not. Besides that, they are like competition and
winning. The cause and effect for this work will enhance the performance because the
motivation will get higher when they compete to others (Kanfer, 1990). The dominant
motivator of Power also enjoys status and recognition. In this concept, the status and
recognition shows their work and achievement. Due to some cases, the characteristic of this is
like to win any arguments. The satisfaction comes in the way they firm their own ideas
because they believe with the strength and reliability of the outcomes.

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The most essential part of McClelland’s theory is that different people have different
personalities and therefore different motivation. The role of each individual will change due
to some situation. Besides that, everyone has strengths and weaknesses in different situations
and the tendency is that one guides itself toward situations in which the individual can do the
best and better performance in their life.

3.1 Strength and weaknesses of McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory.

McClelland proposed that an individual’s particular needs are obtained over time as a result
of life experiences (Woot el al. 1976). There are three categories in McClelland’s acquired
need theory which can be described as need for achievement, need for power and need for
affiliation. The strengths of the McClelland’s acquired need theory is that it can make the
organization more successful due to division of work in proficient way. This can be showed
that teachers will recognize personality and types of students and give task to them according
their personality. Hence, the theory provides a clear picture for the school for example
because teachers know which type of task is suitable for the students. According to the
article, the authors stated that leaders who have strong power of needs are more successful
than those with lower power of needs (Wagner & Swanson, 1979). In other hand, McClelland
and Burnham identify two types of power leaders are those who seek personal power and
those who seek institutional power (Lyden, 1976). However, leader who seek for institutional
power are more successful as they can create favourable condition at any task. Wagner and
Swanson (1979) attributes the success of higher power needs people to their ability to create a
greater sense of responsibility and team spirit in their group. Therefore, school organization
should provide people with high need for power the opportunity to lead other. Furthermore,
this will give the leader a guideline on how to become a good leader as stated that leader who
seek institutional power are more successful and can work in efficient way.

Apart from that, the strength of McClelland’s acquired need theory is that it gives an
understanding for the leaders on how to deal with different types of members in group. There
are three general categories in the McClelland’s acquired need theory which are need for
power, need for achievement and need for affiliation. The leader can actually put the
members to different types of task according to these categories. The theory suggested that
people with high level of achievement are suitable to become salesperson as they prefer

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challenging task, whereas people with high need for affiliation are suitable to hold a position
of customer service representative as they are good in maintaining companionship or
interpersonal relationship and people with high need of power are suitable to hold formal
supervisory position as they have influence over other people in the organization (Woot et al.
1976). In this matter, teachers have a significance to recognize the ability of each student and
divide the task according their ability to work on that task.

The weakness of the theory can be described as the leader with high need of
affiliation will always look at fairness when judging because different situation require
different types of decision. A major problem with the leader with high need of affiliation is
that due to the concern of the well being of the members, he is willing to make exceptions to
the organization’s rule in responding to his member’s need in which this action violate one of
the bureaucracy’s first principles which is fairness (Lyden, 1976). In this matter, the leader
should judge wisely in any situation before gives the decision because it is important to seek
the cause and think about the effect. Besides that, the weaknesses of the McClelland’s
acquired needs theory is that it gives little purpose in the public sector. As stated by
Jurkiewicz , Massey and Brown (1998), public sector employees are being motivated by job
security and stability, teamwork and worthwhile service to society, while eschewing
monetary rewards, prestige and the desire for challenge and autonomy. In this matter, public
sector employees are only high in the need of affiliation and low in the need of achievement
and power. The employees do not like challenging task because they are very high in the
need of affiliation. This will make difficulty in the organization to create competitive
environment at work.

David McClelland’s theory is known as better and useful than those of Alderfer and
Maslow (McClelland, 1965). This is because there is much stable evidence to support
McClelland’s Acquired Need Theory than Alderfer’s or Maslow’s. McClelland theory offers
a better description which enabling organizations to proactively encourage behaviour through
both matching motivational and training programs with task situations. However, critics of
McClelland’s theory state that there are issues with the validity concerning the TAT
projection used to determine the level of individual needs (Redmond, 2009). In this matter,
McClelland theory gives better individual understanding because everyone has their own
ability. It is also helped to divide the task according the individual ability so that the task will
completely smooth in progress. According to Kapp, Smith-Hunter and Yonkers (2003), the
decision to own or manage a business is not directly correlated with the need for achievement

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as there are many factors that drive people to become entrepreneurs. In this matter,
McClelland’s theory is criticized for its lack of predictive power as it relates to
entrepreneurship. Besides that, different in cultures play a significant role in how
achievement is viewed. Some cultures view failures as something that embarrasses for while
other cultures view failure as an experience in life that allows people to become stronger and
grow to take the next challenges.

On the other hand, McClelland’s Acquired Need Theory suggests that understanding
these needs will accurately placing the right people in the right positions should enhance
greater level of motivation which in turn will increase productivity and reduce turnover. As
for the strength of McClelland’s Need Theory in education, the need for achievement will
assign achievable tasks based on a student’s ability. In this way, the achiever seeks to reach
goals and excel and they do this by taking more difficult task. The student will feel motivated
to perform at a higher level than other students because teachers have an instruction to give
student of high ability more challenging tasks than those of low-ability students (Patton,
2002). Besides that, the theory provide feedback regularly that a student who wants to
achieve must get feedback so they know where their strength and weaknesses in order to be
in high proficiency. The theory also suggests that don’t show them failure as a lack of ability
and give feedback at the end of a project or essay would be effective ways of studying. The
theory also suggests acknowledge achievement with praise. This is because achievers seek
frequent recognition that they are doing well. Teachers also have to praise students and
encourage them to continue improve in better ways. In order to recognize students’
achievement, teachers should provide a reward such as extra computer time or read comic
(Navahandi, 2006).

In the need of affiliation, it helped to set academic group work. An affiliation seeker
wants to create good relationships with other people. Furthermore, teachers should set fun
group activities so they can interact with other students confidently. The need of affiliation is
about creating meaningful social contact. In this matter, the theory helps to give idea to
teachers to encourage students to interact outside of studying such as play team sports during
physical education classes and during lunch so that the students can learn to have friendships.
Moreover, affiliation students sometimes use group work to be more confident in themselves.
The theory suggests teachers encouraging them to interact in class activities will show them
that teachers approve of their interaction. In the need of power, a power student wants to
control other people so that they can reach their goals. The theory suggests that teachers put

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students in charge of others within a group so they can learn how to develop leadership skills
such as assign team leaders in group work. Besides that, the theory gives the idea by letting
students make collaboration in the classroom rules in order to create a good learning
environment. The theory also suggests maintaining authority of the classroom by follow and
explaining through for students who break rules (Zhao & Kuh, 2004).

4.1 How the McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory motivate students?

i. Students who are highly motivated and make use of learning strategies are most likely
to achieve. Different strategies of learning can make the students to enhance their
proficiency skills in any subjects. It is depend on how the students perceive the new
material and use strategies to solve the problem. The students also have the ability to
make the combination between the upcoming ideas within the knowledge in long term
memory to make the better outcome results. Therefore, teachers should emphasize the
specific strategies when introducing new material.

ii. Students are motivated to achieve and learn when they see that their teachers care
about them. Teachers, who were demonstrating interaction styles, modelling a
responsible attitude toward their own work, expect high for student behaviour and
providing constructive feedback will enhance motivation in students. The theory gives
many example of suitable instructional based on the need of power, need of
achievement and need of affiliation.

iii. The theory suggests involving students in deciding what kind of homework to get is
the good step to develop a sense of power. Therefore, by giving the opportunity to
students, they will more care in their learning because they have experience in the
challenges of think why learning to read and write is important in their lives.

iv. The theory also described that in order to receive information on a sensory and
knowledge level, student attaches a strong positive value to the experience because
what he/she perceives closely matches what their wants at that moment. In this matter,
the theory developed some confident level for student to achieve the goals and grab
the knowledge.

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 v. When students find learning and school to be a need-satisfying experience, they will
put working hard on learning. Therefore, the level of motivation on academic will get
higher because students take the responsibility in learning.

In other words, the theory will helped to motivate students in the way that related to personal
achievements (Spence & Helmreich, 1983).

i. Mastery of needs which and individual prefers jobs that are challenging,
intellectually, demanding and thought-oriented. He or she enjoys playing a leadership
role in groups and is able to complete tasks already started.

ii. Work orientation is an individual takes a proactive attitude toward work and loves
what he or she does. He or she obtains sense of satisfaction from work and pursues
self-realization and growth.

iii. Competition is an individual hopes for victory and has the desire to win over others.

iv. Personal unconcern is an individual does not consider success or performance to be

the cause of being rejected by others. In other words, there is no fear of success.

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