Is an Individuals Need-Combination Related to the Work Environment - Research Paper Example

David McClelland identified certain needs and characterized people according to them. McClelland believes that all individuals possess those needs to a certain extent. Their behavior is an outcome of the combination of these needs. The three needs that McClelland identifies are the need for achievement, the need for power and authority, and the need for affiliation. The need for achievement makes people n-ach. These people are motivated by a sense of achievement. These people value the supervisors’ positive feedback a lot. People for whom power is the most important need are termed as the n-pow people. These people strive to gain more power upon the work setup and are best motivated by roles that require them to execute their leadership skills. The third need identified by McClelland is the need for affiliation. People who have this as the most important need are called the n-aff people. These people seek to make friends in the workplace. The more they socialize, the more they are motivated for work. Putting these people in roles in which they feel isolated makes them lose motivation for work. Although the behavior of workers is a mix of all these needs, yet one of the three governs an individual’s behavior. This theory raises numerous new challenges for managers. First of all, managers don’t have an objective means to confirm whether the three needs identified by McClelland’s theory are sufficient to represent all needs. Some people value job security and salary more than power, affiliation, or achievement. Even if managers assume that McClelland’s theory is sufficient to represent all needs, they don’t have a robust means to identify the way they are combined in different workers. In order to keep them motivated, managers need to be sure that certain worker values certain need more than others. Then, there is no means to be sure that an individual’s need-combination would not alter with time. After all, people’s preferences in life keep changing from time to time. 

I shall conduct the cost-benefit analysis of putting too much time and effort into studying individual workers’ psychology to learn their needs and the positive results achieved by assigning them roles accordingly.

Research Questions

• Is an individual’s need-combination related to the work environment?
• Is it always profitable for employers to assign workers roles according to their needs?