David Mcclelland\'s Acquired-Needs Theory According

David McClelland's Acquired-Needs Theory

According to managerial theorist David McClelland's Acquired-Needs Theory, all individuals have a certain desire for achievement, affiliation, and power. Every person has a different degree of 'need' for these fundamental, core attributes of the human character. Conflict between colleagues, or superiors and subordinates often arises because of different need orientations, or when people with the same personality types have different objectives. The three types are as follows: achievement-dominant types (nAch) are driven by the need to excel and attain success, while high (nPow) affiliation types (nAff) need harmony and acceptance from other people. Power-focused people enjoy directing others ("McClelland," 2009, Net MBA).

While McClelland intended his theories to apply to a business environment, it is easy to see his theory in action in a college context. Take, for example, a typical resident hall. Resident Advisors (RAs) are students who function in loco parentis for other, usually younger students. The reasons a student might seek out this position could be because he or she has a high achievement orientation and wishes to bolster his or her resume; the RA may genuinely wish to help younger students become oriented to the college community and increase the RA's personal social connections or affiliations; or the RA may simply enjoy exercising the personal and institutional power of the position.

All of these motivations can prove problematic in the interactions between student residents and RAs. Students may resent RAs who seem solely interested in the position as a resume-booster, or feel upset if the RA is so friendly that the RA cannot be an objective mediator in hall conflicts. In my own experiences as a first-year student, I came in conflict with an RA because of his or her strong institutional power orientation. As a freshman at Boston College I was marked as in violation for a relatively minor infraction by my RA. I doubt that I would have been reprimanded -- however, when the RA questioned me, I was relatively casual. I did not act worried and abjectly sorry about his power to affect my future, and in retrospect, I realized that the student's sense of authority had been threatened by what he perceived as my insolence. I saw him as a fellow student, the RA saw me as a threat to his power because I treated him as an equal, not a superior.