Customer Reviews

The Achieving Society

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For nearly a half century, the pioneering work of David McClelland has been considered a major contribution to understanding human behavior in the organizational setting. The existence of the psychological drives for achievement, affiliation, and social power and influence have been well supported by the work of Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and countless others. Many of the ideas in "The Achieving Society" are as relevant today as when first written. Other of McClelland's notions have been the springboard for more contemporary research. The richness of his work should be obvious to both those well grounded in organizational behavior and students aspiring to become so.

This book documents a research program of McClelland and associates in the late 1950s and 1960s to isolate and document the "achievement motive" ascribed to individuals (or groups) as an explanation of "the rise and fall of civilizations," largely unmediated by the influence of institutions or other social or historical forces. Although it is fair to say that little if any of this perspective would be accepted by contemporary social scientists, the book is fascinating in retrospect as it documents McClelland and Co.'s attempts to quantify the "achievement motive" for example by scoring the content of folk tales, elementary school reading primers, and popular music, and then the linkage of these measures to other social outcomes, complete with ex post rationalizations of the results (or lack of results) obtained in these exercises.

Contra a statement by one of the reviewers, McClelland does in fact develop the n Achievement/Affiliation/Power factors extensively, and provides a detailed breakdown of his discussion in the appendix, where the three concepts combined occupy over a half a page of entries.

Cognitive and cultural/attitudinal factors are coming back strongly as a causal factor in human achievement, where expertise, 'deliberate practice', and effort are now recognized as decisive. And what's good for the individual presumably is good for the collective...non? Of course, social injustice can impede widespread 'self-actualization' by the disadvantaged. Hence the need for an achievement society (culture, that is).

This was far from a "failed" research project, as one reviewer implied. McClelland successfully managed to predict the economic futures of entire countries (e.g., Japan, India), as well as intervening in them to some extent, as he did in India. There is a reason why this book was required reading at the Harvard Business School for so long.
The research methodology is ingenious and difficult to make simple, but the patterns of motivated behaviors have shown themselves quite robust, and still underpin a great deal of the work on competencies, e.g., the work of Goleman and Boyatzis. Is it current? No. Does it have something to teach us about the Achievement Motive and how it influences culture and society? No question.

Not 1967; in fact 1961. My attention was drawn to this by 'The Great Reading Disaster'. It seems to have been well-known, and quite influential amongst some social science types, when new.

It really is quite an odd book, but deserves to be commended for its boldness. However, I think it fails completely. In a way, it's an example of applied maths - throughout there are tables of analysis of variance, chi-squared, and so on. However, the it's not clear that underlying theory of these tests (for example, normal distributions of pencil and paper tests), could be expected to operate, or even that the theory is understood. They appear to be sausage-machine applications.

I don't think I'm being far-fetched in being able to identify this as a pre-word processor book. The first parts seem to aim at one, modest, proven claim; then this is expanded; and again - the 'goal' of the book turns out to be a series of 'goals'.

The bibliography lists ten books from the 1950s jointly-written by McClelland, or books to which he contributed a chapter. Some are on children and parents; most are on motivation, achievement, talent, success. This book therefore is McClelland's attempt at a significant work of synthesis. It tries too be something like a look at the rise, decline and fall of societies.

What's striking is the way immeidate post-war US attitudes are taken for granted. There's something to be said for ignoring the past; to look at (say) Ireland, or the USA, or Japan without taking their histories into account, to step away from the past and take a fresh look. However, this is easier said than done, and McClelland settles for attitudes of the New York Times of the era. Adorno's book on authoritarianism was new. McClelland seems to have no doubts that the USA is democratic, although he must have heard comments to the effect that it was run by a few dozen (or hundred, or whatever) men. Germany and Japan are of course judged. There's vagueness over Spain and Portugal. 'Russia' is talked of, not the USSR, a clear ideological point - he compares 1929 with 1950! Israel has no mention of subsidies. Vietnam is not known of. McClelland throughout assumes 'entrepreneurs' are responsible for 'achievement'. He doesn't seem to have noticed the statism introduced by the Second World War. He's perfectly aware that (e.g.) Mexico's electrification was being carried out almost entirely by American bosses - hardly 'entrepreneurs' in any traditional sense. He's aware Kuwait and Arabia were wealthy, but without any noticeable prior 'achievement'. Moreover he says nothing about the vast expansion of the military. All this is entirely conventional, part of the post-war censorship tradition. Because of all this, 'entrepreneurs' tend to morph into 'managers'.

The book tries to correlate three things with rise, stasis, and fall of civilisations. These are 'n Achievement' (lower case n, upper case A), 'n Affiliation', and 'n Power'. These aren't described or defined, or even listed in the index. They're supposed to be something like raw achievement, presumably of many people - hence the 'n' - is some way contributing jointly to their 'society'. 'n Affilitaion' is something like friendship or kinship or tendency to associate together. And finally 'n Power' is something like the impulse to selfish power, rather than societal cohesion and advance. Although it's supposed to apply to civilizations, this morphs into 'the economic development process'. McClelland doesn't seem to know about raw materials, so the idea of locally appropriate technology is entirely missing. Roads, gasoline cars, airplanes, suburbs are the unquestioned measures of progress, whether in Africa, Asia, or presumably Greenland. He even uses electrical power output as a measure of 'achievement' despite the fact that it was introduced by a few experts. Moreover his idea of history is taken from the traditional easy 19th century outlook - Greece and Rome; then the Middle Ages; then modern times, including the Reformation and a few other advances. South America, Africa, China and central Asia, and the Indian peninsula aren't part of history, though he does consider them as modern states.

Part of what attractiveness the book has, is its odd choice of ways try to measure things which are rather hard-to-measure. This is where his previous academic contacts come in. We have doodles, children's stories - usually mass published ones, though he also uses ancient Greek literature, colour preferences. However most of the research was carried out on children, who were administered pencil and paper questionnaires - typically in rather tiny numbers. Why children - who after all can't have much idea of progress, technology, careers, or work - should be considered suitable targets, rather than adults, isn't clear to me; probably it reflects his earlier writings. How can a schoolboy be expected to know how risky stockbroking is?

A couple of chapters which may have been based on stand-alone chapters, don't fit this scheme: there's one on Hermes, whch must be influenced by a classicist trying to keeep up to date; there's another on race and climate, which as per fashion, McClelland doesn't think much of as explanatory factors.

Conclusion: of great interest if you want to examine the shallow post-WW2 optimism of academics who do the safe thing and publish rather than perish. I don't think it's of much help is charting the course today.