Abstract
Since the publishing of David McClelland’s book “The Achieving Society” in 1961, the need for achievement (nAch) has been one of the most discussed psychological concepts in research on entrepreneurship. In the book as well as in continued research, McClelland presents empirical support for his hypothesis that the level of nAch in a society is a major determinant of its rate of economic development.
However, research on nAch has also been criticized for a number of reasons. Establishing strong evidence for the relation between nAch and entrepreneurial behaviour at the individual level seems to be especially troublesome. Nevertheless, nAch has been used also at this level, e.g., to investigate how it relates to small firm start-up and survival.
In a fairly large survey of small firms in Sweden, nAch was included as one factor potentially explaining differences in entrepreneurial activity. As expected, the results show positive relationships between nAch and various forms of entrepreneurial activity in the firms, although differences in nAch do not account for a lion’s share of the variation.
It is argued that although the nAch concept has problems with definition and measurement, and although more recent developments within an attribution theory framework promises more sophisticated explanations, nAch might still have a role to play in cases where very simple generalizations are sought.
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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Davidsson, P. (1989). Need for Achievement and Entrepreneurial Activity in Small Firms. In: Grunert, K.G., Ölander, F. (eds) Understanding Economic Behaviour. Theory and Decision Library, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2470-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2470-3_4
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