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The Use Of Power Motivation And How It Ultimately Affect Employee Behavior

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Abstract
This research proposal has been designed in the interest of exploring the construct of power motivation and how it ultimately affects employee behavior in the workforce. Motivation for power refers to an individual 's desire to have an impact on and exert influence over others (McClelland, 1970). There are two high level facets of motivation for power including personalized and socialized power motivation. The construct has been largely ignored by researchers in recent decades due to the absence of a quality measurement tool, however a new self-report scale has been developed and validated using item response theory techniques (Deuling et al., n.p.). Organizational commitment has been shown in many studies to be related to a range …show more content…

As stated by McClelland, everyone has some desire for power, however that need is much stronger in some than in others, and therefore individuals have different motives for achieving power (McClelland et al., 1953). Over the decades, several studies have been published on the topic of power motivation, resulting in mixed findings where some have found power motivation in leaders to have a positive influence on organizational success and others demonstrating a negative impact. Specifically, past research has shown that power motivation is an important factor in predicting business success (McClelland et al., 1953), organizational effectiveness (McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982; McClelland & Burnham, 1976), political leadership (Winter, 1987), and prosocial decision making (Magee & Langner, 2008). On the other hand, previous studies have also found positive correlations between motivation for power and negative work-related behaviors, including aggressive behavior (Winter, 2000), increased threat in conflicts (Magee & Langner, 2008), and increased risk-taking (McClelland & Watson, 1973). To supplement these negative findings, another study found that need for power predicted further negative work-related

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