Motives to choose ‘manager’ profession (the results of the survey in PFUR)

The article analyzes David McClelland’s theory of social needs and the perspectives of its application for identifying students’ motivation for choosing management professions. According to the theory of McClelland, in the motivational structure of personality there is always a dominant motive triggering actions. McClelland considers three basic motives to be such: motive of obtaining power, motive of achieving success and motive of affiliation. These motives reflect inner needs and aspirations of every person. The article analyzes three motives as factors affecting work activities and reflecting individual primary aims and goals in the professional sphere. The authors describe characteristic features of people with pronounced motivation; discuss the results of various studies based on the theory of social needs and other concepts aiming to identify the dominant motives of different groups of workers. The article presents the results of the study of the students’ basic motives to choose the profession ‘state and municipal management’ conducted in December 2014 at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. The results of the survey were interpreted in the context of McClelland’s theory of social needs.