English Summary 1 Both cognitive and non-cognitive predictors are important with regard to predicting performance. Testing to select students in higher education or personnel in organizations is often carried out by means of a cognitively-loaded test and a non-cognitive test, the latter often comprised of the five-factor model of personality. The applicant s motivation, if considered at all during assessment, is frequently assessed by means of essays or interviews. It has been argued that selection systems need to further increase their predictive validity, especially by means of including narrower personality traits. This thesis proposes the inclusion of a test measuring motivation to further increase the predictive validity of such selection systems. These measures pertaining to motivation stem from the Murray tradition of manifest needs, are narrower than the measures of the five-factor model of personality and enable the investigation of dispositional differences among individuals. The main objective of this thesis is to find support for the proposition that non-cognitive predictors, in particular those related to motivation, can explain and predict individual, team and economic performance. This led to the following central research question: To what extent does motivation explain and predict individual, team and economic performance? In order to answer this central research question four main studies were undertaken. The studies and their results are discussed in more detail in the sections below. Following this, the most important theoretical and practical implications are outlined. A number of suggestions for future research are also provided 2. 1 References have not been included in the summary for reasons of readability. The references pertaining to the theoretical insights presented in this summary can be found in chapters one through seven. 2 This summary focuses on the main findings of the studies. A full overview and discussion of the findings can be found in the chapters associated with the respective studies. The theoretical and practical implications as well as the suggestions for further research are discussed in more detail in chapter seven.
Study 1: The development of the Manifest Needs Assessment Questionnaire (MNAQ) The four manifest needs that have been the most extensively studied are the need for achievement (the desire to excel, to be competitive and to be all that one can be), the need for dominance (the desire to influence and direct others), the need for affiliation (the desire to interact socially and be among others) and later the need for autonomy (the desire for self-direction). The four manifest needs were measured with a variety of instruments, but all of these instruments available in the public domain have been criticized regarding their reliability and validity. Although previously-developed measuring scales for the manifest needs approached the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, the need for dominance and the need for autonomy as unidimensional constructs, this thesis disputed this conceptualization. It was argued that the earlier conceptualization of the four manifest needs in work and educational settings as unidimensional constructs could have attributed to the aforementioned reliability and validity issues. Based on theoretical and empirical considerations, this thesis distinguished eight unidimensional manifest needs, namely the intrinsic and extrinsic need for achievement, the need for cooperation, the need for social interaction, the need for power, the need for leadership, the need for independence, and the need for responsibility. Two separate studies were performed to investigate the reliability and validity of these eight manifest needs. Support was found in both studies for convergent and discriminant validity. Furthermore, the reliability coefficients of the eight manifest needs were adequate and a test-retest demonstrated that the manifest needs were stable over time. Measurement invariance was investigated as well and was established for gender and higher education. This newly-developed measuring scale was named the Manifest Needs Assessment Questionnaire (MNAQ) and was applied in the other studies incorporated in this thesis.
Study 2: Cognitive ability, personality and motivation as predictors of academic performance Due to a growing demand for additional non-cognitive predictors that can be used in conjunction with cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality to predict academic performance, this study included the eight newly-developed manifest needs as additional predictors of the Pre-Master s Grade Point Average (GPA). The findings indicate that cognitive ability was the strongest significant positive predictor of academic performance in this study. As far as the five-factor model of personality was concerned, conscientiousness and agreeableness were found to be significantly positive predictors of academic performance, while a significantly negative relationship was found between openness and academic performance. It should be noted, however, that agreeableness was found to be sensitive to sample selection bias. As far as the eight manifest needs were concerned, a significantly positive relation was found between the intrinsic need for achievement and academic performance. Both the need for social interaction and the need for independence were found to be significantly negatively related to academic performance. The hierarchical regression models also demonstrated that, although cognitive ability is a strong predictor of academic performance, the predictive power of the model increased when more psychometric scales were entered into the model. A model with demographic variables, cognitive ability and the manifest needs explained more variance than a model with demographic variables, cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality. However, the best model included demographic variables, cognitive ability, and both the manifest needs and the five-factor model of personality. Study 3: Cognitive ability, personality and motivation as predictors of team performance The effects of team composition in relation to performance have been studied extensively and are also regarded as important in educational settings. Research into team composition already indicates a multilevel phenomenon, as individual traits are manifested at the team level. In order to study the effects of these individual traits in relation to team composition, it is necessary to convert these individual inputs
into a measure that is representative in terms of team composition. The conversion method chosen is closely related to the task being completed by the team. In this study, four measures in terms of personality in relation to team composition were distinguished, namely trait elevation (the aggregate of a trait of all individuals that comprise a team), the variability (the variance of a certain trait for all individuals within a team), the minimum score of a trait in a team, and the maximum score of a trait in a team. Both the minimum and maximum scores were based on the individual in the group with either the lowest or the highest score. As researchers argue that multilevel research is distorted when individual attributes are related to criterion variables on a higher level, this study did not take the lowest level into account (which would focus on the individual scores of team members in relation to a criterion variable at the team level). Instead, this study regarded the trait elevation, variability, minimum score and maximum score of the psychometric measures per team as the lowest level and incorporated the context (in this study represented by the specific educational program in which the team was formed) as a higher level. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the explanatory and predictive power of the manifest needs next to cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality in an educational context by means of a multilevel regression model. Team performance was assessed by the case grades obtained by students. Support was found for the choice of a multilevel model, as the four groups (teams formed in the Pre-Master s program, or teams formed in the financial management, general management and marketing management tracks of the Master s program) accounted for almost half of the total variance explained in the model which included all psychometric measures. Thus, the remainder of the explained variance could be attributed to the various psychometric measures that were included. As far as the individual measures of these psychometric measures are concerned, the elevation, variability and minimum score of cognitive ability were found to be significant positive predictors of team performance. With reference to the fivefactor model of personality, the maximum score of neuroticism, the minimum score of openness and the minimum score of agreeableness were found to be significantly positively related to team performance, while the elevation of openness and both the variability and maximum score of agreeableness were found
to be significantly negatively related to team performance. With regard to the manifest needs, the elevation of the intrinsic need for achievement, the variability of the need for cooperation, and both the variability and maximum score of the need for social interaction were all found to be significantly positively related to team performance. The variability of the intrinsic need for achievement, the elevation and variability of the need for cooperation, the minimum score of the need for social interaction, the maximum score of the need for power, the variability of the need for independence and the maximum score for the need for responsibility were all found to be significantly negatively related to team performance. However, it should be noted that the maximum and minimum score of cognitive ability, the variance of the intrinsic need for achievement, the variance of the need for social interaction, the maximum score of the need for power, the variance of the need for independence, and the maximum score of the need for responsibility were found to be very sensitive to sample selection bias. It was interesting to note that the inclusion of the elevation, variability, minimum and maximum score of cognitive ability did not statistically improve the model fit when added to the demographic variables. The inclusion of measures for the five-factor model of personality and the manifest needs did, however, improve the subsequent models significantly. A model which included the demographic and control variables, the measures for cognitive ability and the manifest needs outperformed a model which included the demographic and control variables, the measures for cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality. However, the model which included both the manifest needs and the five-factor model of personality next to cognitive ability yielded the best result. Study 4: Cross-cultural differences in achievement in relation to economic prosperity Economic performance has frequently been associated with cross-cultural differences. Early studies already associated the orientation of a society influenced by the doctrine of Catholic and Protestant religions with economic growth. Catholicism focuses on living a good life devoid of earthly distractions on the path to the afterlife. Conversely, the Protestant religion argues that doing worldly work to the best
of one s ability is a requirement for salvation. Societies following the Protestant doctrine view it as their religious duty to improve their economic conditions. Due to Protestant values a society would acquire a higher need for achievement, in turn a greater entrepreneurial spirit and consequently higher economic growth. The values of Confucianism had a similar effect on the economic growth of the Southeast Asian countries. Thus, no specific religion can be said to have a monopoly on the achievement orientation. The recent GLOBE studies incorporated many indicators to tap economic success, yet they did not include economic growth and only focused on economic indicators spanning one year. For this reason this study did not only include economic growth as a variable, it also included five-year averages of all economic indicators. Both the growth in that five-year period and the arithmetic growth in that period were also incorporated in the study. Previous studies have operationalized the societal need for achievement or performance orientation as a unidimensional construct. This study made a distinction between the intrinsic need for achievement and the extrinsic need for achievement, as the original need for achievement construct is not regarded as unidimensional. The aim was to explore the extent to which the intrinsic and extrinsic need for achievement are related to economic growth and prosperity. Two studies were conducted. The first study incorporated twelve countries. The second study was performed two years later. Apart from the twelve countries in the first study, sixteen additional countries were added. In both studies measurement invariance was investigated before further analyses were performed. Although configural and metric invariance could be established for all cross-cultural comparisons, the evidence for (partial) scalar invariance was limited. However, the lack of scalar invariance can also be evidence of valid group differences across cultures. This study found no evidence of a significant relationship for the intrinsic need for achievement in relation to the economic indicators, yet the extrinsic need for achievement was significantly related to several economic indicators. A multivariate analysis of variance was performed between the countries in both studies followed by a post-hoc test, which showed that countries characterized by high economic growth had significantly higher scores on the extrinsic need for achievement. Most of these significant differences could be attributed to three of the four BRIC countries, namely India, China and the Russian Federation. These countries score significantly higher than most
other countries in both studies. In this light it is also interesting to note that both Indonesia and Mexico were also found to score significantly higher than most other countries in the second study, as Indonesia and Mexico are considered as additions to the current BRIC countries due to their high growth rates and economic prospects. Theoretical implications The findings of the studies performed in relation to the development of the MNAQ suggest that the previous conceptualizations of the manifest needs as unidimensional constructs in work and educational settings is less preferable than an eight-factor conceptualization of the manifest needs. Even though no criterion variables were used to examine the explanatory power of an eight-factor conceptualization of the manifest needs in comparison with a four-factor conceptualization, the findings of the subsequent studies focusing on academic, team and economic performance do support the notion that the criticism leveled by this thesis at the unidimensional approach of the original manifest needs is warranted, as none of the eight manifest needs were related to the operationalized criterion variables in a similar manner. It is also interesting to observe that none of the non-cognitive psychometric measures (therefore neither the measures of the five-factor model of personality nor the manifest needs) are consistently related to the various criterion variables included in this thesis. These findings can in part be explained by the various levels of analysis used. After all, relationships at one level of analysis cannot automatically be transferred to another. Thus, some effects might not be found on an individual level, but can come into play at the group or country level and vice versa. Another possible explanation is that contextual variables influenced the results, which could account for some of the unexpected findings as well. It is also interesting to note that the manifest needs were found to be a stronger predictor of both academic and team performance when compared with the five-factor model of personality. This finding could support the notion that although the five-factor model of personality has advanced theory regarding personality-performance relationships, it is insufficiently comprehensive and too heterogeneous. The inclusion of the manifest
needs led to better results assessed by model statistics and a decrease in predictive error when compared with the measures for the five-factor model of personality in two separate studies (focusing on academic and team performance). Thus, the findings of this study support the inclusion of narrower traits in future studies regarding the personality-performance relationship. With regard to the findings of the study focused on economic performance, it was noted that the deprivation hypothesis might explain some of the findings, as significant negative correlations were found between the extrinsic need for achievement and several economic indicators that pertain to a society s prosperity, while significant positive relations were found with indicators associated with economic growth. This deprivation hypothesis posits that societies that have high economic prosperity become satiated, while societies that are less prosperous feel deprived and will develop a higher need to achieve. Nonetheless, due to the relatively robust findings over two studies support can be found for the notion that a distinction between the intrinsic need for achievement and the extrinsic need for achievement could lead to interesting insights regarding which societal orientations might possibly drive economic growth and prosperity. Practical implications Based on the results of this thesis, the MNAQ could be considered as a non-cognitive predictor of performance in selection systems for students in higher education. The studies incorporated in this thesis found support for the predictive and explanatory power of the manifest needs next to cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality. However, the use of the manifest needs for recruitment purposes is currently not recommended, as more research is needed regarding the predictive validity of the manifest needs in organizational settings. If anything, it is highly recommended that Nyenrode Business Universiteit should start using the MNAQ in its selection policy of students. It is also interesting to note that Dutch society frowns upon those that excel and stand out from the crowd. Although the intrinsic need for achievement was found to be an important positive predictor of both academic and team performance, the extrinsic need for achievement was found to be positively related to economic indicators pertaining to
economic growth. As such, it could be argued that Dutch society can truly allow talents to develop if its societal values acknowledge and stimulate the pursuit of excellence, which is currently not the case. This argument can also be related to the so-called bonus culture. Although the bonus culture has been heavily criticized as it is seen as one of the causes for the financial crisis, it can also be argued that bonuses and high remunerations attract talent. As true managerial and executive talent is rare, it is important it is rewarded accordingly as well if a society wants to develop and stimulate this talent. Future research The majority of the suggestions regarding future research revolve around the further application of the MNAQ in a variety of settings with other criterion variables and possibly in conjunction with other predictor variables. In this light, it was suggested, for example, that students from other educational institutions and programs be incorporated, that facets rather than the composite factors of the five-factor model of personality be included, that career success as a criterion variable be investigated and that additional contextual factors be investigated that might influence the relationship between the manifest needs and performance. It is also important to include the MNAQ in studies focusing on work-related behaviors such as innovation, organizational commitment, task-performance and job satisfaction. Future studies could potentially also establish the MNAQ as a valid predictor for work-related behavior, and if so, the MNAQ could be employed for recruitment purposes as well. Conclusion This current thesis attempted to find support for an additional non-cognitive predictor in the form of the manifest needs with the aim of improving the predictive validity of selection and recruitment procedures. Based on the findings of this thesis support was found for the predictive validity of motivation (as measured by the MNAQ) in relation to individual, team and economic performance. The manifest needs
were found to be related to academic performance, team case grades, and several economic indicators. Thus, this thesis found support for the potential of the manifest needs as a predictor of individual, team and economic performance in conjunction with other well-established predictors such as cognitive ability and the five-factor model of personality.