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OPERATIONAL DEFINITION: DIMENSIONS AND ELEMENTS 177

3. Because they want always to be achieving and accomplishing, they would
prefer to work on their own rather than with others.
4. With mind and heart set on accomplishment and achievement, they would
rather engage in challenging jobs rather than easy, hum-drum ones. However,
they would not want to take on excessively challenging jobs because the
expectation and probability of accomplishment and achievement in such jobs
would not be very high.
5. They would be yearning to know how they are progressing in their jobs as
they go along. That is, they would like to get frequent feedback in direct and
subtle ways from their superiors, colleagues, and on occasions even their sub-
ordinates, to know how they are progressing.

Thus, we would expect those with high achievement motivation to drive them-
selves hard at work, find it difficult to relax, prefer to work alone, engage in chal-
lenging, but not too challenging jobs, and seek feedback. Although breaking the
concept into these five dimensions has somewhat reduced its level of abstrac-
tion, we have still not operationalized the concept into measurable elements of
behavior. This could be done by examining each of the five dimensions and
breaking each further into its elements, thus delineating the actual patterns of
behavior that would be exhibited. These should somehow be quantitatively mea-
surable so that we can distinguish those who have high motivation from those
with less. Let us see how this can be done.

Elements of Dimension 1
It is possible to describe the behavior of a person who is driven by work. Such
a person will (1) be at work all the time, (2) be reluctant to take time off from
work, and (3) persevere even in the face of some setbacks. These types of
behavior would lend themselves to measurement.
For instance, we can count the number of hours employees engage themselves
in work-related activities during work hours, beyond working hours at the work-
place, and at home where they are likely to pursue their unfinished assignments.
Thus, the number of hours put in by them on their work would be an index of
the extent to which work “drives” them.
Next, keeping track of how frequently people continue to persevere doing
their job despite failures is a reflection of how persevering they are in achiev-
ing their goals. A student who drops out of school due to failure to pass the
first exam can by no means be deemed to be a highly persevering, achieve-
ment-oriented individual. However, a student who, despite getting D grades
on three quizzes, toils day and night unceasingly in order to understand and
master a course he considers difficult, would exhibit persevering and achieve-
ment-oriented behaviors. Achievement-motivated individuals would not usu-
ally want to give up on their tasks even when confronted by initial failures.
Perseverance would urge them to continue. Hence, a measure of perseverance
could be obtained by the number of setbacks people experience on the task