| Summary: | "What motivates an achieving society? Why are some societies able to produce great historical figures, writers, scientists, and entrepreneurs when others just barely manage to survive? What causes the decline of a great empire? Is it just luck, or a particular combination of circumstances? The Achieving Society examines these questions in the light of psychological factors responsible for economic development. In particular, it shows how one human motive, the need for Achievement, appears with great regularity in the imaginative thinking of men and nations before periods of rapid economic growth. Evidence is drawn from history (Ancient Greece, England from 1400-1800, etc.) and some 40 contemporary nations. The book provides a solid, factual basis for evaluating theories explaining the rise and fall of civilization as advanced by Toynbee, Spengler, Kroeber, Marx, Weber, Sorokin, Parsons, and others. The way in which a strong need for Achievement promotes successful entrepreneurship is also explored in theory, in the laboratory, and among business executives in various countries around the world--the United States, Italy, Turkey, and Poland. The findings provide a basis for suggestions on how to accelerate economic growth in underdeveloped countries when development plans focus on increasing the motivation needed for success. The emphasis throughout is on factual, quantitative tests of the relationships discussed, in the belief that the methods of the behavioral sciences can be applied with profit to traditional problems in history and economics. "This book will become a classic," concluded one pre-publication review which also said of The Achieving Society " ... a powerful book ... stimulating, sound, and imaginative ... readers from anthropology, sociology, social psychology, economics, political science had better look into it with some care"--Cover. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
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