Ambition as an economic category

A study of quantifiable results of the manifestation of career ambitions and the development of the concept of the “employee utility function” by Nobel Laureate in Economics George Akerlof through the prism of the interests of the individual (the bearer of ambitions), the employer and other individuals (employees) involved in the competition for career opportunities. To achieve this research goal, work was carried out to determine the place of the concept of “ambition” in the totality of modern economic works, its essential characteristics relevant to economic problems were identified and approaches to the perception of this category among researchers were systematized. Applying separate provisions of the theory of the firm (G. Spencer, O. E. Williamson) and algebraic expressions to evaluate the studied quantities, the possible economic consequences of the manifestation and stimulation of ambitious career behavior are evaluated, studied in three dimensions: at the level of a particular employee, in his immediate environment (team) and within the framework of the employer organization. It is concluded that the concentration of ambitious employees leads to an increase in unproductive stress among the employees themselves, destroys the results of team building, increases the costs of managing such teams and does not maximize, but, on the contrary, reduces the overall return (profit) of the organization at certain phases of the life cycle, thus determining the predictable trajectory of the employee's utility function. The originality of the research is confirmed not only by the formulation of the scientific problem, but also by the methods of its solution. New research logical constructions have been obtained that can be applied at the level of individual organizations in order to improve personnel policy and be taken into account individually when arranging employment or career planning. The definition of the concept of “ambiance”, clarified for the purposes of the study, is proposed.