Abraham Maslow Administrative Thinkers PDF

Subject: Public Administration Paper Title: Administrative Thinkers (Paper II) Title of the Module: Abraham Maslow Abraham H. Maslow is one of the most influential thinkers of the Humanistic Approach. First part of the module will cover his brief life history and his major works while the second...

Subject: Public Administration Paper Title: Administrative Thinkers (Paper II) Title of the Module: Abraham Maslow Abraham H. Maslow is one of the most influential thinkers of the Humanistic Approach. First part of the module will cover his brief life history and his major works while the second part describes arrival of Maslow on the scene, marking the beginning of Humanistic Approach in the evolution of the administrative theory. Third part of the module comprehensively describes Maslow’s holistic theory of motivation or Need Hierarchy along with its critical evaluation. The fourth part briefly reveals Maslow’s conception of an ideal Theory Z Organization and management practices – an important contribution to administrative theory which is not so widely acknowledged. Key Words: humanistic, motivation, need-hierarchy, holistic, Theory Z organization, management. Introduction What motivates human beings to work has been a question that has always fascinated the ancient scholars and the modern administrative thinkers alike. Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970) is one of the most distinguished thinkers in the realm of motivation in psychology as well as in administrative theory. His theory of motivation is immensely popular and widely known though he also worked on organization. Maslow’s humanistic approach is very significant turning point in the evolution of administrative theory and he is rightly considered a revered father figure of the human potential movement. A Brief Life History of Abraham H. Maslow Maslow was born in New York City in 1908 of Jewish immigrant uneducated parents. “A poor, lonely, unhappy child, he turned, at a very early age, to books and study for solace and they carried him through childhood and adolescence to Cornell and the University of Wisconsin. (Schultz, 1977) There, two events considerably broadened his life: his marriage (Maslow calls it “a school in itself”) and his introduction to behaviouristic psychology. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1934 and he returned to New York for advanced study at Columbia and then accepted a position in the psychology department at Brooklyn College. Maslow studied with various psychotherapists, including Alfred Adler, E. Fromme, and Haren Horney who left a deep impression on him. Besides, he was most strongly influenced by Max Wertheimer, and by Ruth Benedict, a brilliant cultural anthropologist. Realizing how little psychology contributed to major world problems, Maslow decided to deal with the heights that human beings are capable of attaining. He criticised the pessimism of so many psychologists like Freud who - Maslow believed - had “dealt too much with human frailty and not enough with human strengths.”(Lundin, 1984) B y emphasizing the positive side of humanity, Maslow became one of the foremost 1 spokesmen of humanistic psychology, which he characterized as the “Third Force” in American Psychology, the other two being behaviourism and psychoanalysis. His famous need hierarchy theory was published in 1943. His major works are: 1. Motivation and Personality (1954) 2. Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences (1964) 3. Toward a Psychology of Being (1968) 4. The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966) 5. Eupsychian Management: A Journal (1965) 6. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Published posthumously in 1971) Maslow joined Brandeis University shortl y after its establishment in 1951 and remained there till 1968. He was chairman of the first psychology department there. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1967. From 1968 to 1970, Maslow was Fellow of the W.P. Laughlin Charitable Foundation in California. He died of a fatal heart attack in June, 1970. Humanistic Approach and Maslow The assumptions about human nature and work motivation have been evolving and undergoing drastic changes over the period of time. In the post-Industrial Revolution era and the early 1900s, the classical ‘economic’ man model 1 of motivation came to the forefront of administrative thought which recommended ‘economic incentives’ for motivating work shy men to work with machine-like efficiency. It was replaced by the human relations’ ‘social’ man model, assuming non-economic incentives to be the most powerful motivators in the thirties. However, by the 1960s, a realization about the inadequacy of these models grew out of the increasingly complex environment in which organizations were operating. It triggered an active search for a ‘whole man’ who was recognized as crucial in the organizational process. At this moment, Abraham Maslow - one of the scholars who spearheaded the humanistic movement - stepped into the picture to do away with the serious limitations of the earlier models of human motivation. He took a much-needed holistic and positive view of man and his motivation. Maslow did not view a man merely as economic or social. For him a man was neither a money-hungry worker nor an all-time praise-seeking social creature. Maslow saw him as a ‘whole’ human being, with needs and an inherent potential to be fulfilled. Leavitt et al. (1973) aptly remark, “.....You can’t hire just a piece of him. You can’t hire just the machinist’s skill. You must hire the whole machinist...., the man as a whole”. From the time of its introduction in the mid-1940s until the late 1950s, Maslow’s theory remained primarily in the realm of clinical psychology. As the role of motivation at work started gaining phenomenal attention in the sixties, Maslow’s theory of motivation emerged as an appealing model of human behaviour in organizations. Largely due to 2 hungry man, utopia can be defined simply as a place where there is plenty of food.” Capacities that are not useful for this purpose lie dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to write poetry, the desire to acquire an automobile......or philosophy, community feeling, love, freedom are waved aside since they fail to fill the stomach. Therefore, Maslow remarks. “Man lives by bread alone - when there is no bread”. But Maslow recognizes that such chronic, extreme hunger of the emergency type is not common in most of the known societies. When gratified, the physiological needs cease to be the most important motivator and next want emerges. 2. The Safety Needs The safety needs are the next set of needs to dominate the behaviour of individuals. Even sometimes, the physiological needs, which being satisfied now are underestimated. Safety needs are like the common preference for a job with tenure and protection, savings accounts and all sorts of insurance (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old age). The need for safety becomes an active and dominant motivator only in emergencies, e.g., war, disease, natural catastrophes, crime waves.....” and similar bad conditions. 3. The belongingness and love needs When both the physiological and safet y needs are fairly gratified, the love and belongingness needs will emerge and “the person will feel keenly as never before, the absence of friends, a social circle, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children”. He might have sneered at love as unnecessary when he was hungry but now, he will strive with great intensity to achieve it. These needs, Maslow points out, are often thwarted in our society and are a common cause of maladjustment and psychopathology. It should be noted that it is ‘D-love and not B-Love’ 4. The love needs can never be fully satisfied but at some level of satisfaction of these needs, their dominant influence diminishes on the individual and the esteem needs become more important. 4. The Esteem Needs According to Maslow, all people in our society (with a few pathological exceptions) have a need for esteem which can be classified into self-esteem and esteem from others. The former includes “the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom” and the latter includes “the desire for reputation or prestige, status, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, or appreciation.” 5. The Need for Self-Actualization Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fit for. In oft- quoted lines of Maslow,” A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” The 4 emergence of the topmost need of self-actualization 5 after the satisfaction of other four needs makes an individual desire to use his potential to the fullest and to accomplish all he is capable of accomplishing. The specific form that these needs will take will, of course, vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. From his study of self-actualizing people, Maslow has given fifteen characteristics of the self-actualized persons:- 1. More efficient perception of reality and more comfortable relations with it. This means that self-actualized people readily detect falseness and spuriousness in other people and judge people accurately. Therefore they live closer to reality and to nature than most people do. 2. Acceptance of self and of others. These people have relativel y little guilt, shame, or anxiety, that is, they accept themselves and their various characteristics and are not defensive. 3. Spontaneity. They are especially spontaneous in their thoughts and other covert tendencies and are so, also, in their behaviour. 4. Problem centering. They are not ego-centered but rather oriented to problems outside themselves, to which they are devoted in the sense of a mission. 5. Detachment; the need for privacy. They do not mind solitude and even seek it; their objectivity is an expression of their detachment. 6. Autonomy: independence of culture and environment. They have relative independence of their environments, as prior characteristics would suggest. 7. Continued freshness of appreciation. “...they derive ecstasy, inspiration, and strength from the basic experiences of life”, even on occasion from things they have seen, heard, or done many times. 8. Mystic experience or the oceanic feeling. These are experiences which may arise in a variety of settings; they are “feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space,...” 9. ‘Gemeinschaftsgefuhl’ or social interest (Alder’s term). This is a “feeling of identification, sympathy and affection” for mankind, even though the self-actualizing person is troubled by the many shortcomings of the species. 10. Interpersonal relations. These are very deep and profound and are present usually with only a few rather than with many individuals. Hostility is reactive in a situation, rather than chronic. 5 11. Democratic character structure. They respect people and can learn from and relate to them, irrespective of birth, race, blood, family, etc. 12. Discrimination between means and ends. The self- actualized discriminate ends from the means for accomplishing the ends to an extent that most people do not. They can often enjoy the means or instrumental behaviour leading to an end. 13. Sense of humor. These people tend to be philosophical and non-hostile in their humor. 14. Creativeness. Each one has “a special kind of creativeness or originality or inventiveness that has certain peculiar characteristics”. 15. Resistance to enculturation. They get along in the culture but are detached from it; that is, they are essentially, autonomous of it although not especially unconventional in a behavioural way. In response to the question whether self-actualizing persons are motivated at all, Maslow says, “Perhaps the concept of motivation should apply only to non-self- actualizers. Our subjects no longer strive in the ordinary sense, but develop. They develop more and more fully in their own style....for them motivation is just character growth, character expression, maturation and development; in a word self-actualization.” It is to be noted that a person does not have to attain one goal to the point of total satisfaction before going on to the next need. After satisfying the first need to minimum level, he moves on to seek the satisfaction of the next and so on. In later papers and lectures, Maslow added two additional classes of needs to his basic theory of motivation: a) The Need to Know and to Understand To discover, to understand and to explain, to explore the mysterious, unknown and unexplained is a fundamental aspect of psychologically healthy people. b) The Aesthetic Needs The aesthetic needs are revealed in the deep-rooted need for beauty as it promotes a feeling of well-being whereas ugliness is experienced as stultifying. It is almost seen universally in healthy children. The Basic Needs: Some Further Characteristics 1) The hierarchy of needs is not absolutely fixed and there can be many exceptions, like innately creative people or idealistic people giving up everything for the sake of a particular ideal. 6 2) Another important point is that emergence of a new need after satisfaction of the prepotent need is not sudden but gradual. 6 3) The needs are more often or largely unconscious than conscious in an average person. 4) This classification of needs is not ultimate and universal for all cultures but there is a kind of unity in needs behind the apparent cultural diversities. 5) Maslow argues that the failure to satisfy the basic needs leads to deficiency and such a man can be called sick. For Maslow, the good or healthy society’s definition is “one that permits man’s highest purpose to emerge by satisfying all his basic needs.” Critical Evaluation Though Maslow’s hierarchical theory of motivation is intuitively very appealing, the major grounds on which critics have criticized Maslow’s theory of motivation are given below:- 1. Many critics have questioned the existence of hierarchy of needs itself. Porter, Lawler and Hackman (1975) opined on the basis of their research studies that the hierarchy should be considered merely a two-tiered affair with needs related to existence at the lower level and all other needs grouped at the second level. However, the studies of Slocum (Flippo, 1984) as well as Mason Haire et al (1967) indicated that Maslow’s model was less dependable when applied to different countries because needs at different places were culturally and socially bound. 2. Can needs be satisfied? A research study of longitudinal nature conducted by Hall and Nougaim (1972) yielded results contrary to Maslow’s theory. It showed that the correlations between the satisfaction of a need and the intensity of that need were positive and despite the gratification of lower needs, average satisfaction decreased in each of the lower needs. Thus, Maslow’s theory about the role of basic need gratification got little consistent support. 3. Another controversial aspect of Maslow’s theory is the positive portrayal of human nature in healthy persons. Though it was highly appreciated by many scholars on one hand, yet at the same time, it was difficult either to accept or fully evaluate this. The reason is that Maslow’s major support for his view of human nature comes from his study of self-actualizing people and little is known about the methodology followed in it. Besides, he neglected the negative aspect of human nature. 4. The concept of self-actualization is a fertile source of confusion and questions. Unfortunately, Maslow does not tell us much about his research methodology. Cofer and Appley (1964) doubted if the self-actualizing characteristics are potential in all of us and they raised questions about education, employment, age, sex distribution, marriage status, economic level and so on of Maslow’s sample. Available information fails to supply answers to these basic questions. There are also grave doubts about the sample being suitable and representative of us from which generalizations have been drawn about the species. 7 5. Moreover, critics attack the concept of self-actualization for being very vague and utopian. It is without any operational variables. The looseness of its language coupled with the inadequacy of the evidence come in the way of further meaningful investigation. However, this criticism has been overcome to great extent by the development of Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) by Evertt Shostrom in 1964 cited in Gauri Shankar’s book (1993). Self-actualization is operationally defined and measured by POI. But much overlapping is criticized in Maslow’s characteristics of the self-actualizing persons. 6. Herzberg was very critical of Maslow’s needs hierarchy, particularly the argument that the satisfaction of higher-order needs awaited the satisfaction of lower order needs. Herzberg (1976) argued, “...we would have not art if man needed to have full belly in order to be creative.” Secondly, Herzberg remarked, “The hierarchy became an excuse for non-self-actualization. Since the lower needs are never satisfied (they need to be replenished), the results of his (Maslow’s) efforts were a most “scientific” and “humanistic” theory that became in reality, an excuse for the failure.....” 7. Maslow’s theory is also blamed for concentrating only on the content and neglecting the process of motivation, that is, how behaviour is activated, directed and sustained. 8. Bass and Barrett 7 felt that Maslow’s theory has been most interesting and most popular than true. This theory is widel y accepted though it has never been tested adequately as a complete and true theory. 9. Michael Nash 8 opines that Maslow’s theory has great face validity but the problem with need hierarchy is that it cannot be translated into a practical guideline for managers who are trying to make people productive. Maslow on Organization and Management 9 It is true that Maslow is famous for his need hierarchy theory but there is more to Maslow’s work than just the hierarchy of needs. It is widely known that in management, McGregor popularized Maslow’s theory of motivation which was originally developed in psychology. But a lesser known fact 1 0 is that later, Maslow himself related his need hierarchy to organizational setting and theorized about the best form of management and organization in his treatise Eupsychian Management: A Journal (1965). This book was republished as Maslow on Management in 1998. 1 1 Eupsychian Management Maslow (1968) asserted that human nature has been sold short because man has a higher nature which is just as “instinctoid” as his lower nature. He begins by raising a basic question about management: “What conditions of work are best for personal fulfillment?” To be more precise, what Maslow implies is: a) “What conditions of work, b) 8 what kinds of work, c) what kinds of management, d) and what kinds of reward or pay will help human nature to grow healthily to its fuller and fullest stature?” Maslow advances his answer to these in the form of eupsychian management because eupsychian conditions of work are often good not only for personal fulfillment, but also for the health and prosperity of the organization (factory, hospital, college, etc.), as well as for the quantity and quality of the products or services turned out by the organization”. Theory-Z Organization Maslow visualized Theory-Z organization or Organization-transcending as the highest form of organization. The Theory-Z organization was developed by Maslow as a next step after studying autocratic, custodial, supportive and collegial forms of organization as given by Keith Davis 1 2 (Maslow, 1971, pp. 284-286). Maslow’s Theory-Z organization depends on the devotion to Being itself rather than becoming. Transcendence, the most holistic level of consciousness, is seen as an end in itself. All employees are considered fellow workers, devoted to their work. Management only gives guidance and not orders to the employees. Corresponding to management’s positive approach, the employee orientation in this environment is love and admiration for the management. The employees are highly motivated and dedicated to their work and fulfillment of meta-needs. In a nutshell, Maslow’s eupsychia has man as an end in himself. However, critics raised serious doubts about the feasibility of Maslow’s Theory-Z organization run by eupsychian management and inhabited by self-actualizing people as it cannot be put into practice. Summing up, Maslow’s ideas are still very relevant because in today’s era of fierce international competition, no management task is more urgent than motivating staff to achieve greater efficiency and productivit y. Maslow’s theory of motivation (Need Hierarchy) is considered to be his most creative and lasting contribution to social sciences and particularly to administrative theory. A pioneer of Humanistic Approach, Maslow rejected the earlier negative motivation assumptions and took a holistic and positive view of human nature and motivation. His ideal Theory-Z Organization with eupsychian management practices and self-actualization holds out a hope of a better human organization in a healthier society. ************************************* 9