Maslow's Contribution to Administrative Theory

Note: Only Maslow's Need-Hierarchy has been extracted and given here from my own book for M.A. students.

Those interested in studying Maslow in detail and his Theory-Z Organisation should refer to:

• Renu, Maslow's Theory of Motivation: A Critique, Journal of Government and Political Science, Vol. XXI, Issue no. 1,2, Sept. 1999, March 2000, pp.55-60.

• Renu Kapila, Maslow's Contribution to Administrative Theory (Some Lesser Known Aspects), Arun Publishing House (P) Ltd., Chandigarh, 2003.
• Book's Review published in Diviner - A Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 4: No. 2, Feb-July, 2007, Chandigarh, pp. 169-170.

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MASLOW'S THEORY

Maslow’s theory of motivation or need hierarchy as it is popularly called, is perhaps the most celebrated and widely known theory of motivation. It earned him a unique place in the galaxy of prominent social scientists. Maslow’s need hierarchy is the starting point for any discussion on motivation in administration and management. In this chapter, we will explain Maslow’s theoretical framework in detail and critically evaluate it along with mentioning some of its implications for administration as given by various writers.

MAJOR ASSUMPTIONS

Maslow’s theoretical framework stands on the following assumptions:

(i)      Man is a perpetually wanting creature. When he satisfies one want, others spring up to receive his attention. It is a never-ending process.

(ii)     Satisfied needs do not motivate. Only unsatisfied needs motivate.

(iii)    Man has certain basic needs. They are basic because their gratification is essential for psychological health and their deprivation leads to psychological illness, just as the absence of certain vitamins results in illness.

(iv)    A normal healthy man has “a natural drive towards health, happiness and accomplishment.”1

(v)     Human needs do not exist as miscellaneous wants that are satisfied in a random fashion. Instead, there is a ordering of needs.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Maslow’s theory of motivation postulates that people are continuously in a motivational state. Human beings have five classes of basic needs (the physiological needs, the safety needs, the love and belongingness needs, the esteem needs and the self-actualization need) which organize themselves into a hierarchical structure according to their prepotency. As one need is relatively satisfied, the next higher need in the hierarchy becomes a motivator and so on. It can be demonstrated as given below :-

Let us now discuss Maslow’s theory of motivation* in detail which comprises of the following levels of needs emerging in a hierarchical pattern:-

I. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS

Physiological needs like hunger and thirst are the most preponent of all needs and constitute the lowest rung in the hierarchy. It implies that if all the needs of human being are equally unsatisfied, the physiological needs are most likely to be the major motivating force rather than any other needs. When the organism is dominated by the physiological needs, for instance hunger, all capacities are put into the service of hunger satisfaction, the receptors and effectors, the intelligence, memory, habits-all simply become hunger-gratifying tools. (p. 82)

* Maslow’s theory has been derived from his book Motivation and Personality (New York : Harper and Row, Publishers, 1954). In the following discussion where we cite page number only, reference is to this book.

Another peculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of the future also tends to change. Maslow says, “For our chronically and extremely hungry man, utopia can be defined simply as a place where there is plenty of food.” (p. 82). Capacities that are not useful for this purpose lie dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to wrtie poetry, the desire to acquire an automobile......or philosophy, community feeling, love, freedom are waved aside since they fail to fill the stomach (pp. 82-83). Therefore, Maslow remarks. “Man lives by bread alone - when there is no bread”. (p. 83). But Maslow recognize 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.

II. THE SAFETY NEEDS

The safety needs are the next set of needs to dominate the behaviour of individuals. All that has been said of the physiological needs is equally true of these needs also. “The safety needs may serve as the almost exclusive organizers of behaviour, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service, and we may fairly describe the whole organism as a safety seeking mechanism (p. 84). Even sometimes, the physiological needs, which being satisfied now are underestimated.

Though the safety needs are obvious and easily observed in infants and children, yet we can perceive the expression of these needs in adults, too, in such security measures as the common preference for a job with tenure and protection, savings accounts and all sorts of insurance (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old age). Normally, the safety needs are fulfilled in a well ordered or regulated, peaceful society and normal adults are not dominated by these needs.” 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 (p. 88). An acute search for safety need is, however, often seen in neurosis.

Maslow perceives the tendency to have some religion or world philosophy, also, in part motivated by safety seeking as it attempts to organize the universe and the men in it into some sort of satisfactorily coherent, meaningful whole. We may list science and philosophy in general as partially motivated by the safety needs, besides other motivations. (p.88).

III. THE BELONGINGNESS AND LOVE NEEDS.

“These needs include the needs for both giving and receiving love and affection; the need to accept, associate with and be accepted  by others; and the need to belong or to feel one’s self a part of social groups.”3

When both the physiological and safety 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 (p. 89).

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. Secondly, love is not synonymous with sex. 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.

IV. 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.” (p.90).

Satisfaction of the self-esteem needs leads to feelings of self-confidence, strength, of being useful and necessary in the world but thwarting of these needs produces feelings of inferiority, helplessness and can give rise to neurotic trends. Many scholars like Fromme, Rogers have also emphasized that the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame and unwarranted adulation (p.91).

V. 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.” (p.91). The emergence of the self-actualization needs 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. Creative behaviour, like painting, is like any other behaviour having multiple determinants. It is also clear that creative activity may be compensatory, ameliorative, or purely economic. From informal experiments, Maslow’s impression is that it is possible to distinguish the artistic and intellectual products of basically satisfied people from those of basically unsatisfied people by inspection alone.

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. They also distinguish “far more easily than most the fresh, concrete, and idiographic from the generic, abstract, and rubricized” (p. 205). Therefore they live closer to reality and to nature than most people do. They also tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity more easily than do others.

2.            Acceptance of self and of others. These people have relatively 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. But unconventionality is not a mark of their behaviour, for their unconventionality is not put on to impress others and may even be suppressed in order not to distress others.

4.            Problem centering. They are not ego-centered but rather oriented to problems outside themselves, important problems to which they are devoted in the sense of a mission in life.

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” (p. 215), 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, with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened...”(p. 216).

9.            Gemeinschaftsgefuhl or social interest (Alder’s term). This is a “feeling of identification, sympathy and affection” for mankind (p. 217), 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. Such hostility as is shown is reactive in a situation, rather than chronic.

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 or what they are striving for from the means for accomplishing the ends to an extent that most people do not. On the other hand, they can often enjoy the means or instrumental behaviour leading to an end, which more impatient persons would dislike.

13.          Sense of humor. These people tend to be philosophical and nonhostile in their humor.

14.          Creativeness. Each one has “a special kind of creativeness or originality or inventiveness that has certain peculiar characteristics” (p. 223).

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.

Unfortunately, Maslow tells us little about the nature of his sample or the methods used in studying these people. 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.” (p. 211).

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. The figure4 below  shows how all the five needs interact within the personality:

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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

These needs may be subsumed under the broad heading of curiosity. Maslow believes that studies of animals, children, great creative people, explorers and ordinary mature individuals reveal the curiosity, the desire to learn. To discover, to understand and to explain, to explore the mysterious, unknown and unexplained is a fundamental aspect of psychologically healthy people.

Maslow finds from a few cases he saw, that the pathology (boredom, loss of zest in life, self-dislike and the like) were produced in intelligent people leading stupid lives in stupid jobs. At least one case in which the appropriate cognitive therapy (resuming part-time studies, getting a position that was more intellectually demanding, insight) removed the symptoms. (p. 95) It appears here Maslow is hinting at what Herzberg called lack of job enrichment.

The cognitive needs are a prerequisite for the fullest development of human potentialities. Maslow sees a hierarchy here too, in which the desire to know is prepotent over the desire to understand. He urges not to separate these needs from the basic needs.

b) THE AESTHETIC NEEDS

The aesthetic needs are revealed in the deep-rooted need for beauty expressed by some individuals. In early investigations of students in their environments, Maslow found that ugliness was experienced as stultifying and beauty as  promoting a feeling of well-being and enhancement of the self-image. It is almost seen universally in healthy children.

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.........................................(See the book for details and references)

                          

SUMMARY

Maslow’s well known theory of motivation takes a holistic view of man and it postulates that a normal healthy man is motivated by five basic needs emerging in a hierarchy. He later added two more needs in it. Maslow’s theory of motivation exerted deep influence on his successors. Many writers pointed out some similarities between Maslow’s need hierarchy and some of the major motivation theories given by management pioneers. Some scholars also tried to relate Maslow’s theory to administration and discuss its ramifications. However, most of the main propositions of Maslow’s need hierarchy drew severe criticism from critics. Findings of various empirical studies conducted to test Maslow’s theory, at best, provided only partial support to its major tenets. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, Maslow’s need hierarchy gained tremendous popularity owing to its intuitive appeal and positive portrayal of human nature.