Students of business management at sometime or other get introduced to Maslow's ideas on motivation and people's needs - I did. We then get weaned off the ideas with arguments that Maslow's concepts are too simple, an inadequate explanation of human motivation. So be it - but I like Maslow. Readers might therefore treat this page as a comfort blanket. Maybe he would have liked that!
Have you noticed how in textbooks on human resource management we hardly speak of the employee as a person. "We " become "staff" - personnel, human resources. Actual people with lives inside and outside of work - which need not be referenced always by our job role - are somehow neglected . Our feelings, interests, values, desires, worries - are glossed over. The real person is put behind a veil. Even the manager - the target of management textbooks - is hardly addressed as a unique person with individual ways of construing what he/she experiences and does.
Managers who decide things about others seldom comprehend the biography of those they employ in anything other than superficial, generalised and often wrong ways. Sometimes the individual employee or group is reduced to a type - a sterotypical classification (albeit academically defined). Who are these academics anyway - to so categorise?
Decisions are made on the basis of scores and categorisation resulting from psychometric tests. Do we really comprehend the uniqueness of the individual nor how he/she brings together (integrates) that collection of positions and behaviors which is "the self".
A person's level of gratification within this hierarchically integrated framework would be represented by a horizontal line across all needs, and growth would be represented by that horizontal line moving upwards through all needs.
NOTE: Maslow's scheme is an ordinal scale - not amenable to being quantified. It's value is a heuristic abstraction. It is the general idea, the overall shape - that has some descriptive and analytic interest. Maslow's theory is weak on exact points of transition. You can (and he does) for illustrative purposes speak of someone being 85% satisfied in physiological needs, for instance, but so far as I know there isn't a test which provides a quantified measure of gratification across needs.
| Physiological Needs |
| We have a need from the moment of conception/birth for basic sustenance: food, drink, warmth etc. These are fundamental survival matters. The list may well also include needs arising from body hormonal levels/cycles or stresses placed on the body organism from everyday stimulus or sensory deprivation that we experience. At such a "level" - the individual's natural inclination e.g. as an extrovert or introvert may be at play - with greater or lesser needs for stimulus to be satisfied.
Physiological tiredness may be chronic and the infant goes to sleep. The adult however - may be driven by cognition - grit and determination to succeed - so stay at the wheel until they crash out. Maslow did not explore such detail of instances but it is important that we do not ignore possible physiological needs and deficiencies in relation to influences on behaviour (drivers).
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| Safety/Order Needs |
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From basic physiological needs, Maslow now proposes higher order needs arguing that once basic needs are relatively well gratified (in form of equilibrium within the person), new needs emerge. The next "level" he categorised as
safety needs which relate to the individual's need for protection, security, stability, reliance on orderiness, freedom from fear and anxiety, need for certainty, structure and predictability and so on.
We can see that children exhibit these needs. So too with adults. |
| Social (Belongingness and Love) Needs |
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With physiological and safety needs in equilibrium with no chronic deficiency, there is scope for expression of higher social needs. This broadly fits in with our general notions of human development from childhood into adulthood. The need remans with us albeit that its colour andintensity may change.
Social need involves affection and belongingness - giving and receiving affection in relationship with others. When an individual's social need is not satisfied, he/she may feel separate, isolated, distanced from others - friends, colleagues, lover, family. Much depends on ability to tolerate "being alone" (high safety need or high self-actualisation perhaps). Someone with low toleration may yearn for warm relations with others - a place in the group/family. The need to be socially wanted/accepted may drive behaviour to this end. This need for affection is real, necessary, and important for many and lack of fulfillment may bring loneliness, rejection, friendlessness, rootlessness and anomie.
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| Esteem Needs |
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Maslow argued (apart from pathological exceptions), that a need exists for stable, verified self-respect (self value) or esteem of others (other-value). The need references
Thwarting of of self-esteem needs produces feelings of being snubbed, ignored, degraded, inferior and powerlessness. Thus this particular category is underpinned by the lowever safety/order and social levels of need. Maslow saw the construction of healthy self-esteem stemming from everyday signs and signifiers that communicate respect from others. This is thus more fundamental than explicit fame or adulation.
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| Self-actualization |
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This category is less a need than a final development stage for the person.
Maslow saw that lower needs may be satisfied but that discontent and restlessness may remain for the individual.
"Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization." |
Maslow's explanation of human motivation in the late 50s and 60s was taken up in many management textbooks. It underpinned McGregor's model of Theory X and Theory Y and his argument for staff appraisal systems. But it is too simple. It is a content oriented, simple view of some, generalised statements (abstractions) of human needs. It doesn't cover all needs or how I, assuming myself to be aware and fully in charge of what I do and not driven by mysterious impulses for which my mother (bless her) is the main culprit, construe my world and what is important to me.
The volumes of papers and books on "how to motivate employees" illustrate a basic concern of employers namely
to get employees to perform "better".
Rather than exploring how employees as people experience their world, too frequently managerial interest in motivation (instrumental - get people to perform better) tends to describe and explain employee behaviour as categorising theories (from which we then may interpret and define how someone is motivated). These often reflect managerial expectations of "qualities for performance in role" but they do not really uncover the real person - and may distort or hide who this is. The person (the employee!) is
Maslow's interest in motivation extended to his observation of employment leading to people being unable to express themselves fully and suffering for it. Membership of the firm and its regime seemed to mean experiencing a way of life which separated people from their needs and capacity to express their real nature and potential to "be".
Making the fullest of "my (your)" potential is of major significance for most of us. We express and come to accept our existence (how we see it and how we construe it). As Coffer and Appley (pp.660) suggest, this seems to approximate to "self-actualisation".
Many writers on employee motivation emphasise self actualisation and - seeking to be scientists - try to identify and describe the necessary conditions and requirements for ideal working life. The existentialist view however is probably more a philosophical concern rather than one of empirical (lets gather data on it and measure it) science.
The substance of a cocept suc as self-actualisation requires us to focus on
