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Essay on Humanists: Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was a United States psychologist and behavioural scientist. He spent part of his career in industry as well as working as an academic. His "Hierarchy of Needs Theory" was first presented in 1943 in the US Psychological Review and later developed in his book "Motivation and Personality", first published in 1954. His concepts were originally offered as general explanations of human behaviour but quickly became a significant contribution to workplace motivation theory. They are still used by managers today to understand, predict and influence employee motivation.
Maslow was one of the first people to be associated with the humanistic, as opposed to a task-based, approach to management. As eople have increasingly come to be appreciated as a key resource in successful companies, Maslow's model has remained a valuable management concept.
Maslow saw human needs in the form of a hierarchy, ascending from the lowest to the highest. When one set of needs is satisfied it ceases to be a motivator; motivation is then generated by the unsatisfied needs in the hierarchy. The needs are: survival or physiological needs, safety or security needs, social needs, ego-status needs and self-actualisation needs. If managers can recognise which level of the hierarchy a worker has reached, he or she can motivate the employee in the most appropriate way.
Today the hierarchy is usually represented as a triangle, although Maslow himself did not present it in this way. The hierarchy consists of five levels:
- Survival or physiological needs. The most primitive of all needs consisting of the basic animal requirements such as food, water, shelter, warmth and sleep.
Security or safety needs. In earlier times these needs were expressed as a desire to be free of physical danger. This need has been refined so that its implications are now felt in terms of the social and financial, such as job security, rather than purely physical requirements....
