[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Motivation Theories to a Fictitious Organization
Maslow was one of the first people to be associated with the humanistic, as opposed to a task-based, approach to management. As people 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.
Nevertheless, it was a very unsettling time for him: Recovering from a major heart attack, the temperamentally restless and ceaselessly active Maslow was finding forced convalescence at home to be almost painfully unbearable. Suddenly, his extensive plans for future research, travel, and lecturing had to be postponed. Although Maslow hoped for a speedy recovery, frequent chest pains induced a keen sense of his own mortality. As perhaps never before, he began to ponder his career's accomplishments and his unrealized goals. (Morgan, S. (1996)
Although the complete audiotapes of the sessions, conducted over three days, disappeared long ago under mysterious circumstances, the written condensation that remains provides a fascinating and still-relevant portrait of a key thinker at the height of his prowess. Intellectually, Maslow was decades ahead of his time; today the wide-ranging ideas he offers here are far from outdated. Indeed, after some twenty-odd years, they're still on the cutting edge of American psychology and social science. Emotionally, this interview is significant for the rare--essentially unprecedented--glimpse it affords into Maslow's personal history and concerns: his ancestry and upbringing; his mentors and ambitions; his courtship, marriage, and fatherhood; and even a few of his peak experiences.......
