Maslow on Management

by Abraham H. Maslow, Warren Bennis (Foreword by)

Overview

A seminal work onhuman behavior in the workplace-now completely updated

"At last! We have all been quoting Maslow for years and to now have such an excellent compilation of his seminal thoughts on management and organization comes like a timely gift from heaven. The values and principles he taught decades ago are even more relevant today."
—Stephen Covey, author, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People

"Maslow's book is a readable, impressionistic masterpiece that extolled the virtues of collaborative, synergistic management decades ahead of its time. This edition reveals just how much the management thinkers of our day, including Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Peter Senge, owe to Maslow, and how much, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, management can still learn from his insights."
—Andrea Gabor, author, The Man Who Discovered Quality

"Maslow's brilliant and humane perspectives are made easily accessible in this exceptional book. It's also quite humbling-why haven't we yet actualized the truths about human nature and the nature of work?"
—Margaret J. Wheatley, author, Leadership and the New Science and A Simpler Way

"Maslow's profound concept of self-actualization could generate a Copernican Revolution of work and society, catapulting us out of what future generations will look back on as the dark ages of management."
—Jim Collins, coauthor, Built to Last

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780471247807
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/14/1998
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.51(h) x 1.09(d)

About the Author

The late ABRAHAM H. MASLOW is the most widely renowned expert on human behavior and motivation. His books are acknowledged as standards in the psychology literature worldwide.

DEBORAH C. STEPHENS, cofounder, The Center for Innovative Leadership, is an author, educator, and management consultant in the areas of customer service, leadership, and organizational development. She is coauthor of One Size Fits One: Building Relationships One Customer and One Employee at a Time and Executive Producer of "Leadership Lessons From the Fast Lane," a monthly Internet broadcast which highlights leaders from organizations and institutions worldwide.

GARY HEIL is an educator, business consultant, and expert on leadership, service quality, and change management. Founder of the Center for Innovative Leadership, Heil is a highly regarded speaker and frequent commentator on American and Australian radio and television. In addition, Heil has served on the Board of Examiners for The Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award and is coauthor of Leadership and the Customer Revolution and One Size Fits One: Building Relationships One Customer and One Employee at a Time.

Read an Excerpt

Maslow on Management
Abraham H. Maslow with Deborah C. Stephens and Gary Heil
ISBN: 0-471-24780-4

Introduction This is not about new management tricks or gimmicks or superficial techniques that can be used to manipulate human beings more efficiently. Rather it is a clear confrontation of one basic set of orthodox values by another newer system of values than claims to be both more efficient, and more true. It draws on some of the truly revolutionary consequences of the discovery that human nature has been sold short.
----- Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

What can a set of journal entries that are nearly 37 years old teach us about managing today? We asked ourselves that question when Ann Kaplan, Abe's daughter, approached us with the idea of republishing them. Our answer is that Maslow's ideas about work, -self-actualization, and the influence of business in developing "the good society" are some of the most profound thinking we have discovered in nearly 20 years of studying leaders.
We immersed ourselves in Maslow's work: his published books, articles, and personal papers. Although we had always equated Maslow with his hierarchy of needs theory, we discovered in his work a collection of research and wisdom and insights that were decades ahead of its time. His pioneering work in the field of management, creativity, and innovation speaks to us today in a voice that makes current work and thinking appear almost obsolete. Maslow's theories regarding -self-actualization and work, customer loyalty, leadership, and the role of uncertainty as a source of creativity, paint a picture of today's digital age that is profound.
The future Maslow describes in his journals is the world we live in today-the digital age. A world in which human potential will be the primary source of competitive advantage in almost every industry, every organization, every institution. Maslow's work makes us question whether we understand the crossroads we have come to. A crossroads, where in our effort to just keep pace, we will need committed, educated, and highly motivated people at all levels; crossroads where compliance or authoritarian means of leadership no longer work; crossroads where the needs of society and the needs of a business are becoming so intertwined that if one entity is dysfunctional the other will suffer the consequences.
Yet, are we prepared to go forward? We speak the language of this new frontier, but have yet to embrace the meaning. We need look no further than our new vernacular for people: intellectual capital, human resources, knowledge workers, and all of the other terms we have invented to disguise the fact that what we are speaking of are people and their untapped potential. People spend too many hours in organizations and institutions that do not support them in reaching their true potential. We believe this should be as much a driving force as financial management, product development, return on investment, and all of the other indicators we put into place to measure success. Without this force, our successes will be short lived, our plans nothing more than short-term, and our ability to continue to compete in a global world severely restrained. Perhaps it is time we embrace Maslow's words and truly believe that we can create organizations which fully tap the true potential of people.
Building Great Organizations

In bringing back the journals of Abraham Maslow, we set out to prove that his theories and ideas were, in fact, possible. Our journey took us to leaders in a wide variety of industries. We asked these leaders to discuss their thoughts on Maslow's words and their own struggles and triumphs in building enlightened organizations.
We would like to thank the numerous leaders who gave their time to read these journals and who allowed us time to explore their thoughts:
Mort Meyerson, Former Chairman, Perot Systems
Warren Bennis, University of Southern California
George McKown, Chairman McKown and DeeLeeuw
David Wright, Chief Executive Officer, Amdahl
Linda Alepin, Chief Executive Officer, Pebblesoft Learning
Brian Lehnen, Director, Village Enterprise Trust
Sherri Rose, Former Director, Apple University
Michael Ray, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Jackie McGrath, Insight Out Collaborations
Anne Robinson, Former Chairman and Co-Founder, Windham Hill Records
Michael Murphy, Co-Founder, Esalen Institute
Andrew Kay, Founder, KAYPRO Computers
Tom Kosnik, Professor Engineering and Global Marketing, Stanford University
Stanford Engineering students in IE 292
Aspen Ski Company
Pat O'Donnell, Chief Executive Officer, Aspen Ski Company
Richard Karesh, Co-author, Fifth Discipline Handbook; founder, Learning Org. Dialogue
Art Kleiner, Co-author Fifth Discipline Handbook; Author, Age of Heretics
Allan Webber, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Fast Company Magazine
Ken Morris, Co-Founder, PeopleSoft
Dr. John Popplestone, History of American Psychology at the University of Akron
Dr. Edward Hoffman, Author, The Right to Be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow
Allan Wernick, Attorney at Law, Columbus, Ohio
Jeanne Glasser, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., for her enthusiastic support of this project

We would like to thank Ann Kaplan and Ellen Maslow for persisting in their efforts to bring their father's work to a new generation of leaders and managers. Their gift to us was significant: Through the process of bringing their father's journals back to life, we ourselves have become better educators, better leaders, better parents, and better human beings.

Deborah C. Stephens
Gary Heil
July 1998
The Center For Innovative Leadership
San Mateo, California

Table of Contents

The Attitude of Self-Actualizing People to Duty, Work, Mission.

Additional Notes on Self-Actualization, Work, Duty, Mission.

Self-Actualized Duty.

Different Management Principles at Different Levels in the Hierarchy.

Enlightened Economics and Management.

The Neglect of Individual Differences in Management Policy.

The Balance of the Forces toward Growth and Regression.

Memorandum of the Goals and Directives of Enlightened Management and of Organizational Theory.

Regressive Forces.

Notes on Self-Esteem in the Work Situation.

Management as a Psychological Experiment.

Enlightened Management as a Form of Patriotism.

Relationship between Psychological Health and the Characteristics of Superior Managers, Supervisors, Foremen, etc. (Notes from Likert).

Further Notes on the Relationship between Psychological Health and the Characteristics of Superior Managers (Notes from Likert).

Memorandum on Enlightened Management.

By-Products of Enlightened Management.

Notes on Synergy.

The Synergic Doctrine of Unlimited Amount of Good versus the Antisynergic Doctrine of Unlimited Amount of Good.

Addition to the Notes on Synergy.

Memorandum on Syndrome Dynamics and Holistic, Organismic Thinking.

Notes on the B-Values (the Far Goals; the Ultimate Goals).

Notes on Leadership.

The Superior Person-The "Aggridant" (Biologically Superior and Dominant) Person.

The Very Superior Boss.

Notes on Unstructured Groups at Lake Arrowhead.

Notes on Creativeness.

Addition to the Notes on the Creative Person.

Notes on the Entrepreneur.

Memorandum on the Redefinition of Profit, Taxes, Costs, Money, Economics, etc.

Additions to the Notes on Profits.

Additions to the Notes on Definition of Profits, Costs, etc.

The Good Enlightened Salesman and Customer.

Further Notes on Salesmen and Customers...

Memorandum on Salesmen and Salesmanship.

On Low Grumbles, High Grumbles, and Metagrumbles.

The Theory of Social Improvement;
The Theory of the Slow Revolution.

The Necessity for Enlightened Management Policies.

Bibliography.

Index.

What People are Saying About This

Andrea Gabor

Maslow's book is a readable, impressionistic masterpiece that extolled the virtues of collaborative, synergistic management decades ahead of its time. This edition reveals just how much the management thinkers of our day, including Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Peter Senge, owe to Maslow, and how much, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, management can still learn from his insights.

Stephen Covey

At last! We have all been quoting Maslow for years and to now have such an excellent compilation of his seminal thoughts on management and organization comes like a timely gift from heaven. The values and principles he taught decades ago are even more relevant today.

Editorial Reviews

Maslow's book is a readable, impressionistic masterpiece that extolled the virtues of collaborative, synergistic management decades ahead of its time. This edition reveals just how much the management thinkers of our day, including Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Peter Senge, owe to Maslow, and how much, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, management can still learn from his insights.

Andrea Gabor

Maslow's profound concept of self-actualization could generate a Copernican Revolution of work and society, catapulting us out of what future generations will look back on as the dark ages of management.

Jim Collins

Abraham Maslow's vision on living with ambiguity and lack of structure are profound. His humility as a scientist never let him take credit for his incredible insight into the future of business structure, let alone the value of work itself. Now, we can correct this error.

Watts Wacker

At last! We have all been quoting Maslow for years and to now have such an excellent compilation of his seminal thoughts on management and organization comes like a timely gift from heaven. The values and principles he taught decades ago are even more relevant today.

Stephen Covey

Proper management of the work lives of human beings, of the way in which they earn their living, can improve them and improve the world and in this sense be a utopian or revolutionary technique.

Abraham Maslow

Maslow's brilliant and humane perspectives are made easily accessible in this exceptional book. It's also quite humbling—why haven't we yet actualized the truths about human nature and the nature of work?

Margaret J. Wheatley

In an age of self-directed teams, team-based improvement, and enterprisewide knowledge management, Maslow's concept of enlightened economics, resonates more today than when he originally formulated his ideas.

John Peetz