University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Maslow on Management
Book

Maslow on Management

Abraham H. Maslow, Deborah C. Stephens and Gary Heil
Wiley, 1998
First Edition: 1965
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

This book is a collection of entries from a journal that industrial psychologist Abraham H. Maslow kept in 1962 after spending the summer in a factory that permitted its workers some input into how production was organized. Authors and consultants Deborah C. Stephens and Gary Heil add a series of comments from various authorities, some quite astute, others serving only to remind one of the great gulf between genius and mediocrity. Maslow’s ruminations are unpolished, random, pointed, frank and often (from our modern perspective) quite politically incorrect. Some consider Maslow the greatest industrial psychologist ever, and his journal makes no concession to received opinion or popular fad. In fact, he goes out of his way to skewer both. It is noteworthy that most of the barbs he shot so long ago still manage to find their mark. getAbstract highly recommends this book to all readers who recognize the importance of periodically shaking the foundations of their most cherished assumptions about how the world works.

Summary

Duty, Work and Mission for Self-Actualizing People

Highly actualized people incorporate work into their self-definition. It is part of what makes them what they are. Work can also help people move toward self-actualization. Individual psychotherapy cannot change the world, because many people are unfit for psychotherapy, but applying psychology’s discoveries to the economic sphere can make the world different.

Management experts, such as Peter Drucker, arrived at conclusions similar to those that psychologists teach, but they used only workplace observations. Management experts have generally rejected psychology as too recondite or abstract for their purposes. But despite its experiments with rats and pigeons, psychology has much to offer these experts. For the psychologist, the industrial context is a great laboratory. Industrial psychology provides a rich new vein of data and can confirm or validate theories developed in a clinical context.

Each person has a certain suitable work or calling. It is important to let yourself be chosen, to respond to your own call. When your work is part of you, integral to your selfhood, you can attack the problems of work, and...

About the Authors

The late Abraham H. Maslow is one of the most widely renowned expert on human behavior and motivation. Authors, educators and business consultants Deborah C. Stephens and Gary Heil are co-founders of The Center for Innovative Leadership.

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