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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Unfinished Business of Culture,” Accounting, Organisations
and Society (v.30/1, 2005); G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values
(SAGE, 1984); G. Hofstede, Cultures and Organisations:
Software of the Mind (HarperCollins, 1994); G. Hofstede
et al., Masculinity and Femininity: The Taboo Dimension
of National Cultures (SAGE, 1998), B. McSweeney, “Hofstede’s Model of National Cultural Differences and Consequences: A Triumph of Faith—A Failure of Analysis,”
Human Relations (v.55/1, 2002).
Jenny K. Rodriguez
University of Strathclyde
Maslow’s Hierarchy
of Needs
One of the well-known complaints about the limitations of economics is that economic theorizing is
often based upon unquestioned assumptions about
the nature of human agents. The model of homo
oeconomicus has often been taken as an abstraction
of human behavior in order to highlight major rules
of economic functioning in a simplified way. A fundamental problem is that homo oeconomicus’ underlying assumptions clash increasingly with everyday
experiences by observers inspired by social sciences
like psychology or sociology. According to these
assumptions, human agents are isolated from social
networks and they are reduced to rational calculating machines following ultimately egoistic aims of
maximizing individual profit. The sterile world that
operates with ideas of a homo oeconomicus takes
motivation as granted and treats human behavior as
a black box.
In contrast, the primary aim of psychology is to ask
for forces, grades, and types of motivation. Abraham
H. Maslow (1908–70), a psychologist, offers a systematized typology of human needs that are organized
hierarchically and that operate as motivation incentives at different levels. Maslow’s work has a prominent place within the academic area of psychology
but is also very well known by a wide field of neighboring disciplines concerned with questions of needs
and motivation. His book Motivation and Personality
(1954) reads as an address not only to psychologists
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but also a plea to refer more systematically to a concept of meaning in science:
A psychological interpretation of science begins
with the acute realization that science is a human
creation, rather than an autonomous, nonhuman,
or per se “thing” with intrinsic rules of its own. Its
origins are in human motives, its goals are human
goals, and it is created, renewed, and maintained by
human beings. Its laws, organization, and articulation rests not only on the nature of the reality that
it discovers, but also on the nature of the human
nature that does the discovering.
Maslow inspired a new school of thought in academic
psychology that tried to establish a platform beside
behavioristic and psychoanalytic approaches and that
was coined humanistic psychology. The approach had
clear proximity to phenomenological thought and was
distant to methods employing large data sets. Maslow’s
taxonomy of needs serves as textbook knowledge still
today and it is basic introduction in courses on management training or personal development. Initially,
Maslow suggested five stages of needs that were later
further developed to seven and finally eight stages.
The first edition of Motivation and Personality (1954)
summarized Maslow’s work undertaken between 1943
and 1954. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been often
misunderstood as a very strict corset by which “higher”
needs only come into discussion when “lower” needs
are already satisfied “but actually it is not nearly so
rigid as we may have implied.”
Distinguishing between higher and lower needs
means that lower needs are—anthropologically
viewed—basic needs that cover physiological necessities such as getting or having food and shelter but
also warmth, sexuality, and sleep. Maslow argues that
even physiological needs can be ordered in a subhierarchy. On the other side, a higher need signals a
later phyletic or evolutionary development. The need
for food is shared by all living entities whereas the
need for love or self-actualization is shared by fewer
species. Another point is that higher needs are later
ontogenetic developments.
In Maslow’s hierarchy model the first and lowest
stage of needs is represented by those biological and
physiological needs whereas the second stage represents safety needs as provided through stability,
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protection, and security. Maslow’s idea is that a firm
order, laws, and limits belong to this area of safeness.
The third stage of Maslow’s introduced needs represents love needs and belongingness needs that aim
at affected and emotional inclusion of human beings
into categories such as family, work groups, partnerships, or further social relationships.
Esteem needs represent the fourth stage of Maslow’s
hierarchy. Here, self-esteem, mastery, or independence
are listed as well as status dominance, prestige, or managerial responsibility. With the third and fourth stages,
Maslow proves to include clearly more sociopsychological dimensions into his framework of thought that
regards human beings as being part of a social context
and belonging to a social matrix of relations. The fifth
stage, finally, is in line with those stages before: it is the
level of self-actualization needs. By those needs, motivation for self-fulfillment is addressed. Realizing one’s
individual personal potential, seeking personal growth
and personal aims, and collecting one’s own experiences are moments that belong to this type of needs at
the top of the hierarchy pyramid.
The principle of hierarchy organization is that the
higher the need, the less imperative it is for sheer survival, and the longer gratification can be postponed.
Maslow argues in line with psychometric and psychomotoric findings that meeting with higher need levels
means greater biological efficiency, greater longevity, less disease, better sleep and appetite and he says
that psychosomatic researchers proved to find out
that anxiety, fear, lack of love, or domination tend to
encourage physical as well as undesirable psychological results, whereas higher need gratifications have
survival value and growth value as well. Higher need
gratifications result in better subjective results, e.g.,
more profound happiness.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is led by a conceptualization of human beings that is not unidimensional.
Later Maslow added further dimensions as cognition,
aesthetic, and transcendence. Although Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs is primarily developed by conceptual reflection, the attempt is far from being abstract.
Maslow sheds light on human motivation and different sources of needs as they are very often neglected
in economic models where human incentives are
reduced to principles of homo oeconomicus. All that
has been learned by human relations theory in management research and organization theory is fitting
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well with Maslow’s thought. As more differentiated
and wealthy societies and organizations prove to be,
intrinsic motivation is increasingly becoming a major
source of organization and restructuring. Even current voices in leading international economics are
going to refer explicitly for a better understanding
of motivation and are matching with some pieces of
principle thought provided by Maslow.
Motivation and Personality is not only a book by a
psychologist for psychologists but it is of interest for
all social scientists. The argumentation is based upon
broad knowledge of the division of science. Maslow
reads as presenting his hierarchy of needs primarily
as a heuristic scheme knowing that this scheme has to
be modified according concrete societies. Even in the
beginning of his study, Maslow expresses that sociology matters:
The study of the sociology of science and of scientists deserves more attention than it is now getting.
If scientists are determined in part by cultural variables, then so also are the products of these scientists ... these are questions of the type that must be
asked and answered for fuller understanding of the
“contaminating” effect of culture upon perception
of nature.
During the last 50 years, Maslow has emerged as a
classic for different academic disciplines.
See Also: Consumer Needs and Wants; Empowerment;
Motivation.
Bibliography. Steven J. Hanley and Steven C. Abell,
“Maslow and Relatedness: Creating an Interpersonal Model
of Self-Actualization,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology
(v.42/4, 2002); Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (Harper & Row, 1954).
Dieter Bögenhold
Free University of Bolzano
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