Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who has introduced the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs published one of his books called "Motivation to Work". Since then, Maslow's theory has been taught in many business schools around the world.

According to Maslow (1970), an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met.

Maslow's initial concept included only one growth need that is up to self-actualization position. Self-actualized people can be categorised by their characters as follows;

1. Much focused to problems;

2. Can be easily motivated on appreciation of life;

3. Concerns very much on personal growth;

4. Abilities are more focused on experiences.

Maslow's theory has been used from a long time for few decades and has been very popular among many organizations and adapted in to many organizational cultures by cusomizing as there are many gaps and conflicts while using it. Maslow later realize some of the issues and came up with new new layers by introducing the growth related to self fulfillments of needs. Mainly he identified two of the first growth needs, in the figure 1 depicted as self fulfillment needs as part of the more general level of self actualization (Maslow & Lowery, 1998) and another level which is beyond the general level mainly focused on the growth focusing on the highest expectations in the self-actualization (Maslow, 1970).

Figure 1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (McLeod, 2017)

The most valuable aspects of Maslow's theory of needs lies in the practical aspects it has for every organization for their management (Greenberg & Baron 2003 p.195). The rationale behind the theory based on the fact that it’s ability to suggest to executives and managers how they can actually adopt the Need Hierarchy Theory in their organizations as a general concept.

Applications of the theory by any organization made their employees or subordinates to become self-actualised. This is because self actualised employees are more likely to work at their maximum levels of creative potentials. Therefore it is very much essential to make employees meet this stage which is the highest stage by helping meet their need. Any organization can take the following strategies to attain this stage of recognising accomplishments by their human resources:

Recognizing the accomplishments by the employees is an essential way to make them satisfy at their esteem needs.

This could take the form of awards, plaques, appreciation, recognise them towards their commitments, selecting employee of the month etc.. According to (Greenberg & Baron 2003, p197) the research carried out in GTE Data services in Temple Terrace, Florida shows that rewards, appreciation and recognition are given to employees who develop ways of achieving organization targets, improving customer’s satisfaction or business performance. But it is confirmed by Greenberg & Baron (2003), rewards, recognition and appreciations are mostly practically effective at esteem building, mostly when they are clearly linked to desired behaviours at certain stages. Awards that are too general and common fail to meet this specification and hence there should be a strategy to select the performances by the best employees.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory has not been able to considered as a great deal of support with respect to specific areas of concepts it proposes. The model defined by Maslow is concerned more on effectiveness in describing the different types of behaviours of highly successful individuals who are are having a very good potential in growth need strength because employees who are different to the idea of increasing their growth will not realise any physiological reaction to their jobs.
(Greenberg & Baron, 2003)

Friedlander (1966, p 143) carried out on his surveys targeting a cross-section of the working population in Los Angeles, posited “background factors, altitudes and aspirations affects workers needs, expectations and situation assessment”.

Also he made a further argument by mentioning that the theory makes the following unrealistic assumptions about employees in general as:
(a) all employees considered as in a similar platform.
(b) all situations considered of employment are similar.
(c) there is one and only one best way to meet the needs which are clearly mentioned.

Another criticism to the Maslow's view was published by Basset-Jones & Lloyd (2004, p 961). They presented that in general circumstances, the Maslow's needs of theory related to employees satisfaction. In Simple words feeling of employees to take credits for the needs met and needs not met is a measurement of employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

References:

Basset-Jones, N. & Lloyd, G.C. (2005), “Does Herzbergs Motivational Theory have staying power”? Journal of Management Development, Vol.24, No.10, pp. 57-56

Friedlander, F. (1966) “Motivation to work and Organisational Performance”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 143-152.

Greenberg J & Baron A.R (2003) “Behaviour in Organisations”, Prentice Hall, Vol. 8, pp.195-197

Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper & Row.

 

McLeod, S. (2017). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. [online] Simply Psychology. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html [Accessed 26 Nov. 2017].