Motives, Managers, and Maslow: The Hierarchy of Needs in American Management, 1960-1985

Abstract

This paper examines how Abraham Maslow’s motivational theory–the “hierarchy of needs”–became influential in corporate management training, theory, and practice from 1960-1985. As psychologists and management consultants adopted the theory in business, they advanced the claim that work should be a primary site for the satisfaction of higher-order psychological needs for self-actualization. This claim in turn justified new approaches to management training and arrangements of work. This paper argues that the nexus of corporations, business schools, and psychologists who promulgated the hierarchy of needs helped to shape a particular conception of the work ethic that continues to resonate today: the idea that work, and particularly work in a large-scale corporation, should be a major site for self-actualization. By using historical perspectives to illuminate contemporary rhetoric around work, and identity, this paper contributes to the “historical turn” in organization studies. It further contributes to the histories of psychology and management by showing how corporate management practices became important pedagogical and experimental sites to spread and encounter the methods and theories of psychology.