ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

PROJECT REPORT

Team Details:
Kaustuk R Tendolkar (10FN-053)
Kapil Malhotra (10FN-051)
Kiran RK (10FN-054)
Karan Razdan (10FN-052)

IMT GHAZIABAD | ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR – ABRAHAM MASLOW 1

Table of Contents
Early Life......................................................................................................................................................2
Theory.........................................................................................................................................................4
Origin of the need hierarchy theory:.......................................................................................................4
1.  The physiological needs..................................................................................................................5
2.  The safety and security needs.........................................................................................................5
3.  The love and belonging needs........................................................................................................5
4.  The esteem needs...........................................................................................................................6
Self-actualization.....................................................................................................................................8
Application of Maslow’s need hierarchy theory to identify the motivational factors.................................9
Criticism of the theory:..............................................................................................................................10
Another theory by Maslow:.......................................................................................................................11
Theory Z.................................................................................................................................................11
Alternate Theories.....................................................................................................................................12
1. Alderfer's ERG theory........................................................................................................................12
2. Acquired Needs Theory (McClellan)..................................................................................................13
3. Cognitive Evaluation Theory..............................................................................................................13

IMT GHAZIABAD | ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR – ABRAHAM MASLOW 2

ABRAHAM MASLOW

"If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy
all the days of your life

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles
away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up."

Early Life

Abraham Maslow was the eldest son of uneducated Jewish parents who had migrated from
Russia to the U.S. in order to escape from harsh conditions and socio-political turmoil. It was in
Brooklyn, New York, that young Abraham Maslow was born, on the first of April, 1908.

Abraham was the eldest sibling in the family, and the family's culture expected him to care for
his six brothers and sisters. Having suffered so much in their past, a determined father drove
young Abraham with the ambition to succeed in life. He grew up with almost no friends to play
with, having made to study for long hours, and then spending the rest of his time assisting his
father to make ends meet. Books became his refuge, and he found himself immersed in the works
of Freud, Jung, Pavlov and others. Psychology interested him immensely.

Maslow bowed to his parents' wishes to study law, and enrolled himself in the City College of
New York for this purpose. However, it soon became clear to him that law was not his vocation
in life. Yet, he laboured on for three full semesters, battling doggedly through Torts and
Remedies. Finally, he decided to rebel.

His rebellion against his parents was on two fronts: First, his selection of a vocation that was
closer to his heart: he decided to jump into Psychology; second, his choice of his bride: he
decided to wed his own cousin, Bertha Goodman. He sought and obtained transfer to Cornell
University, but again had to return to CCNY for reasons of logistics. Finally, the newly-married
couple decided to relocate to Wisconsin. It was in Wisconsin that Abraham Maslow finally
discovered stability and success in his life.

In 1930, Maslow completed his B.A. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin. His thirst
for knowledge, egged on by mentors such as Harry Harlow, led him to complete his Masters (in
1931) and later his doctorate (in 1934) in the same field. During this period, the Maslow couple
gave birth to two daughters – Dr. Ellen Maslow and Ann Kaplan.

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While in Wisconsin, Dr. Maslow became closely associated with Harlow's experiments on
primates. He had himself pursued an independent line of research on primate dominance
behaviour and published a few papers on the subject. At around the same time, Dr. Edward Lee
Thorndike, Director of the Psychology Division in the Institute of Educational Research of
Columbia University in New York, had also published research papers on animal behaviour. Dr.
Maslow corresponded with Dr. Thorndike, and the next year (1935) saw him travelling to New
York, to further his research work at Columbia University on animal motivation.

The psychology division researchers in Columbia University in those days were involved in
testing and measuring children and adult intelligence and their ability to learn. Dr. Maslow
gravitated to this field of knowledge; and thus began his next stage of growth and evolution. The
papers produced by him from 1937 onwards manifest Dr. Maslow's shift towards social
behaviour, personality traits, self-esteem, and motivation theory, in relation to human beings.

In 1937, Abraham Maslow moved to Brooklyn, his place of birth, and began teaching
psychology at Brooklyn College, a position that he held for fourteen years. It was during this
time that some of his best works were produced. His paper titled "A Theory of Human
Motivation" was first published in the Psychological Review in 1943, and was printed and
reprinted in several publications thereafter. Other papers, such as "'Higher' and 'lower' needs",
"Our maligned animal nature", "Self-actualizing people: a study of psychological health",
"Resistance to acculturation", and "The S-I Test (A measure of psychological security-
insecurity)" were his other much-referenced works. While borrowing ideas from other
psychologists, the ideas, theories, postulates and insights that he built upon them were very
original - especially the concepts of a hierarchy of needs, metaneeds, self-actualizing persons
and peak experiences. He emerged as the leader of the humanistic school of psychology, which
he referred to as the "third force".

In 1951, Abraham Maslow accepted an offer from the then newly-founded, Waltham,

Massachusetts-based Brandeis University, to serve as Chairman of the psychology department.
He held this position till 1969. Washington, D.C.-based American Psychological Association
elected him President for the year 1968.

In 1969, at the ripe age of 61, Abraham Maslow accepted the resident fellowship of the Laughlin
Foundation, and moved to Menlo Park, California. Leading a life of semi-retirement, he
upgraded his book - "Motivation and Personality", which he had first written in 1954. He also
penned two more books - "Toward a Psychology of Being" and "The Further Reaches of Human
Nature".

Ill-health had been dogging him for quite some time; Abraham Maslow breathed his last breath
on June 8th 1970, dying from a heart attack.

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Theory

Maslow’s name is associated with need hierarchy theory. This theory is considered as one of the
most influential concept in the field of motivation.

Origin of the need hierarchy theory:

One of the many interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked with monkeys early in his
career was that some needs take precedence over others.  For example, if you are hungry and
thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first.  After all, you can do without food for
weeks, but you can only do without water for a couple of days!  Thirst is a “stronger” need than
hunger.  Likewise, if you are very very thirsty, but someone has put a choke hold on you and you
can’t breath which is more important?  The need to breathe. 

Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond the details of air,
water, food, and sex, he laid out five broader layers:  the physiological needs, the needs for
safety and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to
actualize the self, in that order.

1.  The physiological needs.

These include the needs we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other
minerals and vitamins.  They also include the need to maintain a pH balance and temperature
(98.6 or near to it).  Also, there are the needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to avoid pain. 

Maslow believed, and research supports him, that these are in fact individual needs, and that a
lack of them, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific hunger for things which have in the past
provided that vitamin C – e.g. orange juice.

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2.  The safety and security needs.

When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, this second layer of needs comes into
play.  You will become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances, stability and
protection.  You might develop a need for structure, for order, some limits.

Looking at it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst, but with
your fears and anxieties.  In the ordinary adult, this set of needs manifest themselves in the form
of our urges to have a home in a safe neighborhood, a little job security and a nest egg, a good
retirement plan and a bit of insurance, and so on.

3.  The love and belonging needs. 

When physiological needs and safety needs are, by and large, taken care of, a third layer starts to
show up.  You begin to feel the need for friends, children, affectionate relationships in general,
even a sense of community.  Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to
loneliness and social anxieties.

In our day-to-day life, we exhibit these needs in our desires to marry, have a family, be a part of
a community, a member of a religious order, a brother in the fraternity, a part of a gang or a
club.  It is also a part of what we look for in a career.

4.  The esteem needs. 

Next, we begin to look for a little self-esteem.  Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs:

1. A lower one.
2. A higher one.

The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition,
attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance. 

The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence,
competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.  Note that this is the “higher”
form because, unlike the respect of others, once you have self-respect, it’s a lot difficult to lose
it.

The negative version of these needs is low self-esteem and inferiority complexes.  Maslow felt
that Adler was really onto something when he proposed that these were at the roots of many, if
not most, of our psychological problems.  In modern countries, most of us have what we need in
regard to our physiological and safety needs.  We, more often than not, have quite a bit of love
and belonging, too.  Therefore generally people are motivated by the esteem needs.

All of the preceding four levels he calls deficit needs, or D-needs.  If you don’t have enough of
something – i.e. you have a deficit – you feel the need.  But if you get all you need, you feel
nothing at all.  In other words, they cease to be motivating. 
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Maslow also talks about these levels in terms of homeostasis.  Homeostasis is the principle by
which your furnace thermostat operates:  When it gets too cold, it switches the heat on; when it
gets too hot, it switches the heat off.  In the same way, your body, when it lacks a certain
substance, develops a hunger for it; when it gets enough of it, then the hunger stops.  Maslow
simply extends the homeostatic principle to needs, such as safety, belonging, and esteem.

Maslow sees all these needs as essentially survival needs.  Even love and esteem are needed for
the maintenance of health.  He says we all have these needs built in to us genetically, like
instincts.  In fact, he calls them instinctoid – instinct-like – needs.

In terms of overall development, we move through these levels a bit like stages.  As newborns,
our focus (if not our entire set of needs) is on the physiological.  Soon, we begin to recognize
that we need to be safe.  Soon after that, we crave attention and affection.  A bit later, we look
for self-esteem. 

Under stressful conditions, or when survival is threatened, we can “regress” to a lower need
level. 

This can occur on a society-wide basis as well:  When society suddenly flounders, people start
clamoring for a strong leader to take over and make things right. When the food stops coming
into the stores, their needs become even more basic.

Maslow suggested that we can ask people for their “philosophy of the future” – what would
their ideal life or world be like – and get significant information as to what needs they do or do
not have covered.

If you have significant problems along your development – a period of extreme insecurity or
hunger as a child, or the loss of a family member through death or divorce, or significant neglect
or abuse – you may “fixate” on that set of needs for the rest of your life.

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This is Maslow’s understanding of neurosis. 

Self-actualization

The last level is a bit different from other levels.  Maslow has used a variety of terms to refer to
this level:  He has called it growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being
needs (or B-needs, in contrast to D-needs), and self-actualization.

These are needs that do not involve balance or homeostasis.  Once engaged, they continue to be
felt.  In fact, they are likely to become stronger as we “feed” them!  They involve the continuous
desire to fulfill potentials, to “be all that you can be.”  They are a matter of becoming the most
complete, the fullest, “you” – hence the term, self-actualization.

Now, in keeping with his theory up to this point, if you want to be truly self-actualizing, you
need to have your lower needs taken care of, at least to a considerable extent.  This makes sense: 
If you are hungry, you are scrambling to get food; If you are unsafe, you have to be continuously
on guard;  If you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that need;  If you have a low sense
of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate.  When lower needs are unmet, you can’t
fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials.

Therefore it is observed that only a small percentage of the world’s population is truly,
predominantly, self-actualizing.  Maslow at one point suggested only about two percent.

The question becomes, of course, what exactly Maslow means by self-actualization.  To answer
that, we need to look at the kind of people he called self-actualizers.  He described their traits
using a qualitative method called biographical analysis.

He began by picking out a group of people, some historical figures, some people he knew, whom
he felt clearly met the standard of self-actualization.  Included in this august group were
Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William
James, Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Spinoza, and Alduous Huxley, plus 12 unnamed people who
were alive at the time Maslow did his research.  He then looked at their biographies, writings, the

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acts and words of those he knew personally, and so on.  From these sources, he developed a list
of qualities that seemed characteristic of these people, as opposed to the great mass of us.

These people were reality-centered, which means they could differentiate what is fake and
dishonest from what is real and genuine.  They were problem-centered, meaning they treated
life’s difficulties as problems demanding solutions, not as personal troubles to be railed at or
surrendered to.  And they had a different perception of means and ends.  They felt that the
ends don’t necessarily justify the means, that the means could be ends themselves, and that the
means – the journey – was often more important than the ends.

The self-actualizers also had a different way of relating to others.  First, they enjoyed solitude,
and were comfortable being alone.    And they enjoyed deeper personal relations with a few
close friends and family members, rather than more shallow relationships with many people.

They enjoyed autonomy, a relative independence from physical and social needs.  And
they resisted enculturation, that is, they were not susceptible to social pressure to be "well
adjusted" or to "fit in" – they were, in fact, nonconformists in the best sense.

They had a quality he called acceptance of self and others, by which he meant that these people
would be more likely to take you as you are than try to change you into what they thought you
should be.  This same acceptance applied to their attitudes towards themselves:  If some quality
of theirs wasn’t harmful, they let it be, even enjoying it as a personal quirk.  On the other hand,
they were often strongly motivated to change negative qualities in themselves that could be
changed.  Along with this comes spontaneity and simplicity:  They preferred being themselves
rather than being pretentious or artificial.  In fact, for all their nonconformity, he found that they
tended to be conventional on the surface, just where less self-actualizing nonconformists tend to
be the most dramatic.

Further, they had a sense of humility and respect towards others – something Maslow also
called democratic values – meaning that they were open to ethnic and individual variety, even
treasuring it.  They had a quality Maslow called human kinship or Gemeinschaftsgefühl – social
interest, compassion, humanity.  And this was accompanied by a strong ethics, which was
spiritual but seldom conventionally religious in nature.

Maslow hoped that his efforts at describing the self-actualizing person would eventually lead to a
“periodic table” of the kinds of qualities, problems, pathologies, and even solutions characteristic
of higher levels of human potential.  Over time, he devoted increasing attention, not to his own
theory, but to humanistic psychology and the human potentials movement.

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Application of Maslow’s need hierarchy theory to identify the
motivational factors.

NEED HOME JOB

EDUCATION, RELIGION, HOBBIES, TRAINING, ADVANCEMENT,

SELF-ACTUALIZATION
PERSONAL GROWTH GROWTH, CREATIVITY

APPROVAL OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, RECOGNITION, HIGH STATUS,

ESTEEM
COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITIES

TEAMS, DEPTS, COWORKERS,

BELONGINGNESS FAMILY, FRIENDS, CLUBS CLIENTS, SUPERVISORS,
SUBORDINATES

FREEDOM FROM WAR, POISON, WORK SAFETY, JOB SECURITY,

SAFETY
VIOLENCE HEALTH INSURANCE

PHYSIOLOGICAL FOOD WATER SEX HEAT, AIR, BASE SALARY

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Criticism of the theory:

There are a few criticisms one might direct at Maslow’s theory itself. 

1. The most common criticism concerns his methodology:  Picking a small number of
people that he himself declared self-actualizing, then reading about them or talking with
them, and coming to conclusions about what self-actualization is in the first place does
not sound like good science to many people.

2. In his defense, one should consider that he thought of his work as initial study. He hoped
that others would take up the cause and complete what he had begun in a more rigorous
fashion.

3. Another criticism is that Maslow placed such constraints on self-actualization.  First, Kurt
Goldstein and Carl Rogers used the phrase to refer to what every living creature does:  To
try to grow, to become more, to fulfill its biological destiny.  Maslow limits it to
something only two percent of the human species achieves.  And while Rogers felt that
babies were the best examples of human self-actualization, Maslow saw it as something
achieved only rarely by the young.

4. Another point is that he asks that we pretty much take care of our lower needs before
self-actualization comes to the forefront.  And yet we can find many examples of people
who exhibited at very least aspects of self-actualization who were far from having their
lower needs taken care of. 

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Another theory by Maslow:

Theory Z

Maslow called his final theory "Theory Z" (Maslow, 1971). It was published posthumously,
and it is less widely known or discussed than his early ideas like the pyramid of needs. Yet
Theory Z presented some major changes in Maslow's theoretical perspective. For example,
in Theory Z, Maslow changed the meaning he assigned to such terms as self-actualizer.

Originally, Maslow said less than 1% of the adult population was self-actualizing. No doubt
this was a difficult message to deliver to rooms full of students and truth-seekers who
probably considered themselves self-actualizers. Maslow decided toward the end of his life
that mental health and happiness were not so rare as he once thought, and he greatly
broadened the concept of self-actualizer. In Theory Z, the self-actualizer was described as
good-hearted and energetic but not extremely creative. He or she was mentally healthy,
playing a constructive role in society, but was not necessarily awe-inspiring, mystical, or
prone to peak experiences like the original Maslow self-actualizer.

In Theory Z, Maslow described a new type of person resembling the 1-in-100 form of self-
actualizer. This type was called the transcender. Transcenders were people who consciously
built the characteristics of peak experiences into everyday life. Transcenders were "less
appalled by elitism" than self-actualizers. In other words, they were more willing to
recognize special people like themselves. Indeed, Maslow said in Theory Z that transcenders
"somehow recognize each other."

With Theory Z, anybody who was a reasonably good person leading a constructive life could
legitimately claim the title of self-actualizer. A new niche (the transcender) was created for
the Abraham Lincolns and the Mahatma Gandhis—the highly unusual types who take our
awareness to new levels.

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Alternate Theories
1. Alderfer's ERG theory

Alderfer classifies needs into three categories, also ordered hierarchically:

 Growth needs (development of competence and realization of potential).

 Relatedness needs (satisfactory relations with others).
 Existence needs (physical well-being).

This is very similar to Maslow – can be seen as just collapsing into three tiers. But it is argued to
be a bit more rational. Alderfer believed that as you start satisfying higher needs, they become
more intense (e.g., the power you get the more you want power), like an addiction.

2. Acquired Needs Theory (McClellan)

Some needs are acquired as a result of life experiences

 Need for achievement, accomplish something difficult.

 Need for affiliation, form close personal relationships.
 Need for power, control others.

These needs can be measured using the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), which is a
projection-style test based on interpreting stories that people tell about a set of pictures. 

3. Cognitive Evaluation Theory

This theory suggests that there are actually two motivation systems: intrinsic and extrinsic which
correspond to two kinds of motivators:

 Intrinsic Motivators:  Achievement, responsibility and competence. Motivators that come

from the actual performance of the task or job – the intrinsic interest of the work.
 Extrinsic Motivators:  pay, promotion, feedback, working conditions – things that come
from a person's environment, controlled by others.

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