Maslow on Management

Management as a Psychological Experiment

... Accountants must try to figure out some way of turning into balance sheet terms the intangible personnel values that come from improving the people of the organization ....

There are enough data available, and enough industrial experiences, and also enough clinical-psychological data on human motivations, to warrant taking a chance on the experiment of Theory Y type of management. And yet it is well to keep in mind always that this will be a kind of a pilot experiment for the simple reason that the data which justify this experiment are definitely not final data, not clearly convincing beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is still plenty of room for doubt, as is evidenced by the fact that many academic people and many managers still do, in fact, doubt the validity of the whole line of thinking involved, and this is not entirely arbitrary. They do bring up evidence, experience, data against the new kind of management. We must certainly agree that there is plenty of doubt, and that the whole business is an experiment, and we must also be very aware of the fact that we need lots of data, lots of answers to a lot of questions yet to come.

For instance, the whole philosophy of this new kind of management may be taken as an expression of faith in the goodness of human beings, in trustworthiness, in enjoyment of efficiency, of knowledge, of ...