Maslow on Management

Enlightened Management as a Form of Patriotism

All the experiments on enlightened management and humanistic supervision can be seen from this point of view that in a brotherhood situation of this sort, every person is transformed into a partner rather than an employee.

It is a question of how to communicate to people who are either ignorant or skeptical or antagonistic to the new principles of management which are based on an understanding of the higher as well as the lower possibilities in human nature. It is a question of how to teach and to communicate what the ultimate goals of this kind of management are. I have thought that I would say this in different ways to different kinds of people, depending on their values and what they consider most important.

For instance, to the patriotic American (that is in the original and in the correct sense, not in the sense of these DAR or American Legions, John Birchers or whoever—we must take this word patriot back from the people who have misused it and give it its original meaning), it would be impressive to point out that the new kind of management is a form of patriotism and love of country and love of Americans applied to the industrial and to the work situation. If democratic, political philosophy means anything at all, then enlightened management can be considered under the head of democratic philosophy applied to the work situation. ...