UPI Study › Courses › Principles of Management › Free lessons › Lesson 4.3 Free with a free account
From Survival to Self-Actualization: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Principles of Management · Chapter 4: The Human Side of ManagementSection 4.3 · lesson 17 of 11713 min · free with a free account
Free preview
Create a free account to keep watching
It takes a minute and costs nothing. Your free account unlocks all of Chapter 1 and 3 more lessons of Principles of Management.
Lesson complete
Earn the 3 college credits for Principles of Management
Enrolling adds a quiz after each lesson, the graded work and the official transcript. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
Next lesson: Seeing Employees Differently: McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y →← What the Hawthorne Studies Taught Us About People at WorkNext lesson: Seeing Employees Differently: McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y →
In this lesson
Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
- Describe the 5 levels and their workplace forms
- Explain the prepotency principle
- Explain why self-actualization differs in kind
- Assess the evidence for the hierarchy honestly
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,766 words). Read along, or search it.
The Human Side of Management
From Survival to Self-Actualization
Few ideas from psychology are as familiar to managers as a pyramid of human needs. This section examines it properly. That means Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, its five levels, and its central claim. That claim is called the prepotency principle. For a manager, it is the most useful part of the theory. We'll see why the top level, self-actualization, works differently from the four beneath it. Then we'll do what this chapter has done throughout, and state the evidence honestly. The hierarchy is one of the most widely recognized frameworks in management education. By the standard of empirical research, it is also poorly supported. Both of those things are true. Our job is to work out what a manager can still defensibly use.
Origins
A General Theory, Applied Later to Work
Start with where the theory came from, because its origin matters for judging it. The psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed his hierarchy of needs in nineteen forty-three. He offered it as a general theory of human motivation, across human life broadly. It was not designed to explain behavior at work. The application to management came later. Later writers found it a useful way to think about what organizations could offer employees. That history raises a fair question. A framework built to explain motivation in general is not automatically suited, to the narrower context of a workplace. So part of this section's honest assessment is about the transplant itself. How well did an idea from general psychology hold up, once it was moved into management theory?
The 5 Levels
From Most Basic to Most Advanced
Maslow proposed five levels of need, conventionally arranged from most basic to most advanced. Physiological needs are the basic biological requirements for survival. Food, water, sleep, and shelter. At work, this level shows up as wages sufficient to secure those necessities. Safety needs concern security, and protection from harm or unpredictability. At work, that means job security, safe physical working conditions, and predictable income. Belongingness and love needs concern social connection, acceptance, and relationship. At work, that is team membership, collegial relationships, and a sense of belonging to a group. Esteem needs concern recognition, respect, and a sense of your own competence and achievement. Notice that esteem comes from two directions. It comes from others, and from yourself. At work, it shows up as recognition, status, promotion, and acknowledged achievement. Self-actualization concerns realizing your own full potential and capability. At work, that means creative, challenging work that lets a person grow and develop, rather than simply execute a fixed task.
Figure 4.3.1
The Hierarchy, With Workplace Provisions
Here are the five levels stacked as a pyramid, each paired with an illustrative workplace provision. At the base sit physiological needs, met by a wage sufficient for necessities. Above that is safety, met by job security and safe conditions. Then belongingness and love, met by teamwork and social connection. Then esteem, met by recognition, status, and achievement. And at the top, self-actualization, met by growth, and by creative, challenging work. The arrow along the side reads upward. That is the prepotency relationship. The theory claims a person moves attention up this ladder only as each lower level is reasonably satisfied. It does not claim that every person, in every workplace, climbs the levels in strict, uniform order. That distinction will matter shortly.
The Central Claim
The Prepotency Principle
The theory's central claim, and the most useful one for a manager, is the prepotency principle. It has two parts. First, a need becomes an active motivator only once the needs below it are reasonably satisfied. Second, once a need is itself reasonably satisfied, it stops motivating further behavior. Attention shifts to the next level up. Take the first part. Picture someone who is hungry, or who lacks stable shelter. On this account, an appeal to esteem or self-actualization is unlikely to move that person much, until the basic need is addressed. Now the second part. Suppose pay is already adequate and stable. Offering more of the same then tends to motivate less than it once did. The lower need no longer has the pull on behavior it had when it was unmet. That second part is the one managers most often forget. A satisfied need is a quiet need.
Different In Kind
The Level That Never Fills
Self-actualization occupies a distinctive position in the hierarchy. Unlike the other four levels, it is not satiable in the same way. A physiological need, once met, is met. A person does not generally need more and more food once fed. Self-actualization is open-ended. Realizing more of your potential does not exhaust the drive to realize still more. That is part of why Maslow treated it as different in kind, not just the highest rung on a uniform ladder. Later in his career, Maslow added further refinements. Cognitive needs are the desire to know and understand. Aesthetic needs are the desire for beauty and order. Both are generally placed near esteem and self-actualization. He also added a transcendence level above self-actualization, concerned with connection to something beyond the self. These additions are far less taught, and far less influential in management. The original five-level version is the one in ordinary use.
At Work
What Pay Can and Cannot Reach
Mapped onto what organizations actually provide, the theory suggests a rough pattern. Pay primarily addresses the lower levels. Physiological security, and to an extent, safety. Recognition, autonomy, and meaningful work primarily address the higher levels, esteem and self-actualization. That leads to a practical implication many managers find intuitive. Once pay is adequate and stable, more pay tends to be a progressively less effective motivational tool. Addressing recognition, growth, and the meaningfulness of the work itself tends to do more. Notice the conditions built into that claim. Adequate, and stable. For a genuinely underpaid employee, pay is still the need with pull. This claim about pay and intrinsic motivators gets much fuller treatment, with its own evidence, in Subchapter eleven point eight.
The Evidence
Famous, and Poorly Supported
Now the evidence, stated honestly. Maslow's hierarchy is, by a wide margin, one of the most widely recognized frameworks in all of management education. By the standard of empirical psychological research, it is also poorly supported. Three specific findings bear on this. First, the strict ordering is not well borne out by research that tests it directly. People do not reliably move through the five levels in the sequence Maslow described. Second, needs appear to operate simultaneously, not one at a time as the ladder metaphor suggests. A person can be motivated by belonging and by esteem at once, without either one being fully resolved first. Third, cross-cultural applicability is contested. The theory was developed within a particular cultural context. Its ordering does not travel uniformly, especially where belongingness sits relative to esteem and individual achievement. In nineteen sixty-nine, the psychologist Clayton Alderfer proposed a direct revision. He compressed the five levels into three broader categories, and explicitly let needs operate simultaneously. That revision is covered in full in Subchapter eleven point three. For now, it shows Maslow was not the last word, even in his own tradition.
Table 4.3.1
4 Claims, Sorted by the Evidence
Table four point three point one takes four claims commonly attributed to the hierarchy, and sorts the evidence for each. Claim one. Needs fall into five identifiable categories, roughly as Maslow described. That is broadly reasonable as a descriptive vocabulary, though not precisely tested as five separable categories. So a manager can use it as language for what a job offers beyond pay. Claim two. Needs are satisfied in a strict, uniform sequence. That is not well supported. The defensible conclusion? Don't assume an employee's lower needs are fully resolved, before higher motivators can matter. Claim three. A satisfied need stops motivating further behavior. This is the theory's most defensible claim, and it stays useful even where strict ordering fails. Its lesson is that more of an already-adequate provision, often more pay alone, yields diminishing motivational return. Claim four. The hierarchy applies uniformly across all cultures. That is contested. So treat the hierarchy as one lens among others, not as a culturally universal law of motivation.
Why It Persists
3 Reasons the Theory Survives
Given that record, why does the theory stay so prominent? Three reasons account for most of it. First, it is intuitive. It maps onto a pattern most people recognize from their own experience, so it's easy to teach and remember. Second, it gives managers a usable vocabulary. Security, belonging, recognition, growth. It is a shared language for what a job offers beyond pay, even where the ladder fails as stated. Third, its core insight is independently useful. A genuinely satisfied need stops motivating further behavior. That holds up even with the strict ordering set aside entirely. You don't need to believe in a rigid five-step ladder to see the point. An employee whose pay is already fair and stable, is unlikely to be moved by yet another small raise. A genuinely underpaid employee would be moved by it, in a way the first employee is not.
The Takeaway
What a Manager Can Defensibly Use
So what can a manager defensibly carry away? Treat the five levels as a descriptive vocabulary, for the different kinds of thing a job can offer an employee. Rely on the prepotency insight. A satisfied need loses its motivational pull. And avoid two things. Don't treat the specific ladder-like sequence as an established, reliable law of behavior. And don't assume one employee's needs must be resolved in the same order as another's. Neither claim has been shown to hold. That leaves a theory smaller than its reputation, but still worth keeping. Used this way, it points a manager at the right question. Which need actually has pull for this person, right now?
Case Vignette
Offering Growth to Someone Worried About Survival
Here is that question in a composite case, constructed for instruction. Denise is a department manager at a fictional insurance firm. She was genuinely pleased with one of her analysts, Marcus. She moved to reward him with an exciting, high-visibility stretch assignment. It was a self-directed project, with considerable creative latitude. It was exactly the kind of growth-oriented, self-actualizing opportunity she believed a talented performer would value most. Marcus's actual reaction was muted anxiety, not enthusiasm. Unknown to Denise, the company had recently announced a round of layoffs in an adjacent department. Marcus was worried about his own job security, and he had not raised it with her directly. To him, the new, less clearly defined assignment meant leaving familiar work behind. Work that was easy to measure, and easy to defend. Denise's offer was not poorly designed in the abstract. A secure, confident employee might well have welcomed it. The mismatch was one of prepotency. She offered something for a higher-level need, while a lower one, safety, was actively unmet. That unmet need was dominating Marcus's attention, however appealing the offer might otherwise have been. Next, Subchapter four point four closes the chapter with Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y.
About Principles of Management at UPI Study
Principles of Management (Business 101) is a self-paced online course of 117 video lessons in 17 chapters, from the classical schools and the four management functions to leadership, motivation, change, human resources, strategy and ethics. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus Every course with PRO →
Why take it here
Why students take Principles of Management with UPI Study
Where the credit goes
Universities that work with NCCRS
Principles of Management carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Thomas Edison State UniversitySigned partner
University of the PeopleSigned partner
Charter Oak State CollegeSigned partner
Strayer UniversitySigned partner
Columbia Southern UniversitySigned partner
Indiana TechSigned partner
Penn StateWorks with NCCRS
Southern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRS
SUNYWorks with NCCRS
+many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.
FAQ
Questions students ask us
About From Survival to Self-Actualization: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
What are the five levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
What is the prepotency principle in Maslow's hierarchy?
Why is self-actualization different from the other levels of Maslow's hierarchy?
Is Maslow's hierarchy of needs supported by research?
About the Principles of Management course
How many college credits is Principles of Management?
How much does Principles of Management cost and what is included?
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
How long does Principles of Management take?
How are the exams done?
How do my credits reach my college?
Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Principles of Management.
117 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →