Is the Hierarchy of Needs Still Applicable by Business Managers?

During a recent conversation with my teenage son, I applied the cliche statement "Yup, just like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs..." to which he replied by discrediting the standard believed pyramid still used commonly today. -- I defended my position with a business example that I always keep in mind during employee surveys. It involved comparing a survey to a prior year with the same score and the leadership team feeling deflated that no change had occurred after all the tangible efforts to improve employment conditions and morale; and in this situation, there was a real effort made. Luckily, we had a wise HR leader who had us take a deep breath and dig into the comments. He explained that we should celebrate the results; That if we applied Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to the comments, we would see that the prior year was all about Physiological and Safety Needs. Employees were worried about job stability, work injuries, and salary increases. Yet, in the more recent survey, employees were worried about Safety Needs and Love and Belonging Needs; Comments focused on improved health benefits, social events and clubs, and even 2-ply vs 3-ply toilet paper. Therefore, while the score did not change, the type of complaints was much less severe and the team could find solace in that humans a negative by nature and will utilize a forum such as a survey to express themselves.-- Since my son and I like to engage in debates and deep discussions, I had to give him the benefit of doubt and do some research to see if his claims that the pyramid was not well supported, that it has changed, and that "self-actualization" is no longer included.

"Maslow’s pyramid of human needs was proposed in 1943 and has been one of the most cognitively contagious ideas in the behavioural sciences." (D.Kendrick et al, 2010). It was applied heavily in the development of psychology. It was a method to explain evolutionary traits that explain human motives and laid these out in a hierarchical fashion. Although the classical model is regularly taught in business lectures and books, I was surprised to learn that there is a history of criticism due to the lack of empirical evidence. The debate was well documented by Wahba & Bridwell in their 1979 paper titled 'Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory. Then again in 2010, Kendrick et al wrote the article 'Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations' providing an interesting 38-page read arguing that the "basic foundational structure of the pyramid is worth preserving, but that it should be buttressed with a few architectural extensions."

"In light of developments at the interface of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology, we have suggested some structural modifications to Maslow’s classic hierarchy of human motives. A consideration of the ultimate functions of behaviors and of life-history development counsels the explicit inclusion of motivational levels linked to mating and reproduction. Reproduction for humans is not ultimately about self-gratification, but involves a considerable diversion of resources away from selfish goals and toward other human beings in our social networks. A consideration of life-history trade-offs also implies that later developing motive systems never fully replace earlier ones and that they continue to coexist, ready to be activated depending on current opportunities and threats in the environment, in interaction with individual differences. Thus, a key point of this revised perspective is the focus on the ongoing dynamic interaction between internal motives and their functional links to ongoing environmental threats and opportunities. (Conclusion by Kendrick et al, 2010)

It appears that Maslow was not the creator of putting his theory into the famous pyramid format known today(*). However, regardless if visualized in its early form, or as a sequence of overlay curves such as depicted by David Krech et al in 1962, or the 2010 version by Kendrick et al, the Hierarchy of Needs remains relevant as it applies to business psychology. The updated version's ability to perceive more fluidity between levels and to navigate the levels dependent upon situational circumstance is more practical. It reminds me of the perils of applying Myer Briggs in the interview process where interviewers commonly misapply a hard label from the evaluation results and relate that as one and the same to the interviewee. Instead, caution should be taught up front to recognize that labels are much less rigid and that individuals migrate across some of the spectra of the 16 personality traits dependent upon a given situation yet will gravitate to a comfort zone of their specific personality trait. Therefore, maybe Maslows Pyramids' depiction of the hierarchy should be reflected upon as less scientific in its applications and instead more an intuitive tool. For understanding employees, it still provides a solid framework to access what types of motives or pains are being expressed. So go ahead and use as you will but note that it does not require an employer or manager to attempt to help an individual reach self-actualization.