Different management scholars to explain how behaviour is energized, gets started, sustained, directed or stopped have propounded several theories.
Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory
Maslow’s need priority model is one of the most widely referred to theories of motivation. Abraham Maslow, a clinical psychologist, thought (1943) that a person’s motivational needs could be arranged in a hierarchical manner, starting in an ascending order from the lowest to the highest needs and concluded that once a given level of needs (set of needs) was satisfied, if ceased to be a motivator. The next higher level of need to be motivated in order to motivate the individual. Although the hierarchical aspects of Maslow’s theory are subject to question and often not accepted, his identification of basic needs has been fairly popular.
The five categories of needs may be described as follows:
1. Physiological Needs
These are the basic needs for sustaining human life itself: needs for food, drink, shelter, clothing, sleep, sex etc. Man can live on bread alone, if there is no bread. But once these basic needs are satisfied, they no longer motivate.
2. Safety Needs
Safety or securing needs are concerned with freedom from physical or psychological (mental) harm, danger, deprivation or threat, such as loss of jobs, property, food, clothing or shelter.
3. Social Or Affiliation Or Acceptance Needs
These are belongingness needs emanating from human instinct of affiliation or association with others. These include owners, love and affection, needs of mutual relations, identification with some group etc. These are the needs more of mind and spirit than of physique.
4. Esteem Needs
This set of needs represents higher level needs. These needs represent needs for self-respect, respect of others a general feeling of being worthwhile, competence, achievement, knowledge, independence, reputation, status and recognition.
5. Self-Actualization Needs
This set of higher order needs concerns with reaching one’s potential as a total human being. It is the desire to become what one is capable of becoming, i.e. to maximum one’s capacity and abilities in order to accomplish something appreciable and self-fulfilling. It is a need for being creative or innovative, for transforming self into reality.
Features of Maslow’s Needs Model
1. The urge to fulfill needs is a prime factor in motivation of people at work. Human beings strive to fulfill a wide range of needs. Human needs are multiple, complex and interrelated.
2. Human needs form a particular hierarchy or priority structure in order of importance.
3. Lower-live needs must be at least partially satisfied before higher-level need emergy. In other words, a higher-level need does not become an active motivating force until the preceding lower-order needs are satisfied. All needs are not felt at the same time.
4. As soon as one need is satisfied, the individual discovers another need which is still unfulfilled.
5. A satisfied need ceases to be a motivator, i.e., does not influence human behaviour. Unsatisfied needs are motivators, i.e., they influence human behaviour.
6. Various need levels are independent and overlapping. Each higher-level need emerges before the lower-level need is completely satisfied.
7. All people to a greater or lesser extent; have the identified needs.
Critical Evaluation of Maslow’s Model
1. Human needs cannot be classified into clear and only specified categories, i.e. their hierarchy cannot be definitely specified. The determination of higher and lower levels is dependent on people’s cultural values, personalities and desires. For example, the higher-level need of an Indian worker may be the lower-level need of an American worker.
2. It is not necessary that a time only one need be satisfied. In other words, needs of more than one levels may be fulfilled jointly, for example: physical and esteem needs, Maslow’s model does not explain this multi-motivation fact.
3. Some of the assumptions of Maslow’s theory are not always found in practice.
4. It has been found by some scholars like Lawler and Suttle that physical and safety needs may be probably satisfied, but high-level needs do not appear to be rather satisfiable.
Though Maslow may not be the final answer in motivation, yet his model does make a significant contribution in terms of making management aware of the diverse needs of human beings at work, their diverse motives. Needs may not be the only determinants of human behaviour but they are definitely important for understanding such behaviour.