Maslow on Management

The Synergic Doctrine of Unlimited Amount of Good versus the Antisynergic Doctrine of Unlimited Amount of Good

All one can steal is a product, a by-product of creativeness or of good management policy. One cannot steal the creativeness or the good management policy.

The one psychological example that I can use for a certain audience is the Freudian doctrine of limited and fixed amount of libido in the individual. Freud assumed that one had only a certain amount of love and that the more of this love was spent on one person, the less was available for others. For instance, in his doctrine of narcissistic love, the person who loved himself was thereby less able to love others. The person who loved one person was thereby less able to love other people. It was as if one had a fixed amount of money and when part of it was spent, that was that and there was just that much less left over. This contrasts with the doctrine of love of Fromm, Horney and others, who understood that at least in the good situation, love breeds more love, that the spending of love creates more wealth of love. It is only when the young lover falls in love for the first time in a reciprocative way that he is truly able to love the whole world. The more he loves his sweetheart or his wife, the more he is able to love his children and friends and humanity in general.

Another example is in the economic realm of ...