Maslow on Management

Notes on the B-Values (the Far Goals; the Ultimate Goals)

We fear our highest possibilities (as well as our lowest ones). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities ....

In the discussion of enlightened management as a direction, and also in the discussion of any other social institution which takes this same direction toward eupsyschia, it is best to give up the “one-big-value” kind of theory (e.g., “All is love”; or as one enlightened industrialist said, “All my efforts are in the interests of service to other people”) in favor of a pluralism of ultimate values—at least for the present. This is true, or at least it is expedient practically, even though we can already today extrapolate to the future this notion of the one-big-value which is over-arching. This is because each B-value, if it is fully defined to its limits, turns out to be defined in terms of each and all of the other B-values. That is to say, when I tried to define truth and honesty totally and ultimately and went on as far as I possibly could with it, I found that truth was defined in terms of each and all of the other B-values on my list. For instance, truth was beautiful, it turned out; truth ...