Maslow on Management

Memorandum on the Redefinition of Profit, Taxes, Costs, Money, Economics, etc.

There are many people who cannot be won away from their present jobs except by offering all sorts of higher need and meta need satisfactions ... if I take into account all these other higher need intangibles which nobody puts into the contract nor on the balance sheet, but which are nevertheless very, very, real to any sensible person . . . Why should a necessary and valuable person stay in a job rather than move to another one?

The redefining of the concept “profit” necessarily involves the redefining of the concept “cost.” Also it requires the redefining of the concept “price.” Maybe I can approach the whole business from a different angle altogether, that is, from the angle of the critique of classical economic theory. In the textbooks I’ve seen, this is based almost entirely on an obsolete motivation theory of lower basic needs exclusively (leaving out higher needs and metaneeds); furthermore it assumes that these can be phrased in interchangeable terms, which in turn implies that any accounting deals entirely with objects or qualities or characteristics that can be phrased in terms of money and therefore put into a money accounting balance sheet.

But all this is today absolute nonsense. This is true only because we now know so much more about the higher basic needs and also the metaneeds beyond ...