Critical Analysis of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Critical Analysis of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Introduction 

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (HON) is popular concept despite the various criticisms it’s used by manager even today, it’s thought in business school too.   It espouses the view that individuals move through needs of hierarchical motivations and it’s consider linear when one need is satisfied individuals move to the next compartment in the order of importance as follows: Physiological, safety, belonging, love, self-esteem, self-actualization (Maslow, 1943). Illustrated in the literature in the form of a pyramid. Although it’s a psychological theory has been adopted in learning theory (Mittleman, 1991) on the basis of relevance to education which facilitates learning and makes the process meaningful to an individual affecting their life and being useful to life. This is considered necessary for retention of information to be reinforced.    

Criticism of HON

Other academics such Cianci and Gambrel (2003) have criticized the theory as being  easy and it doesn’t take societal needs into account at a given time in that it doesn’t consider recession and war. On the other hand, Tay and Diener (2011) makes an interesting point that needs differ with age and is not seem same across all ages. Other criticisms of the theory are that unrepresentative as he used a sample of top 1% achievers of university population thus making it impossible to generalize to wider population. Further others are of the view that different situations will lead to different needs therefore based on individual needs one would go for the satisfaction for a specific need (King-Hill, 2015). A person doesn’t need a Zippo lighter what he needs is fire to light a cigarette but nevertheless some may by a Zippo just to belong that class of people who uses Zippo lighters. In this context the HON’s is not valid. Another criticism is that creative people such as artists and authors e.g. Rembrandt and Van Gough lived in poverty throughout their entire lives and yet if can be argued that such people achieved Self-Actualization

Other experiments conducted by academics such as Tay and Diener (2011) using a sample of some 65,000 respondents based on HON’s suggest that despite cultural differences the needs are universal. But however, the order of needs within the hierarchy is different.

Application at work

In the plantation sector it has been observed that Tea estate workers will spend their money on liquor instead of basic needs such as buying food or milk for their baby’s unfortunately the men and women both behave the same way. Therefore, application of the needs theory doesn’t seem practical.

Reference

Cianci, R. and Gambrel, P. (2003). Maslow's hierarchy of needs: Does it apply in a collectivist culture. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 8(2), pp. 143–161.

Maslow, A. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4); pp. 370–96.

KING-HILL, S., (2015) Critical Analysis of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The Step Journal Student Teacher Perspectives Copyright © 2015 University of Cumbria Vol 2 (4) pages 54-57.

Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 354.