MASLOWS THEORY – LIMITATIONS, CRITICISM AND IMPORTANCE

Maslows hierarchy of needs theory is  important  in many  ways. First , it  made management  aware that  employees are motivated by a wide   variety of needs. Therefore, if management  wants maximum productivity, it  must provide  an opportunity for workers to satisfy these  needs, by creating and sustaining a conducive  work environment that  will motivate people to  achieve organization goals  

Secondly, maslows theory can be helpful to management in the motivation of staff. As  maslow (1970)  reightly observes, status is  unimportant to the average worker, if physiological security and love needs the unsatisfied. Thus  a complnay  indulging in vast  expenditurte  on glossy magazines style premises, may well be disappointed by employee response of it  has not taken care   to estalsih a fair and  secure remuneration policy.

Limitations of maslows theory

While maslows hierarchy makes sense from an  intuition stand point, there  is little evidence to support its hierevchical aspects. In fact, there is evidence that contradicts the order of needs  specified by the model. For example , some cultures  appear to place social needs before any others maslows hierarchy also has difficulty explaining  cases such as the “starving artist” in which  a  person neglects lower needs in pursuit of higher ones. Finally, there is little evidence to suggest that  people   are motivated to satisfy only one need   level  at   a time, exceptin situtation where there is a conflict between needs.

Maslows theory has also been criticized on the  ground that it is difficult  to fit motivators into categories for example a company car satisfyies physiological and ego needs  critics have also argued that individual  need patterns are so varied as to render  any generalization  witless.

Critics  have also questioned the  practicability of the theory since it fails to provide any time scale to   indicate  when  satisfaction is   supposed to occur at a particular  level . as croft(1996:48(  rightly point out, the organization will  therefore need to be constantly checking an rechecking the  satisfaction level of employees, this is a difficult if not   impossible task.

REFERENCES

Adebayo A.  (1992) Principles and Practices of Public  Administration in Nigeria

Nigeria: Spectrum 

Akamoa P.U  and Anyanwu A. (1999)  Introduction to Management . Nigeria:

Avan  Global Publications.

Alugbu C.C. (2000)  Elements of Management. Nigeria :

Concave Publishers Ltd.

Ezeani E.O  (2005)  Fundamentals of Public Administration.

Enugu: Nigeria

Gallerman.S.w (1953)  Motivation and Productivity  N.Y.

American Management Association.