Enlightened Management

"As important as education is, perhaps even more important is the work life of the individual since everybody works.
If the lessons of psychology, of individual psychotherapy, of social psychology, etc., can be applied to man's economic life, then my hope is that this too can be given an enlightened direction, thereby tending to influence in principle all human beings ...

[there is] the hope that the industrial situation may serve as the new laboratory for the study of psychodynamics, of high human development, of ideal ecology for the human being."

~ Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management, 1998, p. 2

"In 1961, the renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow agreed to publish a group of his unedited journals which resulted in what was then titled, at his insistence, Eupsychian Management. The book quickly went out of print, probably because it presented ideas ahead of their time, but resurfaced in 1998 under the auspices of Warren Bennis, Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California, entitled Maslow on Management. In this book, Maslow, like several others of his time, pointed tot he human side of enterprise. It has been said that his ideas were more for the 21st century than the 20th. This thinking lays the foundation for [perceptual paradigm shifts] to succeed in the business environment."*


It was while reading the above book by Maslow as part of the research for my dissertation that I truly heard the calling for my work, shifting it from a clinical focus to organizational psychology. The awareness of the possibility of organizations becoming self-actualized communities which could then model and be a catalyst for a self-actualized society resonated with me like a tuning fork. Corporations and organizations are people, coming together, being in relationship, for a common intent. What could be generated for humanity if organizations could, alongside of generating a consistently opulent ROI, awaken to the possibility of being and modelling that which all of us long to experience: belonging, friendship, respect.

* (excerpted from Implications of the Health Realization Paradigm Experienced as Transformational Humor for Individuals and Organizations, Dissertation Manuscript, © 2001, Laura Basha, Ph.D.)