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As a legal immigrant worker in France, I am paid over a hundred days per year not to work.
For the 70 hour-a-week top guns at Buffalo Bill Gates headquarters, I might perhaps be perceived as being on that impossible dream level #5 of Maslow’s Pyramid. This omnipresent forever quoted, American expert on employee behavior, Abraham Maslow, imagined the evolution of employee behavior patterns, in Anglo-Saxon monoculture work environments, as an Isosceles triangle composed of 5 levels. The first and lowest level, or foundation of work life, is employee physiological needs influencing employee work behavior. In this article, I shall refer to Maslow’s first level as the survival level. His next, and second level, of employee needs I shall refer to as a need for security while the third level will be all that is social at work. His fourth level of needs about recognition for work successfully carried-out resulting in professional longevity, shall be summarized in one word: stability. Finally, I shall refer to Maslow’s top level of employee needs as satisfaction. It is here on his top level where Maslow said professional individual blossoming is supposed to be achieved.
Employee needs defined and symbolized by Maslow are open to interpretation according to cultural influences. When taking a closer look at his 5th and highest level, we observe the perception of self-fulfillment, and resulting happiness, can vary based upon cultural definitions of various work related values. For example, Maslow’s proposed evolutionary chronology of employee needs can be totally inverted upside down for wealthy German, Dutch, British, American, Japanese, Russian, or any other, successful business executives retiring in Southern France. For some of these wealthy retired executives, the apogee of material values and professional achievement is being able to buy and restore an old French country house and spend the rest of their days in sunny southern France drinking famous fine wines and enjoying delicious cheeses just as the French peasants do. Are not the peasants on the first and lowest level of eating, drinking, housing, etc. of Maslow’s physiological needs? Not only can Maslow be interpreted, even inverted, according to cultural influences for eccentric executives, but Maslow can also be interpreted as having fewer levels or several levels being considered as one even non-existent. Consider another example, but this time in African countries, where famine and civil war are not exceptions but factors permanently influencing the local economy. Here, systematic struggling in a life and death situation can transform Maslow’s first level, to a point, where fulfilling physiological material needs becomes a priority and the very purpose of one’s existence. In such a case, level one is so important it becomes its own pyramid. We cannot ignore, but must integrate, the influence of local economy and culture, when trying to understand employee needs and behavior. The local culture and its economy can distort the various levels of employee needs in Maslow’s model into overlapping trapezoids that intersect sometimes out of sequence offering more a geometrical appearance of cultural mazes on each level.
Admitting and allowing cultural mazes their place, is our first step in trying to update, even update, Maslow for a multicultural work environment of the 21st century (see Step#1 in Figure #1.).
By adding these mazes of cultural considerations, as a new second dimension to Maslow’s flat triangular model, brings cultural depth to the different levels of employee needs and behavior patterns for the 21st century. Such cultural considerations about employee behavior patterns include, but are not limited to: race, religion, languages, scholastic level, social skills, networking, wardrobe, talents, taste, etc. James O’Toole from Denver’s Daniel College of Business and Warren Bennis from the University of Southern California, define culture as the values and practices shared by the members of a group. All the layers of culture influence employee work behavior. The central core of influences on an individual is instinct and character traits being encircled by family traditions along with friends but which are all then surrounded from the outside by religious, social, financial and political habits and values. In the 21st century knowledge-based global economy, still another layer of employee culture is professional skills and know how. The work culture of an accountant is different from that of an engineer and that of an engineer from a lawyer and so forth and so on. The 21st century work culture also includes, by necessity, a certain TIC literacy to efficiently use certain working tools. According to one’s professional TIC skills, employee X can have varying degrees of difficulty when trying to make his / her way through a website arborescence, or maze of choices, before achieving a work task objective. Hence, the various layers of employee X’s culture, in a knowledge-based global economy, is to be considered even more complex because it also includes an outer circle of influences on behavior stemming from knowledge about and agility with certain TIC tools. Adding such dimensions of cultural influences contributes to the conversion of Maslow’s flat one dimensional Isosceles triangular into a real three dimension pyramid. The second step, in updating Maslow, is a symbolic comparison of certain major industrial evolutions changing the working world since the industrial revolution in late-19th early-20th centuries. My audacious analysis over simplifying 19th century and 20th century economic history is justified by the limits of this article requiring a concise graphic representation of two centuries of economic history being: #1. agricultural, #2. mechanical, #3. electronic, and #4. technological industries.
Not forgetting our own period of economic history, it is important to add late-20th early-21st centuries’ revolutionary virtual activities and developments as a flagrant fifth facet of today’s global economy: #5.virtual (see Step #2 in Figure #1.). Consequently, Maslow’s model now becomes a 5 sided pyramid (4 sides plus the bottom) framing the cultural mazes on each of the 5 levels of employee needs affecting employee work behavior. A 21st century update of Maslow cannot ignore economic unbalance and inequality around the planet. In Seattle, for example, the local economy is highly influenced by the presence of Microsoft; the uncontested global king of the virtual world (see Figure #2). In the case of Seattle, the virtual facet of her economic structure makes our pyramid appear lop sided even over-bearing and monopolizing. Across the planet, from Florianopolis to Fukuoka, the new high-tech Silicon valleys certainly do create economic, yet unbalanced, growth in local cultures. Here the technology facet of our pyramid model must be represented as over-sized because it over powers the economic importance of other industries locally.
Figure #1. Updating Maslow.
Figure #2. The excessive presence of the king of the virtual
world, Microsoft, distorts the equilibrium of Seattle’s economy.
Figure #3. The excessive Chinese agriculture export barons distort local economies in certain zones of Africa.
The same disequilibrium exists in many other economic zones where delocalization from Western Europe and North America creates an overdose of mechanical and electronic industrial activities in inadequate infrastructures of Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean as well as in some Asian countries. Even more alarming, the Chinese are fast becoming the new agriculture industrial barons in certain economic zones of the African continent where they exploit local cultures then export abroad what they produce off the land (see Figure #3. There the bottom of our pyramid is so much out of proportion economically, the other facets, or sides, of our pyramid appear almost flat. Such sporadic spontaneous economic excesses are causes of economic inequality. This is unacceptable in the light of a knowledge-based global economy. Can knowledge, when more globally accessible, do something to help round off such economic inequalities and favor economic equilibrium around the planet? Before even hoping for a solution to so pertinent a question we must complete our updating of Maslow.
The third step, in updating Maslow, is integrating employee knowledge as a spiraling influence on employee behavior no matter what level or whatever be the maze of cultures where employee X may live or work day-in day-out (see Step #3 in Figure 1). The fourth step is the rounding off of unequal corners of global economic development through evolutionary exponential spirals of employee knowledge circulating through employee mazes on all 5 levels beginning et level #1 and spiraling up to and through level #5 (see Step #4 in Figure #1.). Here, not just 5 industries, but an unlimited, even future industries not yet thought of, can be melted into a more equal world economy ideally symbolized in the shape of a globe. Our multidimensional pyramid is now transformed into a well rounded more economically equal circular globe: a globally knowledgeable economic community (see Step #4 Figure #1). Here, knowledge is the saving golden thread of Ariadne for employees struggling to keep their jobs and succeed within their own maze. It is evident employees will evolve more quickly up through Maslow’s levels by fulfilling their needs through continuous knowledge acquisition. In other words, by faithfully following, just like the timeless thread of ancient Ariadne, spiraling knowledge acquisition, employees will develop more quickly professional talent in knowing which corners and turns to take in the maze of choices before them. Their resulting successful behavior patterns at work, on any of Maslow’s levels, will allow them to fulfill their survival, security, social, stability needs as 21st century global-minded knowledge-oriented employees. At the end of their careers, their acquired knowledge will have led them through any and all cultural mazes to retirement reaping professional satisfaction for a work life well lived. Like Ariadne’s timeless golden thread, spiraling employee knowledge acquisition shows us how to find the way to successfully behave at work thus saving us from that monstrous Minotaur of job loss. It is interesting to note, that in such a knowledge-based global economy of the 21st century, Maslow’s middle level of employee social needs becomes the most prevalent. Updating Maslow brings us closer to our ancient Greek concept of perfection being an equilibrium between composing elements. What is this saving knowledge leading employees through their mazes to professional success safe and far from minatory unemployment? What kind of knowledge do employees need to succeed at work?
In this article, I base the definition of knowledge on the ideas of Aeschylus of ancient Greece (around 500 B.C.) who felt utility was more important than wisdom. Hence, in our 21st century knowledge-based global economy, it is correct to define knowledge as the intelligent use of raw data organized as logical information. There are those who go so far as to say knowledge has gone beyond the realms of being a process and has become a product like everything else in our consumer-based civilization. For some management experts, knowledge is a treasured result of a complex system of objectives for profit. For others, knowledge has even gone beyond the very scope of being a product of any industry and now is the economic basis of our 21st century consumer civilization. Most all experts of knowledge management agree there are three different kinds of knowledge. What is unexpressed but understood is tacit knowledge while what is understood through assumption, logic or in relation to something else is implicit knowledge and finally and in third position, is explicit knowledge being what is complete, direct and understood by sharing without doubt or reserve. Knowledge is more than technology because knowledge engenders experience, judgments and choices resulting in decisions of what actions to take. Technology can only offer tools and processes and methods to seek then store, distribute and exchange information. Technology can only find and identify information while new knowledge can create new technologies. Everyone knows knowledge can be contextualized, calculated, categorized, comparative, condensed, quantitative, qualitative, shared and managed. Above all knowledge is the most important form of working in our 21st century global economy. What we live and experience today as a knowledge revolution; end-20th beginning-21st century, may be just as important and have an even bigger impact on us than that industrial revolution, end-19th beginning-20th century. For a more cultivated example of the importance of knowledge in our high-tech society, take the recent authentification of a painting called, La Belle Milanaise, thought to be by Leonardo de Vinci as a highly coveted discovery of the new identification industry in the 21st century. The authentification of this art treasure is based on artistic expertise and numeric mathematical modeling of fingerprints and brush strokes. For certain art and identification experts, numerical computerization of color pigment, brush strokes and fingerprints reinforce the probability it could have been painted by Leonardo de Vinci hence sky rocketing the value on the global art market. Having examined some of the virtues of different kinds of knowledge, let us now consider an eye-witness testimony about the importance of employee need for knowledge.
As a French employee in the salary category of cadres (managers), I have learned to appreciate the two thousand year heritage of the French judicial system. Some legal concepts, principles and laws date back to the Roman emperors, some only date back to the Medieval feudal system while others have more recent roots in the Monarchy or the Empire up to modern day Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity. As a management professor, I felt incomplete in amphitheaters, pretending to prepare future managers of French industry, because of my need for knowledge acquisition about the parallel world of powerful French trade unions. It is interesting, for our study of 21st century employee behavior patterns, to know France’s powerful and influential trade unions are not tough truck drivers or dog-eat-dog maritime dockers but heirs to historical traditions of guilds protecting and transmitting the know-how of centuries old crafts. The second thing to know is how much French culture favors the individual over the group. For example, as president of the France, our legendary John Kennedy would have inverted the logic of the famous citation from his immortalized inaugural address: Ask not what you can do for your country but ask what your country can do for you! Even the premise of Soviet Communism has French roots in the Uprising of Paris in 1871, when the inhabitants of the city of Paris demanded the Parisian community to clothe, feed, house, educate and take care of her citizens. Here in France, the group must fulfill the different needs of each group member individually however little, or whether or not, they contribute at all to the group. My French CFTC (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens) is the oldest French trade union unofficially founded before World War I upon universal Christian social values especially that of respecting the human dignity of the individual at work. In this mindset, my American MBA culture of trust management and think tanks motivated me, with enough curiosity, to want to gain knowledge about France’s unique, yet ever so complex, labor laws.
My French trade union provides me with the opportunity to live first-hand eye-witness experiences on the front lines of daily work life in France where links between employee needs and behavior patterns can be objectively observed. Some of these first-hand eye-witness experiences are worth sharing in regards to how newly acquired knowledge affects employee behavior. I have observed an immediate effect which seems to be increased self-confidence. A trade union activity, I voluntarily and wholeheartedly participate in, is that of being a certified workshop leader for discussion topics about certain aspects of French Labor law dealing more particularly with job loss. I have found these workshops, open to employees from all walks of life, to be richer knowledge acquisitions when I extract stories from the daily work lives of the participants to supplement, if not replace, those case studies proposed in the discussion outline I am expected to follow and implement.
I solicit participants to share their opinion about a given explanation presented about a labor law topic or theme by asking them if and how it is applied where they work. What is it like in your company? Is it that way where you work? After listening to these front lines stories of French workers, I can then reinterpret a given aspect of French labor law to match their mindset and the particular situation where they have a definite need, as an employee, to know what to do. Once they understand the use of the legal information I am presenting it is then, and only then, freshly acquired French labor law knowledge makes them feel safer, stronger and hence more confident. Their gratitude is expressed to me indirectly through various kinds of exclamatory comments. Wow! Wait till my boss finds out I know now about that ! The non verbal signs of their facial expressions remind me of my 5 year old daughter’s enlightened look of personal achievement, when I let go of her bicycle and she was still riding not falling and suddenly knew she could do it on her own all by herself without training wheels. Please remember the French word for boss is patron whose Latin roots, patronus or pater, mean papa. A French executive, by his / her Latin heritage, has paternalistic social and moral obligations to the family of employees in the company as well as managerial responsibilities concerning the company's future plus those sacrosanct corporate profits. Towards the end of these workshops the employees start sitting up straighter leaning forward energetically and confidently with elbows firmly planted on the table and they no longer slouch or slide down in their chairs looking at the ceiling or around the room uncomfortably. Such non-verbal signs of a change in attitude, energy and interest is because they now understand how to use where they work what they are learning. Knowledge acquisition does affect employee behavior thus allowing them to change the way they think and feel and do.
Another activity of my French trade union also provides me with, but an even richer, form of first-hand eye-witness experiences on the French front lines of the work world battles. I am a trained card-carrying certified voluntary legal assistant to accompany French employees through those painful interviews preceding job loss. Sitting next to employee X, as a legal representative of the French Ministry of Work, in the boss’s office as the boss discusses the eventual job loss of employee X, is, of course very intense. I have observed my seemingly small presence can fulfill one or several levels of Maslow at time for employee X. First of all, Maslow’s second level of employee need for security is fulfilled because employee X has a legal official protector, sitting next to him / her, with the intention of trying to prevent job loss. Second of all, Maslow’s 4th level of employee need for recognition and esteem is fulfilled because the boss admits, and is most of the time somewhat destabilized, by the fact employee X had the guts to exercise the legal right to be assisted by someone from outside the company ( a company with less than 50 employees having no elected employee representatives). Especially in my case, there is the effect of an American professor of management speaking good French, now sitting in front of this French boss’s desk to verify he respects individual dignity and the rights of French employee X as guaranteed by French labor law.
Unfortunately it is rather rare, but it is possible, to save the situation and avoid job loss. I have often observed job loss is more than just loosing monetary compensation because it also generates the loss of self-esteem and self-confidence. Employee X may even go so far emotionally as to feel guilty and ashamed much like a victim of sexual abuse who tries to rationalize and explain why this has happened to them and not someone else by thinking and feeling it is somehow their fault. The irrationality of employee emotions can distort an employee’s chances to think rationally and logically in a given work situation such as sitting in front of the boss’s desk waiting to be let go any minute. The Frenchman, Jacque Séguéla, as does Roderick Kramer, both preach the growing importance of the role of emotional intelligence as an essential component of employee behavior in 21st century work life. Daniel Goleman insists on attributing the rightful place of emotion at work by explaining how much more important emotion is in the work cultures of the X and Y generations. James O’Toole and Warren Bennis echo back with the importance of a work culture of candor which requires developing a culture of courageous conversation at work as suggested by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky.
My presence is perceived by employee X, not as an authority figure, but as a knowledge figure bringing logic to balance out emotion. Perceiving French labor law knowledge, as being incarnated by me, employee X is more confident and at ease thus less emotional and hopefully more logical to think and speak more clearly in front of the boss. The hope of being protected by my knowledge of French labor law in this given situation, helps employee X feel safer balancing out emotions with logic in front of the boss hence engaging more courageously in a more candid conversation about behavior and performance at work and dealing with the reality of eventually being let go. Without doubt, I have witnessed increased access knowledge being a key helping employees be more emotionally intelligent and stabilizing their behavior through the acquisition of a new logic to follow in their maze of daily work life. The missed opportunity of knowledge acquisition can only weaken an employee’s rational logic and favor the irrationality of unintelligent emotions. Indeed, these two extremes of employee behavior, emotion verses logic, are more easily kept in balance through frequent, if not continual, employee knowledge acquisition. Andrew Campbell and Jo Whitehead of the Ashridge Strategic Management Center in London along with Sydney Finkelstein from Dartmouth, all agree employee knowledge acquisition can help avoid emotional tagging leading up to red flag emotional emergencies at work.
Another example of how knowledge influences employee behavior at work is global awareness of, or as I prefer to define as a more global access to knowledge about, the importance of environmental concerns and the urgency of pollution control. A New York trio of experts about life at work: Sylvia Ann Hewett, Laura Sherbin and Karen Sumberg convincingly confirm environmental concerns and pollution control are intrinsic components of work culture differences between the BB (born between 1946 and 1964), the X (born between 1965 and 1978) and the Y (born between 1979 and 1994) generations. Recognition, performance, profits and rewards are not anymore as important, or even a priority, for the X or Y generations as they once were and still are for the baby boomer generation. Knowledge and caring about the planet and people are just as much a priority at work for the X and Y generation as objectives, performance, recognition, rewards and profits. This confirms Step #4 Figure #1 showing Maslow’s middle social level occupies a prevailing importance in a knowledge-based global economy in the 21st century. Back to my own observations on France’s front lines of the work world, bring me to the conclusion of being absolutely convinced how much employees truly do need to renew their knowledge to refresh their confidence and courage to do more and better so as not to lose their jobs. Knowledge is not a luxury for a eccentric executive elite but essential for all employees to vanquish their enemy of fear and behaving out of ignorance or due to incomplete knowledge.
My seemingly exploited French employees dig in, hard and deep, their trenches on the front lines to hang on, because their tedious tasks feed their families. Brick layers and masons, retirement home nursing assistants, cooks in restaurants, cleaning ladies, automobile mechanics, high school teachers, welders, secretaries, accountants, salesmen, computer programmers and sailboat builders; they all suffer from not knowing how to cope with changes at work and need help when it comes to the basics of modifying their employee behavior patterns to fit-in and match a mutating global economy in crisis. At this point, in the unraveling of my words and ideas, it is relevant to consider all employees everywhere. What about employees elsewhere in the world, I, or my fellow French voluntary legal assistants, cannot, or do not, sit next to during their interviews with their bosses telling them they could lose their jobs? Yes, these employees, outside of France, who cannot benefit from legal assistance as a mechanism of protection guarantying their rights be respected by their boss when getting fired! If I, in my meager and insignificant role of French trade union voluntary service, can see the professional life-saving link between knowledge and fulfilling employee needs, what must it be like elsewhere out there? How much greater must be, and is, the vital heart beat of knowledge in our global economy! It is even more than I, you, we can pretend to imagine. No one can deny knowledge today is the heart beat feeding financial, industrial and commercial dynamics around the world. The employee need to know how to modify behavior patterns at work to avoid job loss is essential everywhere for everyone.
So how to keep your job once you have found it? How to find your way to a successful career path through your maze of professional unexpected corners, dead-ends, wrong turns, wrong choices, wrong decisions or false paths, false corners, even false dead-ends? Where are you in your maze? Where you find yourself in your own maze may be linked to those myriad layers of cultural influences on your behavior. Your own employee culture does of course directly affect your work culture when it comes to surviving competition at work. Are you tired of those running around Rabbits never getting anywhere or macho Mad Hatter partiers or unjust heartless queens or secret sly Cheshire cats in the mixed-up maze where you work? And the dignity and value of a human being where you work? Look for that timeless long golden thread of ancient Ariadne wherever it be in your maze of professional life and follow the spiraling evolution of new knowledge acquisition to find your way successfully up through all of Maslow’s levels to the top. Remember to maintain that sacred equilibrium in all you do and say because balance is perfection. Knowledge can be a key to rounding off economic excesses and creating greater economic equality everywhere around the planet. Your behavior patterns in your maze can be influenced by the timeless golden thread of knowledge acquisition you follow to avoid minatory unemployment threats in the 21st century’s knowledge-based economy. In short, updating Maslow means knowledge acquisition contributes to fulfilling employee needs thus influencing how we behave in the maze of cultural choices we make throughout professional life to avoid job loss.
Bibliography
Websites : <
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- Grashow, Alexander & Linsky, Marty & Heifetz, Ronald. "Leadership in a permanent crisis". HBS. July-August 2009. pp. 62-69.
- Campbell, Andrew & Finkelstein, Sydney & Whitehead, Jo. "Why good leaders make bad decisions". HBS. February 2009, pp. 6 –66.
- Séguéla, Jacques. "L’intelligence émotionnelle, la meilleure arme contre la crise". Management. septembre 2009. pp. 80-83.
- Bennis, Warren & O’Toole, James. "What’s needed next : a culture of candor". HBS. June 2009. pp. 54-61.
- Hewlett, Sylvia Ann, Sherbin, Laura & Sumberg, Karen. "How the gen Y & boomers will reshape your agenda". HBS. July-August 2009. pp; 71-75.
- Kramer, Roderick M. "Rethinking trust". HBS. June 2009. pp. 69-77.
- Rana Foroohar, B. J. Lee, Akiko Kashiwagi, Quindlen Krovatin, Mac Margolis, Owen Matthews, Tracy McNicoll, Jason Overdorf, William Underhill. "The Ten Most Dynamic Cities". Newsweek. 3 July, 2006.
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