Psychological Man

Professor Levinson has a theory that has been lying around in the Psychologists' toolbox for a long time. It is that people's experiences define who they are by "telling them how to feel about themselves." Managerial techniques, on the other hand, traditionally have failed to see a need to take basic human feelings into account in the workplace. The human element is treated rather simplistically as just another cog on the wheel of the industrial machinery. Motivation is achieved primarily through a classical brute force application of the Pavlovian "carrot and stick" approach, which is to say by pushing workers to excel through a mixed-strategy of incentives and punishments. Psychologists on the other hand, seek a more sophisticated and a more human approach to workplace motivation: They seek to create an environment where the individual can engage in experiences that will allow him to feel and think good about himself - that is that will allow him to engage in experiences that will help him grow and develop healthy self-esteem. It turns out that this latter more sophisticated approach has many collateral workplace benefits: such as lessening interpersonal conflicts and managerial stress, and generally making it easier to solve a host of problems across the managerial landscape. The book thus is one of the first reconceptualizations of industrial psychology attempting to make it a more sophisticated subject, and putting it on an equal footing with other more technical components on the organizational chart. In this regard, it attempts (and succeeds) at affecting a marriage between the two approaches to workplace motivation. And although psychological and motivational theories and approaches have changed a great deal since it was first published in 1976, the book remains a seminal work, and many of its basic lessons continue to hold. Five Stars