Situating Maslow in Cold War America

Abstract

This article makes the case for situating understandings of Abraham Maslow and his ideas within Cold War America. After discussing the general significance of Maslow, we set out the historical conditions of Cold War culture and social institutions in the United States. We then make links between these conditions and Maslow’s life, his work, and his reflexive awareness of them. This analysis maps, inter alia, Maslow’s place and agency in the Cold War academy and his positions on (un)Americanism, liberalism, religion and secularism, and modernization and Marx. The links identified reveal new explanations of Maslow’s life, work, and significance in the management canon and indicate that the Cold War should be considered as a hitherto missing grand narrative, within which the history of management ideas more generally should be situated.