Eupsychian Management
Abraham Maslow was given a wonderful opportunity to expand on his notion of superordinate unity when invited by Andrew Kay (the founder of Nonlinear Systems) to spend a year simply hanging around and writing at Kay’s business located in Solano Beach California. Inspired by the visionary leadership of “Andy” Kay, Maslow wrote an entire book, originally called “Eupsychian Management” and later retitled a more user-friendly “Maslow on Management.” While Maslow reaches out to many other organizational theorists and successful leaders of contemporary organizations, I particularly like what Maslow had to say about Kay’s leadership of Nonlinear Systems. I must confess that I am a bit biased in this regard, having purchased one of the first Kaypro Computers produced by Nonlinear Systems and having lived near their headquarters. Nevertheless, a brief focus on Andy Kay is worthwhile, for he epitomizes the movement from nothingness to hope and on to fulfillment.
At the time that Kay was forming his company, the first portable computer (Osborne) was being produced. Kay’s company manufactured a portable, “desk-top” computer that soon competed successfully with Osborne. Andy Kay was not only helping to revolutionize the home computer industry but also providing innovative leadership within Nonlinear Systems. Contributing to Maslow’s book on Management (Maslow, 1998, p. 116), Deborah Stephens and Gary Heil highlighted some of Kay’s managerial accomplishments:
“During the late 1950s, Kay experimented with ways to unleash the potential of the several hundred employees on the assembly lines in his Southern California-based manufacturing company. During those days, factories were not known as environments where people were appreciated, let alone valued. Yet, Kay wanted employees to “think like owners” and to participate in the overall decision making of the company. In his search, he embarked upon one of the most innovative managerial experiments in the- country.
Relying heavily on Dr. Maslow’s book, Motivation and Personality, Kay decided to make sweeping changes in the way work was organized. He dismantled his assembly lines and replaced them with small teams of six to eight people. Each team learned every aspect of production. The teams were also self-managed. They decided the hours of work, break times, even scheduling of work. Kay did away with time cards and he also paid his employees 25 percent more than the prevailing wage. He was among the first to offer stock options in the company to employees. Kay even created the post of vice -president of innovation.”
Clearly, Andy Kay’s psyche was filled with hope and images of the future. He read about new forms of management and dreamed about the introduction of these forms into his organization. Andy Kay offers his own account—focusing on his company’s initial production of volt meters (Maslow, 1998, p. 118):
“In our business, the assembly line was crucial to our product. One person did this, another one did the next operation. and so on. Almost always, the people in the beginning of the line were unhappy. The happiest ones were at the end of the line that finished the job. We set out to manage so that all people on the assembly line felt like the people at the end of the line. Everyone was encourages to learn as much as they could about all the operations and to do them. At the same time, the product got more and more complicated. We also had a piece of test equipment we built to see if all of the wires were put in the right place. The goal was to keep it down to one or two errors per voltmeter. People would make up their own notes. We didn’t have a staff to make up these things. The employees made up their own guides. Whatever they wanted to jog their memory on how to do things, we encouraged them to do. Throughout all of the procedures and changes, they did not decrease the rate of production. Essentially, each person on the assembly knew what role they played in the entire production and how their work affected the end product.”
