This is a short course on how human beings might behave in different situations and when faced with specific rewards or threats. It only provided a general background against which to assess more detailed points that may be made in other courses such as Human Behaviour in Organisations and Human Resources Management. The course was to help us develop a basic view of human nature that can be used to assess other theories or views we may come across in our studies. The course covers the study of models such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics model, and Donaldson’s stewardship theory.
However, the main takeaway points from the course manual are;
- Human beings are not totally rational agents. Developing the right emotions is an essential aspect of personal and professional development. Emotions often have great importance in determining their behaviour and must always be taken into account when trying to predict or plan human actions or planning for the personal and professional development.
- Despite how crucial emotions are, people are not ultimately controlled by them.
Men have the freedom of choice, which enables them to act in the face of intensely opposing emotions. In interacting with people, it is crucial to take this ability of free choice into consideration. Achieving meaningful personal and professional progress requires using this ability of free choice.
- The way man uses his freedom determines his character. Man acquires qualities that enable him to operate consistently in the appropriate way in both the personal and professional spheres by making wise choices and working to cultivate the proper emotions. Likewise, poor decisions have a long-lasting impact on our personalities rather than merely passing incidents in our life.
- Even while humans do not possess pure rationality, they do possess intellectual cognition abilities. As a result, giving people motivation to behave in a certain way is crucial when trying to influence them.
- There are compelling arguments to support the conclusion that our intelligence, not our feelings or emotions, should be the final arbiter of our actions.
- The greatest advantage of freedom is that it allows people to truly take credit for the positive deeds they carry out. But when people exercise their freedom to make unpleasant, foolish, or destructive decisions, they jeopardize both their fulfilment and their freedom. This implies that making independence and freedom from bonds the main goals of our lives can only lead to misery and failure.
- Man is a social being who can only survive, grow, and find happiness in the end by living in society, working with and helping other people, and building close relationships with some people. Humans place a high value on belonging to communities that support one another.
- Men must focus on aspects of fulfilment rather than purely extrinsic goods in order to achieve fulfilment, and they must not limit their concerns to their own narrow individual interests.
- Humans are more than simply highly evolved animals. They are spiritual beings who are endowed, as a result of their spiritual nature, with fundamentally superior abstract knowledge and free choice abilities to those of other animals. Because of this, every human being has literally an infinite value or dignity that is far greater than that of any other being in the universe. As a result, they should always be treated with respect and should never be used solely for the purposes of other people.
Finally, there are no guaranteed formulas or solutions for managing human beings and they cannot be reliably manipulated because Man has the power of free choice and ultimately everything depends on him.
