What Frederick Taylor proposed is that man is a material object. What Elton May put forward is that man is a social being. Then Maslow came to divide the human needs, so is there a theory that can be seen in man otherwise?
Taylor didn't propose that man is a material object : the implications of his work were that man at work was primarily a materialistic subject. Mayor's more philosophical work, influence by Piere Janet, suggests that man at work is primarily a social being, and social concerns can mediate material goals. However, the role of fantasy, or "reveries", at an individual level was also important. Maslow developed his early ideas with observations of captive monkeys, and his concern with the emergence of certain people to dominance morphed into the idea of self actualization which led to his 5 levels eventually expanding to 8 but emphasising meaning at the higher levels. There are several problems with the hierarchy, one being the issue of salience, and it appears to vary according to gender and culture. Culture was recognised by Mayo as significant, and is clearly at issue in the growth of Scientific Management, which in practice enabled large numbers of non-Anglophone immigrants to be put to work quickly and efficiently in US industry from Pennsylvania steelworks to Chicago stockyards to Detroit vehicle lines. A third category ignored by Maslow but important to Mayo and Taylor's populations was class. So any attempt to move on from critiquing the classics (and there have been plenty) needs to address the Intersectionality of culture, class and gender - just for starters Check out the introduction to Linstead, Fulop and Lilley (2009) Management and Organization:A Critical Text Palgrave Macmillan, and the chapter on management knowledge, for a full discussion.
I strongly recommend to read "What is Good? What is Bad? The Value of All Values across Time, Place and Theories" by John McMurtry, in Philosophy and World Problems, vols. I-III, Paris & Oxford: UNESCO in partnership with Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, 2011. It goes to the bottom of the socio-environmental conditions presupposed by all the cited authors (Taylor, etc.) and clarifies the meaning of "need".
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