ABSTRACT
The stories we tell each other define our place in the world and some of these stories, such as those which tell us what structure really is, follow themes used for hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of years. Now this may seem to be an extravagant claim, but if we are correct we should see such stories in our concepts of structure and even in our science fiction. In the paper that follows we hope to build a case for this viewpoint by examining one such story-line in two different forms: Maslow’s Need Hierarchy (e.g., 1943), and a story of the silent picture era, Metropolis. We’ll discuss what elements Metropolis has in common with our thinking about organizations, then follow this discussion with an in-depth analysis. Later we’ll discuss Maslow’s theory using these same elements. It promises to be an interesting journey, so let’s start with a trip to the movies, in the year 1927.
