Name Edwin Nevis | ||
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Died May 20, 2011, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, United States Books Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt, Intentional revolutions, How Organizations Learn | ||
Education City College of New York | ||
Edwin C. Nevis (May 20, 1926, Brooklyn, New York – May 20, 2011, Wellfleet, Massachusetts) was a gestalt therapist who identified Maslow's hierarchy of needs as culturally relative and formulated a hierarchy of needs for Chinese culture and a mode of classifying hierarchies of needs in different cultures. He co-founded the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and founded the Gestalt International Study Center, and was a faculty member in management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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Life and career
Nevis was born in Brooklyn on May 20, 1926. He earned an undergraduate degree from City College of New York, a Master's from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Western Reserve University.
Nevis taught at the MIT Sloan School of Management for almost 17 years; he directed the Program for Senior Executives. In 1956 he was one of the founders of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland; he was its president until 1973 and created its Organizational & System Development and International OSD programs. In 1979 he and his wife, Sonia M. Nevis, founded the Gestalt International Study Center in Wellfleet, Massachusetts; he was its president until 2007.
He died of lymphoma in Wellfleet on May 20, 2011, his 85th birthday.
Theoretical contributions
In 1981, while teaching organization psychology in a management program in Shanghai, Nevis's observation of individuals there led him to conclude that their hierarchy of needs differed from that propounded by Abraham Maslow, which was based on American culture, and to formulate a Chinese hierarchy, Nevis's hierarchy of needs. He regarded the need hierarchies of different cultures as classifiable with reference to an individualism-collectivism dimension and an ego-social dimension.
The Gestalt International Study Center is unusual in working with couples, groups, and organizations in an experiential and not solely therapeutic manner. Nevis characterized it as a "hands-on [approach whose] goal is to create tools that will enrich our participants' lives with greater self awareness, interpersonal and professional skills."
Nevis's Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach (1987) was his "signature book."
Awards
In 2010, Nevis was awarded the Organization Development Network's Lifetime Achievement Award.