From Hudson’s Bay to eBay: Why Some People Like Going to Work

Abstract

In 1805 the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company was sinking fast. Since 1670 its Royal Charter had given it a monopoly on the best trade routes to Europe for fine Canadian furs, but the lucrative business had recently attracted a new firm, North West. Its trappers and traders had to haul furs an extra 1,500 miles in birch-bark canoes, often over killing portages. Despite that huge cost disadvantage, North West had somehow managed to snare over 80 percent of market share, and Hudson’s Bay’s stock was in free fall.

The more evolved and psychologically healthy people get, the more will enlightened management policy be necessary in order to survive in competition and the more handicapped will be an enterprise with an authoritarian policy.

—Abraham Maslow