Viktor Frankl’s Thought and Its Potential to Enrich Humanistic Management from a Personalist Perspective

Abstract Viktor E. Frankl’s logotherapy is grounded in experience and in an explicit philosophical anthropology influenced by existentialist thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel, by Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, Max Scheler’s phenomenology, and Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. Frankl’s conception of the person recognises the human being as an indivisible unity, irreducible to larger wholes, unique in existence, endowed with a spiritual dimension, oriented toward meaning, and essentially relational—entailing existence-with-others. The person is also endowed with freedom and the corresponding responsibility, characterised by a transcendent orientation (not closed in on self), and possesses inherent dignity rather than mere utility value. Although Frankl is often described as an existentialist psychiatrist, this article argues that he is more accurately situated within the tradition of personalism. His conception of the human being can contribute to enriching the philosophical foundations of the contemporary Humanistic Management movement by providing new horizons for a humanistic-personalist approach that places the person and his or her existential characteristics at the centre of management.