SAS Institute is the world's largest privately held software company. Founded in 1976, the company makes statistical analysis software that it leases to a widely diverse group of customers. The company's customer base has grown from 100 customers in 1976 to more than 30,000 in twelve countries, including all but two of the largest U.S. public companies. SAS Institute has 5,400 employees; 3,400 are at the company's campus headquarters in Cary, North Carolina. John Goodnight, SAS Institute's founder and CEO, owns two-thirds of the company, while John Sall, a senior vice president, owns the other third.

In recent years, SAS Institute has received considerable media attention for the "utopian" environment for which it has become known. The company's physical surroundings are country club-like, and include two childcare centers, a fully staffed health center, private offices for all, a pianist in the company-subsidized cafeteria, state-of-the-art athletic facilities, and many other perks. In terms of noteworthy non-tangibles, the company offers unlimited employee sick days and a 35-hour workweek. What's not available is perhaps even more telling: there is no executive dining room, no reserved parking spaces (except for company vans), and no coveted offices for executives.

The compelling story behind SAS Institute is not tied to a specific change initiative or the many benefits, but is about the work environment created at the company's birth and sustained over time, and about the company's organizational values: employee-centricity, employee interdependence, a spirit of risk-taking, freedom, challenging work, and richness of resources. On supporting this climate, the company adopted four strategies: a "hire hard" recruitment strategy, the 35-hour workweek, employee and manager surveys, and the compensation system.

Q1: Analyze the efforts that SAS has exerted to motivate its employees in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.