Human-Centricity and Human Potential: An Existential Perspective

Human-centricity as a strategy for organizing social systems is gaining increasing significance in business, education, and public life, and is also attracting growing interest from researchers. However, many existing approaches shift the focus away from a holistic view of the human being, concentrating instead on isolated aspects such as creativity, needs and motives, values, or patterns of social interaction. This paper proposes an understanding of human-centricity grounded in a non-reductionist, integral conception of the human being, as developed within the existential tradition. It is shown that this view invalidates the criticism voiced by some scholars and practitioners who interpret the trend toward human-centricity as a neglect of the social reality of existence. The article argues that a culture can be considered human-centric if it supports the evolution of the human being in its participants, nurturing their individual process of existential development (a movement toward the possible human being). The key concept here is human potential, also based on a non-reductionist understanding of the human being. It is shown that one's potential is defined by the kind of human being one may become. This complex potential is not opposed to the partial forms of potential described in various scholarly traditions (such as personal, agentic, professional, creative, or entrepreneurial potential), but rather lends them internal coherence, direction, and developmental capacity. In a human-centric culture, such partial potentials are realized not as a random set of traits, resources, and skills, but as an integrated expression of the human being. Understood in this way, both human-centricity and human potential cannot be meaningfully measured through quantitative methods. The very act of studying these phenomena, which inevitably affects both culture and its participants, must itself align with the principles of human-centricity. Therefore, the use of qualitative research methods is proposed as the most appropriate approach for examining human-centric corporate culture and the potential of the human being.