Juan Antonio Pérez López - Foundations of management

Thus, the hygiene factors listed by Herzberg include: salary, technical supervision, working conditions, regulations and company policies, personal relationship with supervisors, etc.

The motivating factors included items such as possibilities for personal achievement, acknowledgement of achievements, nature of the task being performed, responsibility, possibilities for promotion, etc.

Clearly (and quite a few theoretical studies discuss this), it is not difficult to link the factors in the first group to the physiological, security and social needs of Maslow's scale. The factors in the second group would correspond to his needs for self-esteem and self-realization.

There are, however, a number of major differences between the two theories. These are due above all to the more limited scope of Herzberg's theory, which studies the motivation to perform a task within an organization, not motivation in general as a driving force for human action, which is the framework within which Maslow operates.

Thus, whereas according to Maslow any unsatisfied need can motivate action, for Herzberg only what he calls “motivating factors” positively motivate a person to work. The lack of an adequate hygiene level simply causes dissatisfaction in the worker. This dissatisfaction disappears if these factors are corrected and brought to an adequate level (or exceed it); however, the resulting satisfaction does not imply a positive motivation towards better performance at work.

According to Herzberg, higher degrees of motivation, satisfaction and task-performance are only achieved by the motivating factors. It is Herzberg's hypothesis that is used as the basis for designing all the “job enrichment” programs that have become so popular as a means of motivating people to improve their productivity and at the same time obtain greater satisfaction from their work.

Perhaps the sharpest difference between the two theories is to be found in the weakest point of Maslow's theory: the dynamism he postulates concerning the appearance of motivations to attempt to satisfy higher-order needs (remember that this dynamism requires that lower-order ones be satisfied beforehand).

Herzberg does not enter into the matter (it is not necessary for the formulations of his conclusions), but one result of his research was that a worker with unsatisfied needs involving both motivating and hygiene factors could be motivated by motivating factors, even if the hygiene factors remained less than fully satisfied.

Perhaps the most comprehensive discussion attempting to synthesize the theories we have mentioned so far (apart from the ones from other studies on motivation being conducted at the same time) is to be found in Douglas McGregor, with his famous Theory X and Theory Y as alternative approaches to management as set forth in his classic work The Human Side of Enterprise 5.

In this work, McGregor acknowledges that at the heart of any theory on how to manage people, there is always a series of hypotheses on human motivation. In light of the development of the study of motivation, he states that there is a body of generally accepted theory that can be used as a basis for a new conception of management, which he calls Theory Y.

This theory is based on the consequences deriving from the theories on motivation described above (and other similar theories) which analyzed motivation within the context of problems of productivity, worker satisfaction, control, etc., in the companies. Theory Y is a management theory based on a conception of the company as a social organism—a psycho-sociological paradigm—and, consequently, the opposite of Theory X, which corresponds to a conception of management characteristic of a mechanistic model or paradigm of the company.

In his subsequent comments on Herzberg's theory, McGregor establishes a very important distinction between the factors affecting motivation. McGregor distinguishes between what he calls extrinsic factors and intrinsic factors.

The former 6are the ones usually associated with the satisfaction of the lower-order needs in Maslow's hierarchy and can be controlled “from outside” the individual: these consist of compensations, incentives, punishments or sanctions that “someone” other than oneself gives or takes away to control one's performance.

The intrinsic factors, on the other hand, are more closely related to the satisfaction of higher-order needs as a direct result of a person's activity. The “sense of achievement,” learning, satisfaction related to feeling responsible for something: all these are examples of intrinsic factors.

For McGregor, the factors that motivate intrinsically in the performance of a task are properties of a human system and represent a potential strength not present in mechanical systems. In the latter, action must be triggered externally by extrinsic factors. In the former, the possibility exists for action to be performed for the sake of intrinsic motives. Basically, Theory Y conceives of the manager as someone who not only motivates by offering external stimuli (incentives), but who above all is able to release people's energy to motivate themselves with the intrinsic results of their action.

McGregor goes no further than this and, with respect to the content of the extrinsic factors, confines himself to noting their connection with Maslow's lower-order needs and with Herzberg's hygiene factors; he relates intrinsic factors to Maslow's higher-order needs and to Herzberg's motivating factors. However, the match is not exact. Finally, McGregor does not fully accept the dynamism by which Maslow accounts for the appearance of motivation towards the satisfaction of a higher-order need.

All these theories clearly point in a single direction and enable one to speak of a common paradigm—the psycho-sociological paradigm—for the analysis of companies. This paradigm includes ideas on motivation that correspond to an image of man reduced to his physical and psychological properties. Both the theories we have discussed in the foregoing pages and other similar theories are flawed due to a series of ambiguities due to the following two characteristic limitations:

a) The limitation of inductive methodology in advancing the understanding of human phenomena.

b) The use of a psychological model of human beings that lacks an anthropological basis. This basis is absolutely necessary in order to address explicitly the essential issues already mentioned by Chester Barnard (person, freedom, etc.).

Using as our starting point the discoveries made by these authors, in the following pages we will attempt to set forth a theory of motivation, developed on an anthropological foundation, which will enable us to complement the insights contained in these authors' works.

By taking this step, we enter a new model or paradigm for conceiving of the human organization: the anthropological or humanistic model. Using this model, we will be able to address the explanation of phenomena such as people's identification with the organization, the development of loyalty towards organizations, and relationships between authority and leadership. In our times, these are the issues that perhaps most concern both business managers and theorists.

1A great number of books and articles have been written on the content and meaning of those investigations. We consider particularly interesting Fritz Roethlisberger's own summary and interpretation, written almost forty years after his initial work, in Chapter 4 of his posthumous work, The Elusive Phenomena (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1977).

2The quote is taken from the beginning of Chapter 2 of The Functions of the Executive (Harvard University Press).