Unit 3

Motivation

Herzberg carried out a motivation study on 200 accountants and engineers who worked in companies in the USA. these subjects of the study were asked two questions: 

1- When did you feel particularly good about your job? 

2- When did you feel exceptionally bad about your job? 

The responses that Herzberg obtained were interesting and fairly consistent. Reported good feelings were usually associated with job experiences and job content. 

One example of these was the head of an accounting department; he was given the job of installing new computer equipment. He took pride in his work and was pleased to know that the new equipment made a big difference in how his department functioned. Reported bad feelings on the other hand, were usually associated with the surrounding or peripheral aspects of the job - the job content. An example of these feelings was give by an engineer; his first job was routine record keeping and managing the office when the boss was gone. His boss was always too busy to train him and became annoyed when he tried to ask questions. The engineer said that he was frustrated in this job context and that he felt that he was just an unimportant assistant in a dead-end job. 

Herzberg concluded that job satisfiers are related to job content and that  job dissatisfies are related to job context.  Herzberg labelled that satisfiers 'motivators'  and he called the dissatisfies 'hygiene factors'.