Criticisms Of Herzberg's Theory

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There was limited value back in 1950 to identify leadership traits, although some weak generalisations did emerge (Shaw, 1961). Leaders do tend, on average, to score higher on measures of ability, sociability, and motivation. Leadership is different with management in terms of the function according to Kotter (1990). He argues the importance of leadership and consigns management to a lesser role. The function of leadership is to create an agenda by establishing direction and strategies to achieve goals (Kirchner, 1990). The principle is also supported by Santora (1991) when she also poses a fundamental challenge to the distinction between leaders and managers. She also agreed that leadership functions are to develop people, motivate, and inspire …show more content…

Needs, pay check, company policy, supervisory style, status, security, and working conditions are reviewed by hygiene as the elements that usually lead to job dissatisfaction. Although this theory is about half of century old, recent research suggests that many employees still respond in ways of the theory prediction (Bassett-Jones and Lloyd, 2005). In essence, the theory proposes that the motivating factors are the primary determinants of employee satisfaction. These intrinsic factors are sense of achievement, recognition, possibility of growth, responsibility and the work itself. Therefore, there are criticisms of Herzberg’s theory. Some researchers claim that salary, working conditions and interpersonal relations may also act as motivators (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). Also, advancement, responsibility and achievement are the only way to increase work motivation (Ogbonna and Harris, …show more content…

He argued that employees have innate needs and identified nine but only focus on five of these as shown in Figure 1. He also argued that these needs are organised in the hierarchy, with lower order biological and safety needs at the bottom, and higher order self-actualisation and transcendence needs at the top. This theory is still influential, particularly in recognising that behaviour depends on a range of needs, drives, and motives.

The theory held that human capital i.e. employees was more important than physical assets (Becker, 1962). The result of this particular application is a trained human agent-worker-whose enhanced productive capacity is manifested in a stream of services of enhanced value (Reder, 1967). The job characteristics model suggested that increased job satisfaction, motivation and performance are all related to complex jobs (Hackman and Lawler, 1971). Figure 2 illustrates job characteristics that are related to positive outcomes. Those five main characteristics are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, where each one of these led to one critical psychological state. Experienced meaningfulness is produced from skill variety, task identity and task significance, whereas the remaining autonomy and feedback characteristics contribute to experienced responsibility

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