Limitations Of Maslow's Theory Of Motivation

Introduction:

In any organisation, the employees are the key asset of the company which provide services or produce the product in a given time frame and from their roles. Organisations provide those benefits in the form of motivational incentives for their excellent job performance. Motivational theory play a significant role in an organisation as they provide a way to company to motivates their employees to perform their job roles within an individual or as a group which ultimately improve productivity and personal and organisational morale levels. In many organisations, in order to achieve its stated objectives and individual department functions, they used the different types of motivational theories by utilizing their human resources in

 It is over simplified and only focused on human needs. Direct cause and effect relationship between need and behaviour is lacking.

 All employees need are not similar

 The model of hierarchy needs is not applicable for every type of employees. It may differ person to person.

 The theory has to include other motivating factors like expectation, experience and perception.

 Maslow’s model does not suits in the present age as every person has lots of needs to be satisfied and may be their need is not necessarily follow the pyramid structure of Maslow.

 Maslow’s theory is most acceptable in the management world but it is more tentative and untested. Moreover Maslow’s theory is more philosophical than scientific.

Limitation of Frederick Herzberg’s theory

Frederick Herzberg’s two factors theory has many limitations which are related to empirical validity, research methodology conducted and assumptions made by Frederick in the theory. It is over simplified as the Maslow’s theory.

Current Issues in Motivation

1. Motivating in tough economic

This is also very important issue to understand by managers. Most of motivational theories were discovered in United Stated by Americans and for Americans but it is not necessarily give the same result for the cross culture countries. To explain this let’s we take an example, Maslow’s need hierarchy argues that physiological need is the first step for everyone and then shift from lower to higher stages in hierarchy pyramid. It is generally applicable for all over the world but in countries like Japan, Greece, and Mexico, where uncertainly avoidance characteristics are strong, security needs would be the foundational layer of the need hierarchy. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland have higher nurturing characteristics which would have social needs as their foundational level. In recent study, it is examine that in Japan, the Herzberg’s model is applicable to Japanese employees. (Robbins, Coulter,