Herzberg's Two Factor Theory

The two factor theory was developed by Fredrick Herzberg from his study of 200 accountants and engineers. It is also known as the hygiene theory. It is a theory of external motivation because the manager controls the factors that produce job satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Prior to Herzberg's study it was generally believed that employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction and hence motivation or lack of it were two opposite ends of the same continuum (scale) i.e. people either satisfied with their jobs or they were dissatisfied or something in between. Herzberg's study however showed that this was not the case. He found out that satisfaction was influenced by one set of factors while dissatisfaction was influenced by another set (hence the two factor theory). Factors which influenced dissatisfaction he called dissatisfiers (hygiene or maintenance factors). These included company policy, administration, supervision, working conditions, salary, status, job security and interpersonal relations. If these factors are present in high quality and quantity, people are simply not dissatisfied and not necessarily satisfied. So presence of these factors does not motivate in the sense of yielding satisfaction. When these factors were absent or deficient, people were dissatisfied yet when they were present people were not necessarily satisfied—instead they were simply not dissatisfied.

Factors which affected satisfaction, he called them satisfiers or motivators. Included here were achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth and advancement. When these factors fell below an acceptable level, they contributed very little to job dissatisfaction but they did prevent satisfaction i.e. when they were present employees tended to be satisfied, but when they were deficient employees were merely not satisfied, but were not necessarily dissatisfied. If a job does not offer an employee advancement, challenging work, responsibility and recognition he will not necessarily be dissatisfied with it but neither will he derive any satisfaction from it.

This theory has a clear message for managers in trying to motivate employees, the first step should be to eliminate dissatisfaction by ensuring that pay, working conditions, company policies are reasonable. But pay and those other improvements will not lead to motivation, so the next step would be for managers to enhance motivation by improving factors that cause satisfaction. So managers should ensure there are opportunities for advancement, achievement, authority, status and recognition. From the theory it can be concluded that:

(a)    The factors that cause job satisfaction are separate and distinct from the factors that cause job dissatisfaction.
(b)    The opposite of job satisfaction is no job satisfaction and not dissatisfaction.
(c)    The opposite of job dissatisfaction is no dissatisfaction and not satisfaction.

The applicability of this theory has been questioned and it must be approached with caution and not treated as a solution to motivational problems.