Motivation to Work

By Frederick Herzberg

Book Overview

Quality work that fosters job satisfaction and health enjoys top priority in industry all over the world. This was not always so. Until recently analysis of job attitudes focused primarily on human relations problems within organizations. While American industry was trying to solve the unsolvable problem of avoiding interpersonal dissatisfaction, problems with the potential for solution, such as training and quality production, were ignored. When first published, 'The Motivation to Work' challenged the received wisdom by showing that worker fulfillment came from achievement and growth within the job itself. In his new introduction, Herzberg examines thirty years of motivational research in job-related areas. Based on workers' accounts of real events that have made them feel good or bad on the job, the findings of Herzberg and his colleagues have stimulated research and controversy that continue to the present day. The authors surprisingly found that while a poor work environment generated discontent, improved conditions seldom brought about improved attitudes. Instead, satisfaction came most often from factors intrinsic to work: achievements, job recognition, and work that was challenging, interesting, and responsible. The evidence marshaled by this volume called into question many previous assumptions about job satisfaction and worker motivation. Feelings about intrinsic and extrinsic factors could not be validly averaged on a single scale of measurement. Motivation and performance are not merely dependent upon environmental needs and external rewards. Frederick Herzberg and his staff based their motivation--hygiene theory on a variety of human needs and applied it to a strategy of job enrichment that has widely influenced motivation and job design strategies. 'Motivation to Work' is a landmark volume that is of enduring interest to sociologists, psychologists, labor studies specialists, and organization analysts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156000634X
• ISBN13: 9781560006343
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Major Contribution to Understanding Motivation

Herzberg's seminal work is both robust and enduring. Few ideas about the workplace have offered such insight and wisdom... as well as misunderstanding and controversy. His classic, "One More Time... How Do You Motivate Employees?" is the number one most requested article in the history of the Harvard Business Review and has been republished multiple times during the past four decades. This is obviously a message management needs to relearn time and again. Ultimately, the core value of Herzberg's pioneering research is that the relationship between the employee and the organization is more complex than mere economic exchange. His work invites us to consider that motivation comes from within the individual -- it is something the organization gets FROM its people, rather than something it does TO them. Herzberg's distinction between motivation (internally generated action) and movement (the response to external reward) is paramount to understanding how employees experience the work world. This crucial insight offers management an alternative to tricking employees into doing stupid jobs by simply paying them money. As Herzberg makes clear, it's the job we ask folks to do and the social context in which work takes place that provide the richest options for creating compelling organizations. Many progressive CEOs and thought leaders in the field embrace this paradigm. Jim Goodnight of SAS states that, "Ninety-five percent of my assets drive out the driveway each night. My job is to bring them back the next day." Peter Drucker extolled the virtues of transcending the notion that "work is a curse." Peter Senge has offered a roadmap for creating a learning organization with self-sustaining energy and vitality. Jeffery Pfeffer states that too often, organizations are measuring all the wrong things -- essentially majoring in minors. His HBR article "Six Dangerous Myths About Pay" offers a platform for demystifying management's numerous misconceptions concerning the realities of compensation. From these and many other giants of the management profession, it is clear that Herzberg's core beliefs about the workplace have enduring value. "The Motivation to Work" offers the reader unique insights into the complexities of employee needs and their performace at work. It also provides a much needed alternative to the carrot-and-stick approach to motivation so apparent in most organizations.

Basis for my research

Not only did I include this in the literature review portion of my research project on retention and turnover, but it really formed the basis of several aspects of my research on turnover and worker satisfaction. I enjoyed it so much after borrowing from the library and reading it that I had to have a copy for myself. Many are quick to reject Herzberg's two-factor theory, but it's hard to go wrong in using what you'll learn from his results and conclusions in dealing with worker motivation. This is an outstanding analysis of what motivates workers, satisfiers and dissatisfiers, and hygiene versus motivators. A true classic in every sense of the word!