Frederick Herzberg (hygiene theory)

Frederick Herzberg (1923-2000) was a clinical psychologist and pioneer of 'job enrichment’. He is regarded as one of the great original thinkers in management and motivational theory. Frederick Herzberg was born in Massachusetts on April 18, 1923. His undergraduate work was at the City College of New York, followed by graduate degrees at the University of Pittsburgh. Herzberg was later Professor of Management at Case Western Reserve University, where he established the Department of Industrial Mental Health. He moved to the University of Utah's College of Business in 1972, where he was also Professor of Management. He died at Salt Lake City, January 18, 2000.

           

His 'overriding interest in mental health' stemmed from his belief that 'mental health is the core issue of our times'. This was prompted by his posting to the Dachau concentration camp after its liberation. On his return to America, he worked for the US Public Health Service. His hygiene-motivation theory was first published in The Motivation to Work in 1959. Herzberg's work focused on the individual in the workplace, but it has been popular with managers as it also emphasized the importance of management knowledge and expertise (Kwasi Dartey-Baah & George Kofi Amoako, 2011)

            

In The Virginian-Pilot it was noted that "The Father of Job Enrichment" and the originator of the "Motivation-Hygiene Theory" "became both an icon and a legend among post-war visionaries such as Abraham Maslow, Peter Drucker and Douglas Mac Gregor. In academic, management and scholarly circles, the mention of the surname 'Herzberg' alone was sufficient to indicate an awareness and knowledge of his concepts and contributions. In 1995, the International Press announced that his book Work and the Nature of Man were listed as one of the 10 most important books impacting management theory and practice in the 20th century."Frederick Herzberg's book 'The Motivation to Work', written with research colleagues Bernard Mausner and Barbara Bloch Snyderman in 1959 was  first established his theories about motivation in the workplace. Herzberg's survey work, originally on 200 Pittsburgh engineers and accountants remains a fundamentally important reference in motivational study. While the study involved only 200 people, Herzberg's considerable preparatory investigations, and the design of the research itself, enabled Herzberg and his colleagues to gather and analyze an extremely sophisticated level of data (Christina M. Stello, 2009).

            

Herzberg's research used a pioneering approach, based on open questioning and very few assumptions, to gather and analyze details of 'critical incidents' as recalled by the survey respondents. He first used this methodology during his doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh with John Flanagan who later become Director at the American Institute for Research who developed the Critical Incident method in the selection of Army Air Corps personnel during the Second World War. Herzberg's clever open interviewing method accumulating far more meaningful results than the conventional practice of asking closed (basically yes/no) or multiple-choice or extent-based questions, which assume or prompt a particular type of response and which incidentally remain the most popular and convenient style of surveying even today - especially among those having a particular agenda or publicity aim.

            

Herzberg also prepared intensively prior to his 1959 study - not least by scrutinizing and comparing the results and methodologies of all 155 previous research studies into job attitudes carried out between 1920 and 1954.The level of preparation, plus the 'critical incident' aspect and the depth of care and analysis during the 1959 project, helped make Herzberg's study such a powerful and sophisticated piece of work.Herzberg expanded his motivation-hygiene theory in his subsequent books: Work and the Nature of Man (1966); The Managerial Choice (1982); and Herzberg on Motivation (1983).Significantly, Herzberg commented in 1984, twenty-five years after his theory was first published:"The original study has produced more replications than any other research in the history of industrial and organizational psychology." The absence of any serious challenge to Herzberg's theory continues effectively to validate it. Herzberg’s central theory is very relevant to modern understanding employer/employee relationships, mutual understanding and alignment with the theories of hygiene and motivators (Christina M. Stello, 2009).