Frederick Herzberg essay

Traditionally, the effectiveness of employees’ performance was one of the primary concerns of managers and theorists who researched issues related to management and who developed management theories. Views on the effectiveness of employees’ performance and its improvement vary consistently. The variety of theories has been developed to stimulate the improvement of effectiveness and productivity of employees through the implementation of new methods offered by different theorists. In this respect, job satisfaction has proved to be one of the key factors that determine the effectiveness of employees’ performance. At the same time, many researchers failed to understand the full scope of factors influencing job satisfaction. In such a context, researches and the Motivator-Hygiene theory developed by Frederick Herzberg are particularly noteworthy. In fact, F. Herzberg develops the idea that there are two groups of factors influencing the job satisfaction and, therefore, effectiveness of work of employees: on the one hand, there are motivator factors, which motivate employees and lead to their job satisfaction, whereas, on the other hand, there are hygiene factors that prevent job dissatisfaction but both groups of factors are essential to maintain positive performance of employees because, according to Herzberg, motivator factors complement perfectly hygiene factors.

Job satisfaction as the key factor of a positive employees’ performance

In actuality, job satisfaction is one of the key factors that influence and determine, to a significant extent, the effective and positive performance of employees. Many researchers (Chyung, 2007) agree that job satisfaction influences directly employees’ performance. Moreover, some researchers (Feder, 2000) believe that the higher job satisfaction is the more motivated employees are and, therefore, the more effectively they work. In such a way, the close relationship between job satisfaction and employees’ performance is obvious.

At the same time, the development of view on job satisfaction as the key factor of a positive employees’ performance was accompanied by numerous debates and contradictions in terms of the development of the management theory. One of the major reason for the dispute was the belief that job satisfaction can be reached through the creation of positive workplace environment, whereas, on the other hand, some researchers (Feder, 2000) argued that motivation of employees is more important for job satisfaction than positive workplace environment. Many management theories emerged and offered different views on job satisfaction and the ways which help to achieve job satisfaction.

In this respect, it is worth mentioning the fact that the overwhelming majority of management theories had certain drawbacks in regard to job satisfaction. To put it more precisely, many management theories stand on the ground that job satisfaction is achieved through motivation of employees, either material or non-material.

However, such a view on job satisfaction is inadequate because it does not fully explain the reasons for a low employees’ performance in spite of the use of various motivation factors. One of the reasons for the ineffective performance of employees, regardless of motivation that is supposed to lead to employees’ job satisfaction, is the dissatisfaction of employees which annihilates all the positive effects of motivation.

At this point, it is possible to refer to Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene theory, which attempts to close the gap between job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction which may come into conflict in the course of the organizational performance. In fact, during the 50’s and 60’s Herzberg “decided to carefully study and research the key factors affecting a worker’s performance” (Chyung, 2007, p.145). In the course of his research, Herzberg arrived to the idea that employees’ performance is vulnerable not only to the impact of job satisfaction but also to the impact of job dissatisfaction.