Maslow Vs. Herzberg

How might knowledge of motivational theories help you as a Managing Director of a supermarket chain, introduce policies and practices which increases the motivation and productivity of your employees? Try to use both theory and evidence to support any specific proposals you might make.

Motivation is the set of processes that moves a person towards a goal. Since motivation influences productivity, the Managing Director would need to have knowledge of motivational theories. The motivational theories which could help me as the Managing Director introduce policies and practices which can increase the motivation and productivity of the employees will be discussed in detail.

There have been many studies carried out to answer the question Ð''if motivation can increase performance?' and different motivation theories have had different affects on staff performance and motivation. Therefore I would need to analyse the theories and then decide which would be best suited to the behaviours of my employees working at the supermarket chain. Motivation theories are focused on psychological factors and these are spitted into process or content theories. Process theories are concerned with how motivation is aroused and maintained, however content theories concentrate on what actually motivates the staff, by attempting to develop an understanding of fundamental human needs. Both types of theories will be discussed and evaluated in order for me to find the motivational theory, which is best suited to the employees at the supermarket chain.

The first comprehensive attempt to classify human needs and develop a universal motivational theory was Maslows Hierarchy. Maslow believed that everyone has the same needs, all of which can be organised as a hierarchy.

E.g. pat levels & working conditions

E.g. Job security, clear job role/description

E.g. team working, social facilities

E.g. status, recognition, power, trust

E.g. develop new skills, meet new challenges and develop ones full potential

This theory consists of two parts, the first concerns the classification of needs or motivating factors and the second is concerned with how these needs or motivating factors relate to each other. According to this theory people have several areas of needs and the first need needs to be satisfied before other needs become pre-dominant, but once a need is satisfied a previous need is no longer a motivator. I think this theory can be used for the motivation of the employees in the supermarket chain by offering the staff a minimum wage so that the psychological needs are fulfilled. Once this need has been fulfilled all the other business implications can be looked at in order to work through the hierarchy so that the staff has reached the top of the hierarchy.

As the Managing Director I wouldn't personally use this theory for the employees of the supermarket chain. This is because it does have a lot of implications, for instance not everyone has the same set of needs and different people have different degrees of needs and its difficult to assume that anyone's needs can ever be said to be fully satisfied. Also different people are likely to be striving for different need levels of the hierarchy. For example someone whose needs are dominant will be behaving differently from someone who is attempting to satisfy safety and security needs. This would cause a problem for managers because if each worker has a different hierarchy of needs, how can the manager provide motivation for all the staff? Other problems reside in the fact that need hierarchies do not recognize that situational factors such as managerial policies and practices, an organisations structure, the type of technology used and the external environment all influence our needs. Any motivational theory which proposes strong similarities between people only leads to one conclusion that there is Ð''one best way' to manage and motivate people; however I feel this is not true as different situations need to be handled in different ways.

Taylor believed that people only work for one reason which is money. He saw it as the task of managers to devise a system which would maximise efficiency. This would generate the profit to enable the workers to be paid a higher wage. Taylor's view of human nature was that of Ð''economic man'. In other words people were only motivated by the economic motives of self-interest. Therefore if I was to use this to motivate the employees of the supermarket chain I can best motivate them by offering an incentive or a threat. For example I can use the time and motion study by observing and recording the workers on what, when and how they carry out their tasks and then identify the most efficient workers and see how they achieve greater efficiency. After identifying these workers I could devise a pay scheme to reward those who compete or beat the targets, but penalise the ones which cannot or will not achieve productivity. This theory has been used by Henry Ford for the mass production of motor cars, as well as communist factories in Easter Europe, China and Russia who imitated Taylor's methods. In all of these cased the result was a huge improvement in productivity, though it was commonly the case that workers did eventually rebel against being treated like machines.

Even though this approach can be useful to increase productivity in the supermarket chain, I wouldn't use this in the supermarket chain as it would decrease the motivation of employees. This is because the employees will feel they are being treated like machines and if they are unable to achieve the targets and miss out on rewards it may lead to de-motivated staff that may give up on the targets and eventually lose interest in the job and leave. Herzberg's two factor theory criticises this theory as in his own theory he has discovered that by bribing employees you can never stimulate people to give their best, therefore people would do just enough to achieve the bonus. Furthermore, bribing people to work harder at a task they find unsatisfying would build up resentments which might backfire on the employer.

They key test if a theory is its analytical usefulness, on this criterion, Herzberg's theory is the strongest by far. This theory stemmed from the research carried out in the 1950's into factors affecting workers job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This theory was carried out on 200 accountants and engineers living in USA. Below is a table showing the findings of Herzberg:-

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