Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory: Evidence and Criticisms

Herzberg's two-factor theory says that features of the work itself are mainly linked with job satisfaction. These include achievement, recognition and responsibility. Features of the work setting are mainly linked with dissatisfaction. These include policy, supervision, pay and conditions.

The theory came from interviews with 203 accountants and engineers. Later research does not show that these groups are fixed or universal.

The model is also called motivation-hygiene theory. It remains part of the wider field of learning theories and work psychology. Yet it is a workplace theory, not a theory of how learners learn. This guide sets out the first study, Herzberg's claims, the main criticisms and the limited lessons that school leaders can draw.

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What Is Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory?

Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (1959) argued that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not just opposite ends of one scale. In their account, some events led people to describe work in a good way because of the content of the job. Other events led people to describe work in a bad way because of the setting in which the job was done.

They called the first group motivators. These included achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility and advancement. They called the second group hygiene factors. These included company policy and administration, supervision, relationships at work, work conditions, salary, status and security.

The word hygiene can mislead. It does not mean cleanliness or a set of basic human needs. Herzberg used a link with preventive health.

Poor conditions could cause dissatisfaction, but better conditions would not always bring the positive satisfaction linked with engaging and responsible work. In his later work, he linked this split with job enrichment (Herzberg, 1968).

Many summaries say that hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction while motivators create satisfaction. This is a useful first guide, but it can make a disputed pattern sound like a universal law. A more exact reading is that Herzberg proposed trends in how staff explained very good and very bad work events.

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How the Original 1959 Study Worked

The Motivation to Work reported interviews with 203 accountants and engineers in the Pittsburgh area (Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, 1959). People were asked to recall times when they felt very good or very bad about their jobs. They had to say what took place and how it affected them. The research team then coded each critical event by the factor involved and the reported result.

This method produced the study's main pattern. Good events were often linked to achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement or the work itself. Bad events were more often linked to policy, supervision, relationships, conditions and other features around the work. The team read this gap as proof that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction had different main sources.

The study was not an experiment. It did not assign work conditions at random, change pay or test later output. It recorded people's accounts after the event and the research team's way of coding them. A person's account of a key event is not the same as an independent test of what caused satisfaction, effort or work quality.

The group also sets a clear limit. The people came from two professional jobs in one US industrial area in the 1950s. The study did not include teachers, school leaders or learners. Claims about lessons, praise, classroom tools or learner interest cannot come from this research.

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Motivators and Hygiene Factors Compared

Herzberg split the factors into two broad groups. Motivators concern the work itself and were linked mainly with good job events. Hygiene factors concern the setting and were linked mainly with bad job events. The table sets out this claim.

It is not a rule for each person or place of work.

On a small screen, swipe the table to compare both columns.

The split between job content and job context helps explain why a new work space may not make routine work meaningful. It does not mean that context has little value. Poor pay, unsafe conditions, insecure work or unfair supervision can cause serious harm. Nor does it mean that each member of staff values advancement or responsibility in the same way.

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What Does the Two-Factor Claim Mean?

The strongest form of Herzberg's claim is often shown as two scales. One runs from no satisfaction to satisfaction. The other runs from no dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction. They can change separately.

Removing a cause of dissatisfaction would move a person towards no dissatisfaction, but would not always create satisfaction. Meaningful responsibility can raise satisfaction without fixing poor work conditions.

This does not mean that each person always has two separate scores that can be tested. The first study counted coded events. It did not prove two distinct dimensions through a valid scale.

King (1970) found at least five forms of two-factor theory in the research. These ranged from modest claims about how often factors appeared to much stronger claims about drive and work quality. Some forms had limited support. Others were invalid or had not been tested well.

The split also differs from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Herzberg did not say that hygiene needs must be met in a fixed order before achievement can matter. It also differs from drive-reduction theory, which explains acts through a fall in bodily tension. The main theories of motivation guide compares these models without merging them.

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Limitations and Criticisms of Herzberg's Theory

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Recall and attribution

The critical-incident method asks people to rebuild key events from memory. Recall can be selective. People may explain good results through their own work, then blame bad results on policy, supervision or conditions. House and Wigdor (1967) argued that the pattern could show how people explain success and failure, rather than two quite different groups of job factor.

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Coding and method dependence

The research team had to decide what each event was about. Schneider and Locke (1971) said that the first coding system could mix up what took place with who or what was held to blame. With a revised coding method, the same kinds of event could be linked with both satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This weakens a strict split between motivators and hygiene factors.

Results also changed with the method. Studies that used the same critical-incident questions were more likely to find Herzberg's pattern than studies based on ratings or other measures (House and Wigdor, 1967). A theory should not be confused with a pattern produced by one interview and coding method.

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Categories can cross over

Salary is the best-known case. Herzberg mainly placed salary in the hygiene group, but this does not prove that money can never add to satisfaction or shape a choice. Pay may affect whether a person takes a role, stays in it, sees the process as fair or works harder under a set reward plan.

Relationships and supervision can also appear in good accounts. A lack of recognition or blocked progress can add to dissatisfaction.

The safest view is not that the groups have no worth. It is that they show trends that change with context. They can prompt a review of job content and job context. They should not be used to dismiss evidence on pay, security, workload, relationships or fairness.

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Population and generalisation

Ewen (1964) questioned the narrow range of jobs and the measures used in early tests. Hines (1973) studied ratings from 218 middle managers and 196 salaried staff in New Zealand. The results did not fit a strict split.

Supervision and relationships were also important to satisfied staff. The study shows why job and culture matter.

These limits matter in education. A claim about learners is a large step away from a study of accountants and engineers. A calm room, clear rules or praise may matter, but Herzberg's study did not test their effects on learning. Research on intrinsic motivation, self-determination theory and the overjustification effect owns those separate questions.

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What Later Research Found

Later findings are mixed, rather than just for or against the theory. House and Wigdor (1967) found that some evidence fitted parts of it. They also found that results depended on the method and that factors could appear on both sides. King (1970) showed that the answer depended on which form of the theory was tested.

Bassett-Jones and Lloyd (2005) reviewed more than 3,200 replies about why staff gave ideas to work suggestion schemes. Inner reasons still had value, but this was not a full repeat of the first two-factor study. It supports the value of meaningful input, not the claim that Herzberg's groups always hold.

Sachau (2007) offered a new account of the theory. He argued that positive psychology and work on meaningful tasks made Herzberg's focus on positive job content relevant again. This is a comparison of ideas. It is not a new experiment that confirms the 1959 method or solves its coding flaws.

Taken as a whole, the research supports a modest use. The split between job content and job context can lead to useful questions. The strong claim that one fixed group only brings satisfaction and another only brings dissatisfaction does not hold well across methods and settings.

Accessible study-note transcript

The original study: 203 Pittsburgh accountants and engineers took part in critical-incident interviews about unusually good and bad work events.

Herzberg's proposal: motivators concern job content. Achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility and advancement were mainly associated with satisfaction. Hygiene factors concern job context. Policy, supervision, relationships, conditions, salary, status and security were mainly associated with dissatisfaction.

Evidence limits: categories can overlap; recall, attribution and coding matter; results depend on method and context. This was not a study of learner motivation.

For school leaders: use the distinction as a discussion prompt about staff work, not as a diagnosis.

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Job Enrichment and the Job Characteristics Model

Herzberg (1968) argued for job enrichment, not just more tasks at the same level. Enrichment aimed to add responsibility, achievement, growth and real control within the work itself. This idea followed the theory's focus on job content. Yet it is still Herzberg's case for management, not separate proof that each enrichment plan raises drive or work quality.

Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model is often placed next to Herzberg because it also deals with work design. It is a separate later theory, not a test based on two-factor theory. Its core job features are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Hackman and Oldham made the Job Diagnostic Survey to test their own concepts (Hackman and Oldham, 1975).

Their later study covered 658 staff in 62 jobs across seven organisations (Hackman and Oldham, 1976). It linked job features with states of mind and work results. It also allowed for personal and local differences. Those data are not a direct repeat of Herzberg's work, and the survey is not a Herzberg score.

In the same way, autonomy in self-determination theory has its own meaning and source base. Shared words do not make the ideas the same.

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What School Leaders Can and Cannot Infer

School leaders can use Herzberg's split to plan a talk about staff work. Job context can cover workload systems, role clarity, supervision, policy, relationships, pay, security and the work space. Job content can cover professional duty, meaningful success, recognition, growth and the substance of teaching or leadership work.

The value lies in asking about both, not in assuming the answers. Praise cannot make up for unsafe conditions or too much work. A better staff room cannot make a confused role feel meaningful.

Pay should not be set aside because Herzberg put it mainly in the hygiene group. Staff should not be given more duty on the claim that duty always motivates.

Direct school evidence is a better base for claims about educators. Dinham and Scott (1998) studied 892 teachers and school leaders in 71 Australian schools. Their three-domain account split satisfaction from core teaching, school-level conditions and wider system factors. This has links with job content and context, but it is not a simple proof of Herzberg's two groups.

A sound leadership review should use more than one form of evidence. This can include private staff voice, workload and absence patterns, retention data, each role's context and the needs of groups whose experience may differ. Herzberg offers terms, not a cut-off score. The invalid score below three in the old article had no sound basis and should not guide work decisions.

Nothing in the first study shows teachers how to motivate learners. It did not test classroom conditions, rewards, praise, challenge, SEND support or learner choice. Those topics belong to education and motivation research, including humanistic psychology, not to a direct use of the 1959 interviews.

Leaders can use the wider guide to leadership theories to place Herzberg beside models of influence, culture and change at work.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the main idea of Herzberg's two-factor theory?

Herzberg said that job-content factors such as achievement, recognition and responsibility are mainly linked with satisfaction. Job-context factors such as policy, supervision, pay and conditions are mainly linked with dissatisfaction. Later research finds that the groups can overlap.

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Who took part in Herzberg's original study?

The 1959 account drew on critical-incident interviews with 203 accountants and engineers in the Pittsburgh area (Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, 1959). It did not include teachers or learners.

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Does Herzberg's theory say salary cannot motivate?

No claim that firm is justified. Herzberg mainly put salary in the hygiene group because it appeared more often in bad events. Pay can still affect who takes a role, who stays, views of fairness, job satisfaction and acts in other settings.

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Is Herzberg's theory supported by evidence?

Findings are mixed. The first critical-incident pattern has had wide use, but reviews and later studies find problems with recall, attribution, coding and method dependence. Factors also appear on both sides across jobs and cultures (House and Wigdor, 1967; Hines, 1973).

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Is job enrichment the same as the Job Characteristics Model?

No. Herzberg promoted job enrichment as a management response to his theory. Hackman and Oldham later made a separate Job Characteristics Model and Job Diagnostic Survey with their own concepts and evidence (Hackman and Oldham, 1975; Hackman and Oldham, 1976).

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How should school leaders use Herzberg's theory?

Use it as a prompt to review both staff job content and job context. Do not use it as a score, a reason to discount pay or workload, or proof about learner interest. Decisions should use direct staff evidence and sound research on the education workforce.

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References

Bassett-Jones, N., and Lloyd, G. C. (2005). Does Herzberg's motivation theory have staying power? Journal of Management Development, 24(10), 929-943. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710510627064

Dinham, S., and Scott, C. (1998). A three domain model of teacher and school executive career satisfaction. Journal of Educational Administration, 36(4), 362-378. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578239810211545

Ewen, R. B. (1964). Some determinants of job satisfaction: A study of the generality of Herzberg's theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 48(3), 161-163. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0048383

Hackman, J. R., and Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(2), 159-170. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076546

Hackman, J. R., and Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behav. Hum. Perform., 16(2), 250-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7

Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 46(1), 53-62. Stable PubMed record

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., and Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The Motivation to Work. New York: Wiley. WorldCat bibliographic record

Hines, G. H. (1973). Cross-cultural differences in two-factor motivation theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 58(3), 375-377. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036299

House, R. J., and Wigdor, L. A. (1967). Herzberg's dual-factor theory of job satisfaction and motivation: A review of the evidence and a criticism. Personnel Psychology, 20(4), 369-390. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1967.tb02440.x

King, N. (1970). Clarification and evaluation of the two-factor theory of job satisfaction. Psychological Bulletin, 74(1), 18-31. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0029444

Sachau, D. A. (2007). Resurrecting the motivation-hygiene theory: Herzberg and the positive psychology movement. Human Resource Development Review, 6(4), 377-393. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484307307546

Schneider, J., and Locke, E. A. (1971). A critique of Herzberg's incident classification system and a suggested revision. Organizational Behav. Hum. Perform., 6(4), 441-457. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(71)90027-4