Insight into Herzberg’s Two-factor Incentive Theory

DOI

10.2991/icedem-18.2018.81How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Herzberg; Incentive factors; Hygiene factors; Subjective initiative

Abstract

Herzberg's two-factor incentive theory has great influence on the field of management and has been widely applied to the management practice. However, there are also controversies over the theory. One of the reasons behind these controversies is that Herzberg didn’t conduct further analysis of the essence of the theory when putting it forward. Herzberg divides the factors affecting the employees’ job satisfaction into incentive factors which are related to the work itself and hygiene factors which are mainly relevant to the working environment. He believes that what motivate the employees can only be incentive factors, and hygiene factors merely eliminate the employees' dissatisfaction. This paper carries out an in-depth analysis of the essence of Herzberg's two-factor incentive theory and finds that the degree of the employees' subjective initiative is obviously different when it comes to these two kinds of factors, and the division of incentive factors and hygiene factors is essentially the division of the different areas in which the employees exert their subjective initiative. The research result shows that the source of the motivation lies not in certain fixed factors but in how much subjective initiative the employees can exert in these factors. If the organization managers really want to motivate the employees, they should provide adequate conditions for the employees to exert their subjective initiative completely.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yaokui Li
PY  - 2018/12
DA  - 2018/12
TI  - Insight into Herzberg’s Two-factor Incentive Theory
BT  - Proceedings of the 2018 2nd International Conference on Economic Development and Education Management (ICEDEM 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 321
EP  - 324
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icedem-18.2018.81
DO  - 10.2991/icedem-18.2018.81
ID  - Li2018/12
ER  -