Frederick Herzberg: Work

Frederick Herzberg was American psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on work.
Frederick Herzberg: 42   quotes 2   likes

“A sample limited to one profession would have yielded results of doubtful generality. To develop findings independent of the peculiar circumstances of the engineer, we needed to study a comparable group. Accountants were chosen because their jobs, like those of engineers,· are rich in technique. This richness makes it likely that the accountant, like the engineer, would have much to tell us. However, the groups are vastly different in the nature of their training, their present degree of professionalization, the kind of work they do, and, presumably, the kind of people attracted into them. Last, by covering accountants and engineers, we examined the job attitudes of two of the most important staff groups in modern industry”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People , Nature , Study , Training

“The factors that are rarely instrumental in bringing about high job attitudes focus not on the job itself but rather on the characteristics of the context in which the job is done: working conditions, interpersonal relationships, supervision, company policies, administration of these policies, effects on the worker's personal life, job security, and salary. This is a basic distinction. The satisfiers relate to the actual job. Those factors that do not act as satisfiers describe the job situation.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 63

Life , Personality

“All the basic satisfiers, recognition, achievement, advancement, responsibility, and work itself, appeared with significantly greater frequencies in the highs than they did in the low sequences of-events.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 80

Appearance

“The job satisfiers deal with the factors involved in doing the job, whereas the job dissatisfiers deal with the factors that define the job context. Poor working conditions, bad company policies and administration, and bad supervision will lead to job dissatisfaction. Good company policies, good administration, good supervision, and good working conditions will not lead to positive job attitudes.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 82

“Idleness, indifference and irresponsibility are healthy responses to absurd work… If you want people motivated to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”

Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg in: Alfie Kohn (1999), Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, ... p. 205

People , Motivation , Indifference

“In our first pilot study we talked with clerical and production workers as well as professional and managerial people. We discovered that the professional and managerial groups were more verbal, showed a quicker grasp of the technique, and gave more and better delineated sequences of events than the clerical and production groups.
The second pilot study was restricted to managerial and professional people. On the basis of our experiences in this work, we decided to concentrate in the major sample on engineers and accountants. It was apparent in the results of this second pilot that engineers were able to give exceptionally vivid accounts of their work experiences. Since our study was still in the nature of an exploratory project, it was vital to us that we mine where the metal was richest.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People , Nature , Study

“Let us summarize briefly our answer to the question, "What do people want from their jobs?" When our respondents reported feeling happy with their jobs, they most frequently described factors. related to their tasks, to events that indicated to them that they were successful in the performance of their work, and to the possibility of professional growth. Conversely, when feelings of unhappiness were reported, they were not associated with the job itself but with conditions that surround the doing of the job. These events suggest to the individual that the context in which he performs his work is unfair or disorganized and as such represents to him an unhealthy psychological work environment. Factors involved in these situations we call factors of hygiene, for they act in a manner analogous to the principles of medical hygiene.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 113

People , Feeling , Question , Success

“In 1950, I received my PhD in psychology. I was offered a fellowship to attend the Graduate School of Public Health at the that I had previously studied in clinical and abnormal psychology. Reflecting this disappointment, I entitled my Public Health Practice thesis Mental Health Is Not the Opposite of Mental Illness. After receiving my master’s degree in public health, I took a job as research director for Psychological Services of Pittsburgh. A local industrialist came to see me after a nasty labor relations disturbance and asked me plaintively, ‘What do people want from their jobs?’ I answered him in typical academic fashion, ‘Sir, I don’t know but if you give me enough money I will find out.’. I followed up on my School of Public Health thesis by designing a study to test the hypothesis that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction were separate concepts. The result was the book, The Motivation to Work, which led to a fundamentally different approach to the study of people’s affective states.”

Frederick Herzberg

Frederick I. Herzberg in: "This Week’s Citation Classic," in: CC, Nr. 19, May 7, 1984; Re-published in: Neil J. Smelser (1987) Contemporary Classics in the Social and Behavioral Science. p. 199

Money , People , Health , Books

“Among the factors of hygiene we have included supervision, interpersonal relations, physical working conditions, salary, company policies and administrative practices, benefits, and job security.”

Frederick Herzberg

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 113