Comparative paper on Abraham Maslow and Fredrick Herzberg

The information presented in this paper is about Maslow and Herzberg like scientists and about their theories. There were presented not only theoretical information about each researcher, but also described in details main aspects of their theories and how we can implement them in life. During the work with this paper there were analyzed many different information sources and were found not only strong, but also weak sides of both theories. The paper has a comparative character and for the best understanding of the topic there were used tables in the body of this paper.

The Introduction

Psychology is an academic and applied science about the conduct and mental processes in the human’s and animal’s psychics. The science has a very long history but people have recognized the importance of it just recently. Many scientists contributed into researches in and around psychology. In this respect, it is important to dwell upon the theories of two great researches Abraham Maslow and Fredrick Herzberg and compare their theories with more details. Both psychologists have developed theories that influenced the development of psychology as well as management theory. At the same time, Maslow and Herzberg use quite different approaches to human needs. On the one hand, Maslow views human needs as the constantly developing hierarchy through which an individual passes in the course of his or her development, whereas, on the other hand, Herzberg simply divides needs on biological and motivator needs, but both researchers agree that human needs grow more and more complicated in the course of an individual’s development.

 “Pyramid” – Hierarchy of Needs by Maslow

First, it is important, “The Pyramid of Maslow”, which is the key to understanding Maslow’s theory. Briefly, the Maslow’s hierarchy or the Pyramid of Maslow may be presented as follows:

At the beginning of his career, Maslow noticed one interesting thing. He worked with monkeys and it became obvious for him that some necessities take precedence over others.  For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first.  After all, you can do without food for weeks, but you can only do without water for a couple of days!  Thirst is a “stronger” need than hunger. Also, if you are very thirsty but you cannot breath you will need breathing more. The less powerful is sex. The person will not die without it.

The scientist took this idea and described his famous “Pyramid” – hierarchy of needs. It consists of the five layers that we can see at the picture above. Let us discuss them briefly one by one.

1.  The physiological needs.  They are the “oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins… the need to maintain a pH balance and temperature… the needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes, to avoid pain, and to have sex”. Maslow and a lot of other researchers believe that those are the most important humans’ needs and lack of them will be very harmful.

2.  The safety and security needs. This layer of humans’ needs is the kind of play – the more safety you have the more protection and stability you want to find.   So, person should to place some borders and limits for the safety and security needs. In other case, the person could become interested not in the need of the first importance but he or she would be depend on his or her fears and anxieties.

3.  The love and belonging needs. When physiological and safety needs are satisfied, it is a time for the third layer to be shown up.  Maslow (1970) stated that “you begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community.  Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties”. It is a reason why people began to look for lovers, became a family oriented and start dreaming of children. Also it is a reason why people of all ages are looking for friends. And even if they were suffered from the betray they still need the friendship very much.

4.  The esteem needs. Every human being needs the feeling of the self-respect. Maslow noticed that esteem needs have two versions. He called it “a lower one and a higher one”.  First of all, we need the respect of other people from our environment. It is the lower version. According to Maslow (1970) it consists of the need of “status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance”. The higher version is a self-respect, confidence, freedom, achievement and independent. The negative side of this layer is “low self-esteem and inferiority complexes”.  Maslow (1971) considered this side “the roots of many, if not most, of our psychological problems”.

These four levels Maslow called “deficit needs, or D-needs”.  If the person does not have enough of something from preceding layers he or she feels need. From another side, the person feels nothing if all needs of preceding layers are satisfied. These needs are not motivated any more. As the old blues song goes, “you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry!”

Now I want to tell some words about self-actualization according to Maslow’s theory. It is the last level of his Pyramid and it is rather differ from the four preceding layers. According to Maslow (1968) the researcher created different terms for this level: “growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being needs (or B-needs, in contrast to D-needs), and self-actualization”. It is a desire to use and fulfill abilities and potentials, “to be all you can be”.

We can see that all the pyramid’s layers have a strong cause-and-effect relation. If the first layers are not taken care of, then the person has no time and possibilities to satisfy the highest layers.

• Supervision
• Interpersonal relations
• Working conditions
• Salary

• Recognition
• Work
• Responsibility
• Advancement

If the factors of the hygiene are not good enough they could not be the motivators; and if the factors are satisfactory, their action is not absolute. Also I want to cite some myth about the psychology motivations. The myths were mentioned by Herzberg. Here they are:

• shorter working week;
• increasing wages;
• fringe benefits;
• sensitivity / human relations training;
• communication.

A lot of scientists criticize Maslow’s way of making his conclusions. He was accused in the subjective experiments. He worked with a limited group of people and it was Maslow, who proclaimed those people self-actualized. He made conclusions according to those people’s words. There are some quotes of Maslow (1971):

“…Though Maslow’s hierarchy makes sense intuitively, little evidence supports its strict hierarchy. Actually, recent research challenges the order that the needs are imposed by Maslow’s pyramid. As an example, in some cultures, social needs are placed more fundamentally than any others…”

And another quote:

“…Maslow’s hierarchy fails to explain the “starving artist” scenario, in which the aesthetic neglects their physical needs to pursuit of aesthetic or spiritual goals. Additionally, little evidence suggests that people satisfy exclusively one motivating need at a time, other than situations where needs conflict…”

The two theories – Maslow’s theory and Herzberg’s theory – have a lot of differences but scientists consider them the two parts of the all-in-one-piece. The motivational theories could help the managing directors of different type of organizations where many people are working. It will be useful to combine the two theories. What are motivations? They are the sum of processes, which make a person to move forward and finally reach the goal. A manager supposes to know about motivations because their influence is productive and they can help to increase the productivity of the employers.

The works of Herzberg are more close to the modern management. Herzberg (1987) proved that the commercial curse of management is rather young “science”. Herzberg started his researches later than Maslow did and it is the main advantage of his theory. It is more close to our days and to-day’s needs. But it is the original idea of Maslow’s theory. I want to give a short table that will help us to compare the two popular theories of motivation.

In the 80-s researchers decided to see if Maslow’s and Herzberg’s theories could be applied to school teachers.

Wahba and Bridgewell (1976) argue:“Do educators fit the profiles of the average business employee?  Do teachers respond to the same motivators that Herzberg associated with employees in profit-making businesses and have the same needs patterns as those uncovered by Maslow in his studies of business employees?”

According to Bellott and Tutor (1990), professionals, who researched the theories of Maslow and Herzberg, found “disagree with Herzberg in relation the importance of money as a motivator and, with Maslow in regard to the position of esteem in a person’s hierarchy of needs”

What was the conclusion of researchers? They agree that “Herzberg’s paradigm of hygiene and motivating factors and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may still have broad applicability in the business world”. But  at least one aspect of in both of the theories – for example, “salary as a hygiene factor (Herzberg) and esteem as a lower order need than self-actualization (Maslow)”, could not be applied  in the case of the teachers of the elementary and secondary school. Researchers saw that esteem needs are not the lasts needs for this kind of workers. Often some good teachers prefer to stay at the low paid position because their esteem needs are satisfied there. We can see that some managers need to pay attention to esteem need of workers, individually and collectively.

On comparing theoretical framework developed by Maslow and Herzberg, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that Maslow uses a complex approach to human needs developing the hierarchy of needs. In such a way, Maslow stresses that humans have diverse needs and steadily they grow more and more complicated. He starts from basic needs, such as the need of food, protection, and so on and accomplishes his hierarchy with the self-actualization need, which is “the most advanced need human may have” (Maslow, 1970, p.113). In this regard, the similar trend can be traced in works of Herzberg, who defines two types of factors that influence human behavior and two groups of needs developed respectively to these factors: motivator factors and hygiene factors. Hence, he distinguishes biological needs, which are comparable to basic, elementary needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy and motivator needs which are superior.  At this point, both Maslow and Herzberg agree that superior needs reveal the higher level of the personal as well as professional development of an individual, whereas the basic, biological needs reveal the low level of the development of an individual. Moreover, both scientists agree that, in the course of the life, individuals develop more and more complex needs and, as they satisfy their needs, new, more complex and advanced needs arise. In such a way, individuals keep progressing throughout their life and so do their needs.

Summary

Taking into account all above mentioned, it is possible to say that the two theories are similar. Discussing and comparing both theories it is also possible to emphasize that Herzberg’s theory has shorter formula but its idea has the same foundation with the theory of Maslow: every human being has biological needs. Moreover, every person has some mental needs that are very important also; but a person cannot satisfy them if he or she is hungry, thirsty or has no clothes and home. Herzberg showed the way in which it is possible for managers to use the natural humans’ needs for the benefit of a company. He made an accent on the mental needs of the person. As we can see in the table above the needs are called “Motivator Needs”.

Conclusion

It is obvious that Maslow’s and Herzberg’s theories are not working unconditionally in all fields of employments. For example Maslow proved to be wrong about esteem needs. According to his Pyramid, those needs were not so important. The needs did not take one of the first places. But workers, like teachers of secondary and primary school, considered the esteem needs very important at their job.

Herzberg turned to be wrong about the great power of salary. It is obvious that the mistake of Maslow and Herzberg was the simplification of humans’ needs. I think that the two great psychologists examined the question of needs and motivations from the point of view that the human being is the highest animal. Scientists and psychologists are agree that Maslow’s and Herzberg’s theories mostly suitable for the world of business. We can agree that Maslow and Herzberg were great psychologists who decided to research the psychology of managing and job placement.

In spite of some mistakes, their theories could be a good foundation for the new modern researches.

References:

Bellott, F.K., & Tutor, F.D. (1990). “A Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom of Herzberg and Maslow Theories.” Paper presented at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association. New Orleans, LA.

Georgopolous, B., Mahoney, G. and Jones, N.(1957, December). “A Path-Goal Approach to Productivity”, Journal of Applied Psychology, 41.

Herzberg, F. (1959). The Motivation to Work, New York: John

Wiley and Sons.

Herzberg, F. (1987) “One more time: How do you motivate employees?”. Harvard Business Review, 65(5).

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B.B. (1959). The Motivation to Work (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being.

Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and Personality.

Maslow, A. (1971). The Further Reaches of Human Nature.

Wahba, A. and Bridgewell, L. (1976). “Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory”. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15, p.212–240.