Herzberg’s theory
Herzberg’s theory is about well-being and non well-being. For instance, if an employee has responsibility in his/her work, it will give well-being. On the other hand, bad salary can lead to non well-being at the place of work. Herzberg distinguishes between two types of factors; motivation factors and hygiene factors. Motivation factors are factors that make well-being, such as responsibility, possibilities for development and for performance/achievement. Hygiene factors are factors that make non well-being, such as working conditions, money (pay, salary), status, job security, company procedures, quality of supervision, quality of interpersonal relationships and technical management. These two types of Herzberg’s factors are also known as Herzberg’s Two-factor Theory (Herzberg et al., 2002).
Herzberg stated like following: “If you want people motivated to do a good job, give them a good job to do.” His theory has been labeled as the “most criticized” of the motivation theories. Perhaps the most controversial part of the theory is its treatment of money as a mere hygiene factor. Money is a major source of confusion and contention in Herzberg’s theory because it provides the means for meeting lower order needs (the capacity to buy food, clothing, shelter, etc.) and it provides a quantitative index one could use to gauge achievement, recognition, and advancement (Smits et al., 1995).
Own experience
Most of the motivation theories that I wrote above were based on ‘motivation of team members is the project leader’s job’. In my team in CS5062, we did not have a team leader at all. First of all, we thought that we could be a democratic team. Second, we thought that every team member would agree with solutions that we found. Now I realize that I was wrong. My team really needed a team leader. Why I have this meaning is because of my teamwork experience in CS5062.
From the beginning, my team really looked so well, every team member was nice. Little by little, I began to know them, how they work and how they are as human. I found out that not everyone was active in the discussion about solutions to our work. Some of them were too shy to tell their meaning, which is understandable. But this was not the biggest problem in the team. The biggest problem in the team came from one and the same team member. Since I do not want to write out the name, I will call this person as Person X in
this paper. No matter what our team decision was (with this I mean the majority in the team), Person X never agreed with the team. He/She never liked what we did, and he/she always wanted to change our work. He/she has his own meaning and view of everything, for instance how to make a concept map, how to make a Vee Heuristic, and as well as how to make the power point slides. It is fair enough that he/she has many ideas related to our work, I have full respect for it, but not every idea was correct. We can take the Vee Heuristic as an example. The two schools of thought that Person X found in the Vee Heuristic were not right, because he/she did not find these schools of thought in the journals we found. We tried to explain to him/her that schools of thoughts must be based on the journals we found, but he/she did not listen at all. He/She is just so stubborn and dominant that he/she wants everything to be like exactly what he/she wants. On this way, the majority of us really lost motivation to keep on working. The most ridiculous was that Person X tried to motivate us to work at the end when he/she recognized that nobody worked anymore.
If we had a team leader, everything would be different. He/She will at least try to motivate us to the end. Although motivation of team members should be every team member’s responsibility, I still think that a team with a leader will be the best solution. If we had a team leader, he/she could try to solve the problems in the group. However, he/she should not act like a boss in the team, but as a friend to every team member.
Therefore, in my future teamwork, I will suggest that our group choose me to be the team leader. I know how to motivate people and how to be a good leader, because I have been a project leader before at my earlier university where I took my bachelor degree in Information Technology. Thus, I know how to respect each team member’s idea, and I will make sure that our group does our work in a happy way. Based on my earlier experience, I will take responsibility to motivate my team members as good as I can. I will not allow any of my team members to feel uncomfortable in any way.
In next chapter I will use the motivation theories in this paper for basis of comparison in my own teamwork experience in CS5062. Based on the comparisons, I want to see if those factors really motivate team members in a team.
Discussion and Results
McConnell states that ”If you are a manager and you try to motivate your developers the same way that you would like to be motivated, you are likely to fail.” (McConnell, p. 252). This is more or less true related to our teamwork in CS5062. When Person X tried to motivate us at the end, he/she was like that. He/She thought that we will be motivated in the same way as he/she wanted to be motivated, but he/she was totally wrong. Maybe he/she really wanted to motivate us, but for us, it looked like he/she complained against us, that we did not finish our work. Well, it was not because we did not want to finish our
work, but it was because we did not know how to do the work. This led to that we finished our work pretty late, as late as a few hours before the presentation took place.
Besides, McConnell (McConnell, p. 257) says: ”One of the most exciting aspects of being a software developer is working in a field that is constantly changing.” In large companies, the possibility for growth can be that the developers are offered useful courses which could help them raising their competence skills and knowledge. Under our teamwork in CS5062 we had lectures which were useful for our team assignment. We learnt for example how to draw a concept map and Vee Heuristic. The biggest possibility for growth in the team was helps and advices from our workshop leader.
Later on, McConnell (McConnell, p. 258) says:
”Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham argue that, generally, people’s internal motivation comes from three sources. They must experience meaning in their work; they must experience responsibility for the outcome of their work; and they must know the actual results of their work activities (Hackman and Oldham, 1980).”
This factor corresponded to my own experience in CS5062. The work itself was a big motivation factor. All in all, Person X is a good person in reality. He/She was just too stubborn sometimes, but everybody knew that he/she also wanted a good mark for our work. Therefore, we tried to motivate ourselves to work, and we also knew the responsibility of our work. In addition, we tried not to think this teamwork only as an assignment where we tried to get a good mark, but also as an experience which we can bring in our lives later.
The remaining motivation factors to McConnell are private life and technical leadership (McConnell, 1996). These factors also had a very important role under our teamwork in CS5062. In large companies, have a right to private life means right for holidays, right for break under working-day, etc. Since our teamwork was a school project, the meaning of private life for us means that every team member could take break in between. For instance, if one team member had a bad day, he/she could just tell the other team members and they would allow for it. Under breaks, we talked about something else than school, but how detailed these would be was up to each team member. The team members can know more of each other and at the same time respect others’ private life. This factor is definitely a good motivation factor for teamwork.
Finally, McConnell (McConnell, p. 261) writes: ”An opportunity to supervise technical work implies that the developer has achieved a level of technical expertise sufficient to direct others.” For project leaders, technical leadership gives a feeling like the work goes a step back, but for developers this is a step which goes forward. I can not use this factor to compare our teamwork in CS5062, because we did not have a project leader.
Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier in this paper, Sommerville points out that one team member will be motivated if this is a member of a group that thinks the group as a whole,
in preference to a collection of individuals who merely work together. This factor corresponded to my experience as well, because we really had this problem. Our group did not function as a group, because some of the team members did not think the group as a whole. Our group was only a collection of individuals who worked together. Even if our team had many good team members, it did not help so much since our team was not well-established.
Later on, a study by McNeill and Kirnmel (1988) examined what happens when individuals who are intrinsically motivated to perform a cognitive problem solving task are offered a contingent monetary incentive for doing so. Their results suggested that the offer of money for problem solving dramatically decreased intrinsic motivation and impaired performance. More recently Alfie Kohn, the author of “punished by Rewards:
The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and Other Bribes,” argues that:
Pay does not motivate people. People need enough money to live, but they need more than money to thrive. When polled on what matters most in a job, employees consistently cite half -a-dozen priorities, such as interesting work, before they mention pay. In contrast, when asked what employees care about, employers consistently rank money first. (American Society for Training and Development, 1994, p. 3) (Smits et al., 1995)
I can not use this factor to compare with my teamwork experience in CS5062, because our assignment is only a school project, nobody pays us for our work. But on the other hand, it is correct that pay does not motivate people at all, if people do not thrive in the job they do. However, this study is a result of different people’s theories that I found in one journal. These people are; Maslow (1954), Alderfer (1972) and Herzberg (1959). Based on the need theories of motivation to these guys, money is not a big motivation factor. All of them treat money as a lower order need; that is, one that must be met for the purpose of survival. In the case of Maslow’s theory, a need is said to have “drive potential”; that is, an unmet need activates behaviors perceived to be the means of satisfying it. When a need is met to the point that one is no longer concerned about her or his capacity to meet it, it no longer becomes the focus of need-satisfying behavior. One then moves up the hierarchy to the next level of unmet need (Smits et al., 1995).
In contrast, the knowledge claim I found in one other paper does not seem to have the same meaning. In the paper, the authors claimed that extrinsic motivation is more important to software professionals of today than to those of fifteen to twenty years ago. Additionally, they also mentioned that intrinsic motivation is less important to software professionals of today than to those of fifteen to twenty years ago. According to them, people choose their occupation only because it offers good pay (Rubin, 1988).
Conclusion
In conclusion, good leadership in a team will lead to a successful project, and bad leadership will lead to the opposite. Hence, motivation is very important in teamwork and a good project leader should use the different ways to motivate its team, as mentioned in this paper. While letting everyone in the team has responsibilities over its own tasks, together with giving the team the possibility for growth, the result of the work will be more effective. The work itself is also an important motivation factor for developers. If the team members can see the meaning in their work and that their contributions will affect the result, they will be motivated to work more. Moreover, to let every team member have a right to private life, for instance have break under working time, will be a motivation factor as well. However, no matter which motivation factors are used, the most important motivation factor is to be motivated oneself.
Furthermore, Herzberg claimed that money is not a big motivation factor at all. In his Two-Factor Theory, money is placed on a lower order need; that is, one that must be met for the purpose of survival. This is supported by the study to McNeill and Kirnmel. They stated that: “Pay does not motivate people. People need enough money to live, but they need more than money to thrive.”
References
Herzberg, Frederick et al. (1959): “The Motivation to Work”. 2nd Edition. Wiley. New York.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1954): “Motivation and Personality”. Harper & Row. New York.
McConnell, Steve (1996): “Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules”. Redmond, Washington, Microsoft Press
Rubin, Harry I. & Hernandez, Edward F. (1988): “Motivations and Behaviours of Software Professionals”. Available:
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Smits, Stanley J. et al. (1995): “Herzberg revisited: The impact of salary on the job and career attitudes of I/S professionals”. Available:
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Sommerville, Ian (2001): “Software Engineering”. 6th Edition. Harlow, Essex. Pearson Education Limited.