Understanding motivation through Content Theories

Content theories refer to a family of needs-based theories which aims to explain what motivates people as opposed to process theories which address how certain behavior is motivated. Maslow, Herzberg, Aldefer are the notable author of content theories. They all share an emphasis on growth, some emphasize on instinct, while all except Aldefer have little empirical evidences to support their theories. However experts have argued that it is unfair to dismiss their theories because they used questionnaires which is deemed inappopriate because it measures conscious explict motives rather than unconscious motives

Herzberg's Motivator-hygiene Theory

Triggered by a review of motivational literature from the past 50 years, Mr.Herzberg noticed that intrinsic motivators are often cited in association with work satisfaction while extrinsic motivators with dissatisfaction. The presence of intrinsic motivators, such as sense of achievement, has a positive influence on work satisfaction and level of motivations but does not cause dissatisfaction. For example, in a typical water-cooler conversation "How's work buddy ?" is greeted by a response like "It's alright, new boss is a loner but as long as I get my bonus, I do not complaint". In contrast the absence of extrinsic motivators, such as pay, company policies, which he terms hygiene factors, leads to dissatisfaction. "How's work buddy?" question posed on the day when salary increment was annouced to someone who has no increment "My boss sucks. Time to leave. No increment" and to someone who has got a bonus "It is as expected. I have worked hard for it".

Guess it is a common behavior of attributing one's success to one's own effort and negative experience to someone else's fault.

Maslow's Hierarcy of Needs

Mr.Maslow is a popular guy because his theories are easily understanable. According to him, human are motivated by a hierarchy of 5 types of needs that are inact and universal and that we will strive towards self-actualization. However he was not specific about what self-actualization entails. His theory implicitly ignores the influences of the the environment and cultural influences. There are several other weaknesses in his theory. The issue of pay was not discussed and it is not clear how to operationalize in the work environment. Despite the lack of empirical evidences, his theory are often widely cited.