Herzberg's Hygiene Motivation Theories - Book Report/Review Example

Herzberg's Hygiene Motivation Theories The task of managing people is one of the hardest tasks of management. This is because people are oftentimes hard to predict on what works best to motivate employees to do their best. Many workers in organizational settings are affected also by a variety of factors obtaining in their environment, the corporate culture and their relationships with peers, supervisors, and the higher or senior management. Various theories have been proposed with regards to management of people offered by psychologists, academicians, organizational experts and business leaders. A careful examination of these factors point out there are no exact ways on what works best, as the situation and the people in them can vary quite considerably based on external elements. In this paper, several articles on people management are reviewed that can offer useful insights. DISCUSSION Many companies today aim to expand their businesses not only within their local areas, but hope that one day, they can go global too like the giant multinational corporations. This is the buzzword in business circles, as entrepreneurs and managers look for new sources of growth and revenue streams in unconventional markets to promote and maintain continuous growth. This is a laudable idea but firms going global have to cope with a number of issues they normally do not encounter when their operations are strictly local in nature only. Issues like diversity, gender and corporate politics caused by ethnic and cultural tensions within the organization require dexterity in managing people, so they will still be able to turn in an outstanding performance and work to attain corporate objectives despite their obvious differences. Human resources managers need to have people skills which are culturally-sensitive to the increased workforce diversity today. The example selected for discussion in this paper is the organizational challenges in a Japanese subsidiary of an American corporation. There are special challenges for a Western firm to operate in an Eastern market like Japan, where customs and practices are vastly different. The general idea is for the Japanese employees to follow their American supervisors but the ways the Japanese culture interact with Western, especially American culture, present unusual situations. In doing business in Asian markets, Western companies must likewise make necessary and often difficult adjustments to get the best out of their people, from both cultures, and avoid clashes. In her article entitled “Going Global” author Ellen Fuller pointed out the many issues associated with the challenges faced by globalizing companies as they tackle gender, diversity and cultural identity issues. The American way of doing things is vastly different from the Japanese culture of doing business, and in many situations special sensitivity is required to motivate people. In the said article, the author undertook her research on specific areas of management, such as how people react to the colleagues who got promoted and are now in positions of power or authority. This may seem quite straightforward in an American setting, but things can get sticky if women are also promoted, and gender issues suddenly crop up, especially in an Asian setting where men are always considered to be the dominant gender. Racial and ethnic biases can show up in work environments, such as the emergence of stereotypes and biases with regards to gender. This can either lead to corporate clashes or turf wars, or it can be an excellent opportunity to promote and foster working relationships between two cultures, without compromising performance, if it is managed properly by a manager who is an expert on inter-cultural communications. Despite a great advance in gender equality, Asian perceptions of women as co-workers still persist and the author did a good ethnographic study to illuminate international practices (Fuller, 2009, p. 3). Along this line, most managers are always looking for ways to make people of different ethnic backgrounds work together. What works for one person may not work for another person, as the old adage goes, “different strokes for different folks.” Based on the previous discussions, a key component of getting superior performance is letting people manage themselves. This works especially in group settings, where employees work in teams and given enough freedom, leeway and discretion to attain stated objectives which were made clear to them (Hackman, 2002, p. 4) in what management experts prefer to call as self-managed teams. Employee inputs like all their comments, feedback and suggestions are highly valued, since these people are in the front lines. It is one good way to enhance individual employee behavior in organizational settings (Rothwell, Stavros & Sullivan, 2009, p. 7) which is a very good strategy to increase employee performance (Staw, 2004, p. 25) despite their differences in ethnic backgrounds and personality traits. Based partly on the previous discussions, social issues in the workplace dominate most of the challenges that oftentimes resist easy solutions. Primary of these issues is gender attitudes, especially when it concerns power relations between the sexes, more so when a woman is a head of an organization or even just a mere department. Despite advances gained from the women's liberation movement (feminism), there is still widespread gender discrimination in the office or other workplaces where prejudice and stereotypes do still persist. It is interesting to note women still continue to experience sex discrimination in most places of work, and this is a particularly sensitive issue in an Asian context, where women are either treated with utmost respect or other situations where they are relegated as second-class citizens with very little rights at all. It is a fact women still experience bullying and sexual harassment today (Stainback et al., 2011, p. 1165). This is a fact as shown by a research done on pre-hiring preferences in Japan towards a certain type of worker. Foreign companies doing business in Japan and other Asian countries do need to consider some local practices, which in this article by Eunmi Mun showed how a gender gap exists in offered wages and level of training for prospective entry-level job requisitions that shows how sex-typing in hiring decisions effectively exclude women from jobs that provide high pay and longer training periods (Mun, 2010, p. 1999). It is a hiring practice that is prevalent in a country like Japan but virtually non-existent in American and European companies today. The holy grail in organizational business management is how to make disparate peoples work together as single team that will strive to attain organizational goals as contained in a firm's corporate strategy and enunciated in its mission and vision statements. It is no wonder that firms try various motivational techniques for employees to strive harder and do their level best despite the presence of numerous constraints and the aggravations in the workplace. Cultural diversity and gender issues are some of the potential hindrances towards gaining maximum performance. One motivational technique that works is a goal-setting exercise because it forces the employees to make a commitment and reinforces the buy-in mentality that produces greater job satisfaction. CONCLUSION Other techniques apply rewards and praise in pursuit of Herzberg's hygiene motivation theories (intrinsic and extrinsic). What is important is to be able to retain good employees, which is difficult these days due to piracy of excellent and talented employees. Without job enrichment programs, many career women opt out of lucrative careers due to family-work conflicts, job burnout, boredom and the high expectations imposed by feminism's views (Stone, 2007, p. 16). References Fuller, E. (2009). Going global: Culture, gender, and authority in the Japanese subsidiary of an American corporation. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Mun, E. (2010, July). Sex typing of jobs in hiring: Evidence from Japan. Social Forces, 88(5), 1999-2026. Rothwell, W. J., Stavros, J. M. & Sullivan, R. L. (2009). Practicing organization development: A guide for leading change. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Stainback, K., Ratliff, T. N. & Roscigno, V. J. (2011, June). The context of workplace sex discrimination: Sex composition, workplace culture, and relative power. Social Forces, 89(4), 1165-1188. Staw, B. M. (2004). Psychological dimensions of organizational behavior (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Pearson-Prentice Hall. Stone, P. (2007, November). The rhetoric and reality of 'opting out.' Contexts, 6(4), 14-19. Read More