Besides the fact that Herzberg’s
theory was greeted with a lot of criticisms, yet it serves as the main
proponent of “Job Descriptive Index (JDI)”, and job enrichment programmes. It
has been assumed that wide and unwarranted inferences have been drawn from
small and specialized samples and that there is no evidence to suggest that the
satisfactions do improve productivity.
Empirical studies by researchers such as House
and Wigdor (1967:369) and Caston and Braito (1985, p.175) criticized Herzberg’s
theory for the following flaws:
v
The procedure that Herzberg used is limited by
its methodology. When things are going well, people tend to take credit
themselves, contrarily; they blame failure on the extrinsic environment.
v
The reliability of Herzberg’s methodology is
questioned. Raters have to make interpretations, so they may contaminate the
findings by interpreting one response in one manner while treating a similar
response differently.
v
No overall measure of satisfaction was utilized.
A person may dislike part of a job, yet still think the job is acceptable
overall.
v
The theory is inconsistent with previous
research. The two –factor theory ignores situational variables
v
Herzberg assumed a relationship between satisfaction
and productivity, but the research methodology, he used looked only a
satisfaction not at productivity. To make such a research relevant, one must
assume a strong relationship between satisfaction and productivity.