Difference Between Elton Mayo And Elerick Herzberg's Theory

The idea and process behind the field of Management has been around for as long as man can remember, with the earliest of our prescribed theorists being Henri Fayol whose birth date dates back as far as 1841. This may seem like a long time ago however if we simply look at the concepts that these early theorists contributed then we would be able to quickly notice that these same ideas are still in play in the modern age. Throughout this assignment I have chosen to delve into the minds of Elton Mayo and Frederick Herzberg, I have chosen these two as they simply stood out to me as characters who share common thought processes in a sense while still managing to tackle their goals in different ways. Many see this pair as a duo who share too many
With regards to the Hawthorne Studies, it has faced heavy criticism (Bedeian and Wren, 2001) since its publication date, this fact would not surprise many individuals as it was a stepping stone into contemporary management thought and therefore needed serious evaluation, the results published were the findings of Elton Mayo and his co-workers and it is worth noting that not every person shares the same ideas in their minds. In contrast, Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory did not face as much criticism as it did analysis. In the modern age researchers tend to often look back and evaluate whether or not his findings remain true to how things operate nowadays (Lloyd, 2005). One can understand the need to criticise and evaluate these cases as they were fundamentally critical in the steps that brought us closer to understanding modern contemporary management thought, if everybody had just accepted these at face value then it would not be possible to advance ourselves in the right direction; this being the direction to improve job satisfaction and productivity in the
However with each of these study cases both theorists were never 100% accurate with their work, they failed to take into account certain aspects of human life. In Mayo’s retrospect he ignored the role of the formal work group and worker rationality whereas on Herzberg’s side of things he made the bold assumption that his test subjects operate and think the same way as all other workers. Herzberg examined accountants and engineers and as I mentioned before with the construction case, his theory unfortunately did not hold true for all individuals. Criteria must be met for certain jobs and people in order to achieve utmost satisfaction. Herzberg’s assumption is seen by many as quite a sceptical one which leads many people to have doubts to taking his findings fully on board. On the other hand with Mayo, however, even though his limitations were noticed there are still few who will truly go against the Hawthorne studies, it played such an important role in the development of managerial thought and was the first of its kind to actively and openly involve humans in the managerial thought