Psychology, 2022, 13, 264-272
https://www.scirp.org/journal/psych
ISSN Online: 2152-7199
ISSN Print: 2152-7180
DOI: 10.4236/psych.2022.132015 Feb. 25, 2022 264 Psychology
An Empirical Examination of Herzberg’s Theory
in the 21
st
Century Workplace. Organizational
Psychology Re-Examined
Michael Mitsakis, Michael Galanakis
The American College of Greece, Athens, Greece
Abstract
This present study empirically investigated the applicability of Herzberg’s the-
ory in the various workplaces of the 21
st
century, including correctional offic-
ers, employees in the retail sector and front-line employees of telecommunica-
tion industries. In fact, through Systematic Review, it was examined whether
Herzberg’s motivational and hygiene factors, such as working conditions, re-
lationship with peers, supervisor feedback, etc., play a major role in boosting
the satisfaction and motivation of the employees, and whether the lack of such
factors leads to increased turnover. It was found out that the strongest pre-
dictors for employees’ perceived job satisfaction included the nature of the work
along with recognition and achievement. Finally, certain limitations and sug-
gestions for future research were provided.
Keywords
Herzberg, Job Satisfaction, Hygiene Factors, Motivation, Turnover
1. Introduction
As the psychological factors pertaining to employee well-being in the workforce
continued to hamper many organizations worldwide during the 20
th
century, lead-
ing to employee turnover and burnout, many theorists pondered for many years
what were the underlying factors of this decrease in motivation, productivity and
engagement that many employees exhibited (Stello, 2011). Employee turnover is
considered to be quite detrimental to the competitiveness and profitability of
organizations (Holston-Okae & Mushi, 2018). In addition, it can also jeopardize
organizational performance and lead to inadequate employee rewarding, toxic
work environments, and it cripples the assets of the company (Holston-Okae &
How to cite this paper: Mitsakis, M., &
Galanakis, M. (2022). An Empirical Exam-
ination of Herzberg’s Theory in the 21
st
Cen-
tury Workplace. Organizational Psychology
Re-Examined. Psychology, 13, 264-272.
https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2022.132015
Received: January 15, 2022
Accepted: February 22, 2022
Published: February 25, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access