Mr. David A. Metcalfe, age 34, is married with 2 children and he is presently th

Question

Mr. David A. Metcalfe, age 34, is married with 2 children and he is presently the assistant production manager at LaRue Electronics Manufacturing in Greenville, PA.  He has been with the company for 5 years, having been promoted twice, from first-line foreman to general foreman, to his present position 2 years ago.  He enjoys his work, finds it basically challenging, gains a feeling of accomplishment from it and believes that there are further promotional opportunities ahead for him at LEMCo.  That is, unless corporate profits continue to sag as they have the past 2 years.  Along with the sag in corporate profits, his salary increases during this period have lagged (although not as much as some other managers at LEMCo).  He is now making $46,500 whereas other comparable firms are now paying about $54,000 for positions with commensurate responsibility.  He considers working conditions not especially good (e.g. inadequate office space and older PC type computers with somewhat dated software applications).  He is somewhat frustrated with the technical incompetence of his immediate superior (the plant production manager) and by a number of newly instituted rules and procedures which have added about 5% to the time he has to devote to routine paperwork.

Mr. Metcalfe, is spite of the above stated advantages and disadvantages of his present position, has indicated privately that he plans to continue working for LEMCo; and he continues to be a top-notch creative and productive member of the LEMCo management team.

Explain his desire to remain at LEMCo and his continued high performance in terms of any or all of the following theories as well as what you know about job satisfaction.

1. Maslow's Theory of Motivation

2. Herzberg's  Motivation-Hygiene Theory

3. McGregors Theory X - Theory Y Model

Explanation / Answer

From analyzing the details provided , Mr. David's achievement, competency, status, personal worth, and self-realization, makes him happy and satisfied. However, the absence of such gratifying job characteristics does not appear to lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. His dissatisfaction areas are company policies, supervision, technical problems, salary and working conditions.

And the desire to continue with LemCo with a High performance goals can be attributed to the Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory, where Motivating factors like challenging work, recognition for one's achievement, responsibility, opportunity to do something meaningful, involvement in decision making, sense of importance to an organization give positive satisfaction, arising from intrinsic conditions of the job itself, such as recognition, achievement, or personal growth.

And on the Hygiene factors like salary, work conditions, supervisors do not give positive satisfaction or lead to higher motivation, though dissatisfaction results from their absence. The term "hygiene" is used in the sense that these are maintenance factors. These are extrinsic to the work itself, and include aspects such as company policies, supervisory practices, or wages/salary.

The hygiene factors causes dissatisfaction among employees in a workplace but the Motivation factors override them and help them to focus on the work and continue doing good and does not consider hygiene factors as a major decision in deciding to continue in the organization.

Eliminating dissatisfaction is only one half of the task of the two factor theory. The other half would be to increase satisfaction in the workplace. This can be done by improving on motivating factors which leads to higher performance.

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