Frederick Herzberg (1923-2000), clinical psychologist and pioneer of 'job enrichment', is regarded as one of the great original thinkers in management and motivational theory.
Frederick I Herzberg was born in Massachusetts on April 18, 1923.
His undergraduate work was at the City College of New York, followed by graduate degrees at the University of Pittsburgh. Herzberg was later Professor of Management at Case Western Reserve University, where he established the Department of Industrial Mental Health. He moved to the University of Utah's College of Business in 1972, where he was also Professor of Management. He died at Salt Lake City, January 18, 2000.
Frederick Herzberg's book 'The Motivation to Work', written with research colleagues Bernard Mausner and Barbara Bloch Snyderman in 1959, first established his theories about motivation in the workplace.
Herzberg's survey work, originally on 200 Pittsburgh engineers and accountants remains a fundamentally important reference in motivational study. While the study involved only 200 people, Herzberg's considerable preparatory investigations, and the design of the research itself, enabled Herzberg and his colleagues to gather and analyse an extremely sophisticated level of data.
Herzberg's research used a pioneering approach, based on open questioning and very few assumptions, to gather and analyse details of 'critical incidents' as recalled by the survey respondents. He first used this methodology during his doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh with John Flanagan (later Director at the American Institute for Research), who developed the Critical Incident method in the selection of Army Air Corps personnel during the Second World War.
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