Unit Title: Managing People and Organisations
Outcome 2: Assessment
1) Content theories of motivation Maslow Hierarchy of Needs is a theory which was created by a man called Abraham Maslow. Abraham Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He himself believed that people possess a set of motivation systems which were unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires. He stated that people are motivated to want to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person will then then seek to fulfil the next need and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs includes five motivational needs often represented as hierarchical levels within a pyramid which can be shown below.
The four bottom needs are called the ‘basic needs’. They are said to motivate people when they are unmet. The need to fulfil such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied for. Everyone must satisfy their lower level basic needs before they decide to progress onto meeting the higher level growth needs, once the needs have been reasonably satisfied one may be able to reach the highest level called self-actualization. Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy towards a level of self-actualization however sometimes progress may be interrupted by failure to meet the lower level needs. Life experiences including loss of job and divorce may cause an individual to rise and fall irregularly between the levels of the hierarchy.

Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory is a “content theory of motivation” the other main one being Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Herzberg analysed the job attitudes of 200 accounts and engineers who were asked to recall when they had felt positive or negative at work and the reasons why. From this research Herzberg suggested a two-step approach to understanding employee motivation and