7 dissatisfiers according to Herzberg’s “Two Factor Theory of Motivation”:
- Company Policy and Administration
This would entail rules, regulations, and their (sometimes) arbitrary enforcement. - Quality of Supervision
How good, qualified, trained, knowledgeable, constructive, helpful, and/or competent are the managers and supervisors? - Interpersonal Relationships
Dealings with other people either horizontally or vertically in the grand scheme of things. - Salary
Not that hard to understand: What do you get for what you put in? - Working Conditions
Safety, comfort, cleanliness, etc… - Status
Within the group, does your existence make a noticeable difference? - Security
Sureness of future situations, circumstances, conditions, etc…
The above are the top seven most common and frequent dissatisfiers (originally called “Hygiene Factors” by Herzberg) reported by workers he studied. These are the things that cause people to be dissatisfied with, according to his study, their jobs, but I can see this theorizing extending into explaining why people are dissatisfied in other situations too. For example, within organizations such as a school, or a club, or… dare I say, the church.
For seasoned church-goers (which isn’t exactly synonymous with Christians), I suppose we can very easily imagine the church-counterparts of many of the de-motivators in the above list. Herzberg says these things cause dissatisfaction and thus, discouragement, lack of motivation, low productivity… Basically, a very loser attitude. As Christians (and/or church-goers) we should pay attention, I think, to getting some of the above problems (if they exist in our churches) sorted out. It’s not hard to see that something is quite likely wrong if in God’s house we are restless and distracted from worshiping because of, say, a grudge held against a fellow brother/sister (i.e. interpersonal-relational problems).
Maybe I’m a bit of a pessimist, since the thought of “This looks like it’d be very useful theory for churches!” was the first to cross my mind (no pun intended). I heard the word “organization” and connected it with “church”. Anyway, what does everyone think? Do you agree that these things indeed find glaringly direct parallels inside the church organization or what? Discuss!