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Maslow's work is concerned with the general field of individual psychology, without any specific reference to businesses. At the end of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Frederick Herzberg carried out his research and formulated his theory (often called “hygiene-motivation”) on the motives that influence work in business organizations⁴.

In many of its aspects, the theory includes ideas present in Maslow's. Herzberg identified two types of factors that influence motivation: hygiene factors and motivating factors as such, including, in each type respectively, those that affect the satisfaction of lower-order needs (hygienic factors) and those that affect the satisfaction of higher-order ones (motivating factors).

Thus, the hygiene factors listed by Herzberg include: salary, technical supervision, working conditions, regulations and company policies, personal relationship with supervisors, etc.

The motivating factors included items such as possibilities for personal achievement, acknowledgement of achievements, nature of the task being performed, responsibility, possibilities for promotion, etc.

Clearly (and quite a few theoretical studies discuss this), it is not difficult to link the factors in the first group to the physiological, security and social needs of Maslow's scale. The factors in the second group would correspond to his needs for self-esteem and self-realization.

There are, however, a number of major differences between the two theories. These are due above all to the more limited scope of Herzberg's theory, which studies the motivation to perform a task within an organization, not motivation in general as a driving force for human action, which is the framework within which Maslow operates.

Thus, whereas according to Maslow any unsatisfied need can motivate action, for Herzberg only what he calls “motivating factors” positively motivate a person to work. The lack of an adequate hygiene level simply causes dissatisfaction in the worker. This dissatisfaction disappears if these factors are corrected and brought to an adequate level (or exceed it); however, the resulting satisfaction does not imply a positive motivation towards better performance at work.

According to Herzberg, higher degrees of motivation, satisfaction and task-performance are only achieved by the motivating factors. It is Herzberg's hypothesis that is used as the basis for designing all the “job enrichment” programs that have become so popular as a means of motivating people to improve their productivity and at the same time obtain greater satisfaction from their work.

Perhaps the sharpest difference between the two theories is to be found in the weakest point of Maslow's theory: the dynamism he postulates concerning the appearance of motivations to attempt to satisfy higher-order needs (remember that this dynamism requires that lower-order ones be satisfied beforehand).

Herzberg does not enter into the matter (it is not necessary for the formulations of his conclusions), but one result of his research was that a worker with unsatisfied needs involving both motivating and hygiene factors could be motivated by motivating factors, even if the hygiene factors remained less than fully satisfied.