• Theory X and Theory Y
    Douglas McGregor: The Human Side of Enterprise.
    Represent different ways in which leaders view employees.
    Theory X: The traditional view of direction and control by managers
    • managers believe that employees
      • are motivated mainly by money,
      • are lazy, uncooperative, and
      • have poor work habits.
    Average human being
    • has an inherent dislike of work
    • will avoid work he or she can
    • prefers to be directed,
    • wishes to avoid responsibility,
    • has relatively little ambition,
    • wants security above all
    • Because of this human characteristic of dislike of work, most people must be controlled, directed, and threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.
    • Leads naturally to an emphasis on the tactics of control - to procedures and techniques for telling people what to do, for determining whether they are doing it, and for administering rewards and punishment.
    • Explains the consequences of a particular managerial strategy.
    • Prevents managers from seeing the possibilities inherent in other managerial strategies.
    • As long as the assumptions of Theory X influence managerial strategy, organizations will fail to discover, let alone utilize, the potentialities of the average human being
    Theory Y
    • Managers believe that subordinates work hard, are cooperative, and have positive attitudes.
    • Individual and organizational goals can be integrated.
    1. The expenditures of physical and mental effort in work are as natural as play or rest.
    2. External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing out effort toward organizational objectives.
    3. Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.
    4. The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but also to seek responsibility.
    5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems in widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
    6. Under the condition of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partially utilized.
    7. Encourages integration, to create a situation in which an employee can achieve his or her own goals best by directing his or her efforts toward the objectives of the organization.
    8. A deliberate attempt to link improvement in managerial competence with the satisfaction of higher-level ego and self-actualization needs.
    9. Leads to a preoccupation with the nature of relationships, with the creation of an environment which will encourage commitment to organizational objectives and which will provide opportunities for the maximum exercise of initiative, ingenuity, and self-direction in achieving them.