Management Hall of Fame: Leading Management Gurus
Douglas McGregor
Theory X, Theory Y in Managing and Leading People
(1906-1964)
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"Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated
with their achievement." (Douglas McGregor)
Key Work
Douglas McGregor is a pioneer in the field of industrial relations. Abraham Maslow viewed McGregor as a mentor. His book " The Human Side of Enterprise: laid the foundations
for the modern, people-centered
view of management. He believed that managers' basic assumptions have a dominant influence
on the way that organizations are run. He argues that these
assumptions fall into two broad categories - Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X and Theory Y describe two views of people at work and two opposing management styles.
McGregor was a Management professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management whose 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound
influence on management practices. In the book he identified an approach
of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via
authoritative, direction and control or integration and self-control,
which he called theory X and theory Y, respectively. He earned a B.E.
Mechanical from Rangoon Institute of Technology, an A.B. from Wayne
State University in 1932, then earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology
from Harvard University in 1933 and 1935 respectively.
In his youth he worked in his grandfather's institute for transient
laborers in Detroit, where he gained insight into the problems faced by
labor. As district manager for a retail gasoline merchandising firm, he
learned the concerns of management. He was the first full time
psychologist on the faculty of MIT, and helped to found its Industrial
Relations Section. Throughout his career he consulted for union and
management alike and served on the panel of arbitrators for the American
Arbitration Association. McGregor resigned the presidency of Antioch to
rejoin the MIT faculty in its new School of Industrial Management in
1954
Theory X: The Traditional View of Direction And Control. It is based
on the assumptions that:
- Average human beings dislike work, wishes to avoid
responsibility
it if at all possible. Therefore most people must be coerced, controlled to
achievement of organizational objectives. Theory X management style therefore requires close, firm supervision
with clearly specified tasks combined with financial "carrot and stick" approach
as motivating factors.
- Managers working under these
assumptions will employ autocratic, detailed controls that can lead to mistrust and
resentment from those they manage.
Theory Y: The Integration of Individual And Organizational Goals.
It is based on the assumptions that:
- Average human beings does not dislike
work and they will in many times seek responsibility.
Depending on personal meaning and conditions of work ( ownership, responsibility
and empowerment) , work may be a source of
satisfaction, or a source of resentment. Employees will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives
to which they are committed. The personal meaning and social and financial
rewards, such as success, satisfaction of ego and self-actualization can
integrated with organizational objectives;
- Avoidance of responsibility, lack of
ambition are generally consequences of negative experiences, like not
getting the rewards associated with their efforts and achievements.
- The capacity and potential to to
produce and innovate is
widely, not narrowly, distributed among people. creating the right
conditions to unleash this potential is the challenge of the
management and leadership
When He & Maslow' put the theory Into
practice at several factories. They found that an organization driven solely
by Theory Y or Theory X could not succeed.
Successful motivation is a complex result
of company policy and administration, level of supervision vs. self-scheduling
and creative environment, working relationships, working conditions, status, security, pay,
advancement or growth, among others.
Leadership
For McGregor, leadership was not a property of the
individual characteristics but a function of the relationship
between the leader the the situation it is a product of a complex relationship among
several variables like the attitudes and needs of the followers, the nature and
structure of the organization itself, and the social, economic, and
political environment.
Books & References:
IIM Executive Education & Management Training
. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.