Douglas Mcgregor
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Life and Works of Douglas McGregor By Group 2 Members Anindita Basu Keshav Kumar Krishna Darshan R. Pankaj Singh Vidyadhara K. Vikrant Bahl Date 12 July 2006 Table of Contents Theory X and theory Y ................................................................................................... 4 Theory X ...................................................................................................................... 4 Theory Y ...................................................................................................................... 5 Characteristics of the Theory X Manager................................................. ....................... 6 Problems with Theory X .................................................................................................. 6 How you can manage upwards your X theory boss:............................................... ......... 7 Theory Y Management Implications ............................................................................... 8 McGregor and Maslow's hierarchy .................................................................................. 9 APPENDIX A: ‘X-Y Theory’ Questionnaire ................................................................10 About Douglas McGregor (1906-1964) A pioneering figure in the field of industrial relations, Douglas McGregor attended Wayne State University (B.A., L.L.D.) and Harvard (M.A., Ph.D.). 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. Today Antioch McGregor bears his name in honor of his contributions to management theory. View a biographical sketch of McGregor or his CV.. Life and Work of Douglas McGregor 11 Review of “The Human side of Enterprise (HSE)” This book was published by Famed MIT scholar and father of Theory Y management, Douglas McGregor some forty years ago. If newer were necessarily better, HSE would now only merit a footnote. However, McGregor was an astute judge of the organizations of his era, and his moral perspective on human relations remains valuable even in altered circumstances. In fact, in this era of downsizing, pension insecurity, and aggressive investors seeking immediate return, it is useful to reconsider McGregor’s call to honor the unfulfilled potential of employees. The recent publication of Douglas McGregor, Revisited: Managing the Human Side of the Enterprise, by Gary Heil, Warren Bennis, and Deborah C. Stephens, makes it especially timely to look back at McGregor’s work. McGregor’s Theories X and Y are still prominently featured in textbooks on management and organizational theory. However, contemporary management scholars have largely rejected McGregor’s arguments, preferring contingency theories emerging from empirical studies. Even leading disciples of McGregor seem to follow the fashion and downplay the critical moral core of his thinking. Partly as a result, management scholars fail to perceive the need for profound reforms in organizations. HSE is best known for its juxtaposition of Theory X and Theory Y management philosophies. Theory X is the still persistent view that workers are ordinarily passive and resistant to the legitimate expectations of management and the organization. Alternatively, Theory Y, McGregor’s favored view, assumes that workers seek fulfillment from work and will prosper in an environment inviting their creative involvement. Throughout the book, McGregor subjects customary management practices to careful scrutiny. He uncovers the arbitrary core of performance appraisal and merit pay and scores managerial manipulation of the illusion of participation. InIn HSE McGregor disputes the motivational value of traditional forms of merit pay in which employees receive small variations in compensation based on subjective assessments of performance. Instead, he favors group rewards based on objective measures of unit performance and substantial awards for the few outstanding performers. With the decline of unions and the corresponding increase in managerial discretion, merit pay of the sort that McGregor challenged is common practice. HSE is still a pleasure to read. It is clearly written, and it reveals a non dogmatic but inquiring mind at work. Contemporary management students might miss the bright colors and multiple fonts of today’s texts, but they would benefit from exposure to this classic. McGregor’s thinking reminds one that there was a period in which many management thinkers accepted the legitimacy of unions. For example, Mary Van Kleeck, a Russell Sage Foundation researcher on human resource issues, grew increasingly committed to trade unionism and economic planning in the 1920s and 1930s. She embraced an “interpretation” of scientific management that prioritized workers and working conditions over company profits (Oldenziel, 2000). Life and Work of Douglas McGregor 22 Neil Chamberlain (1948) explored the union challenge to management control and found managers anticipating a kind of codetermination. McGregor strove to build a new model of management recognizing the new union reality, and his concept of the integration of interests in the enterprise envisioned a fundamental change in direction. Theory Y is compatible with collective bargaining, much more so than the unitarist-oriented human relations doctrines that predated it and most contingency models that followed it. A history of ideas perspective on McGregor highlights these discontinuities (as well as reveals McGregor’s debt to Abraham Maslow). McGregor’s years as president of Antioch College illustrate his willingness to experiment with participatory systems. Antioch pioneered the integrated work/study curriculum under the leadership of Arthur Morgan, better known for his stewardship of the Tennessee Valley Authority. As Antioch president, McGregor helped construct a model of college and community governance in which students played a decisive role. Antioch’s experimental nature and freewheeling politics led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and McGregor was obliged to defend its traditions of dissent and social reform (Scott Sanders, personal communication). McGregor later modified the extremely democratic views of his Antioch period. Factionalism among students and faculty, among other things, exhausted him and convinced him of the necessity of active leadership. When he retired, he commented: It took the direct experience of being a line executive and meeting personally the problems involved to teach me what no amount of observation of other people could have taught. I believed, for example, that a leader could operate successfully as a kind of adviser to his organization. I thought I could avoid being a “boss” . I hoped to duck the unpleasant necessity of making difficult decisions . I finally began to realize that a leader cannot avoid the exercise of authority any more than he can avoid responsibility for what happens to his organization (McGregor, cited in Bennis & Schein, 1966: 66–70). This new moderation did not, however, mean a repudiation of unionism or embrace of authoritarian management. Life and Work of Douglas McGregor 33 Theory X and theory Y Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human motivation developed in the 1960s that have been used in human resource management,, organizational behavior , and organizational development.. They describe two very different attitudes toward workforce motivation. McGregor felt that companies followed either one or the other approach. Theory X In this theory management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can. Because of this workers need to be closely supervised and comprehensive systems of controls developed. A hierarchical structure is needed with narrowspan of control at each level. According to this theory employees will show little ambition without an enticing incentive program and will avoid responsibility whenever they can. Many managers (in the 1960s) tended to subscribe to Theory X, in that they take a rather pessimistic view of their employees. A Theory X manager believes that his or her employees do not really want to work, that they would rather avoid responsibility and that it is the manager's job to structure the work and energize the employee. The result of this Life and Work of Douglas McGregor 44 line of thought is that Theory X managers naturally adopt a more authoritarian style based on the threat of punishment. Theory Y In this theory management assumes employees are ambitious, self-motivated, anxious to accept greater responsibility, and exercise self-control and self-direction. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work activities. It is also believed that employees have the desire to be imaginative and creative in their jobs if they are given a chance. There is an opportunity for greater productivity by giving employees the freedom to be their best. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work