Theory Y management

A manager believing these things is naturally led to a suspicious, coercive management style, where careful monitoring and punishment are the rule. By contrast, what McGregor calls the theory Y manager believes that people ... 

Because of these beliefs, the theory Y manager is led to a more supportive, praise-oriented style of management. 

These findings led to fhe development of Douglas McGregor s Theory X and Theory Y management. Theory X, a basic assumption of bureaucratic organizations, assumes that people inherently dislike work, must be coerced and threatened to do the job, avoid responsibility, and have few career ambitions. Theory Y, in contrast, looks at workers as individuals willing to work and accept responsibility and as capable of self-direction and control. It also considers that the expenditure of menfal and physical energy at work is the same as at play. 

McGregor s Theory Y management approach was designed to tap employees potential (participation). This was based on his observations of the way management thinking had moved a considerable way from the traditional hard approach and the soft reaction that followed the Depression years [2]. McGregor developed six basic assumptions for Theory Y ... 

For more information about Theory-X and Theory-Y managers, including some very interesting examples, read the book McGregor, Douglas, The Human Side of the Enterprise, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1985. 

Theory-X Manager - secretive, has his or her fingers in everything that happens, always has the final word, tells rather than asks questions Theory-Y Manager - values the opinion of the employees, spends more lime hstening than talking, looks for ideas from the bottom-up but makes the final decision Theory-Z Manager - tends to empower the employees to make their own decisions and lets them in tlement their own ideas... 

Theory Y Manager-Cash Manager This manager wants the employees ideas but will make the final decision in all cases based on short-term financial viability. 

Theory Y Manager-Crisis Manager This manager expects employees to be self-directed fire-fighters, maintaining the status quo. 

Theory Y Manager-Conflict Manager This manager listens to employees just to satisfy their egos and basically sees employees as a necessary evil requiring toleration. 

Theory Y Manager-Cool Manager This manager solicits the employees ideas and says yes to everyone, leaving employees without any real guidance from the top. 

Theory Y Manager-Change Manage This manager wants employees to search for... 

Supervisory styles were mentioned both in the Hawthorne study and in a book discussing theory X and Y. The theory X manager/supervisor thinks that workers are basically bad and cannot be trusted. Punishment is mentioned as a motivator for the theory X supervisor. The theory Y manager/supervisor believes that workers are not basically bad. This theory attributes poor worker performance to a management failure and not to the worker s nature. Later chapters expound on the basic themes presented so far and on developing programs to enhance safety culture. 

Almost any organization of any size is filled with its own tales of theory X and theory Y. The next section considers one true story in which an employee s behavior transformed dramatically with a change in management. 

Consider a manager you have worked for. Make a list of things he or she did that you would classify as theory X behavior, and make another list of things he or she did that you would classify as theory Y behavior. 

In conclusion. Theories X and Y both work, but in different ways. On the proper occasions. Theory X can produce better short-term results. However, if people are subjected to Theory X management style consistently, it could lead to disharmony and dissatisfaction, which is counterproductive in the long term. To maintain a healthy, viable organization, managers need to keep people happy and motivated. 

McGregor s book The Human Side of Enterprise was published in 1960. His view was that the leadership approach managers took was based on assumptions they made about the people they managed. McGregor grouped possible assumptions in what he called Theory X and Theory Y categories. 

McGregor s view was that if a manager believed that workers had Theory X characteristics, they would provide close direction and control. But, McGregor believed that Theory Y characteristics prevail. His premise is that people can be self-actualizing, exercise intellectual capacities, and more fully utilize their capabilities—if they are given opportunities to participate in establishing goals and commit to them, and to influence the nature of their work. 

The concepts of employee empowerment and the many forms of participative management that have been tried over the years are reflections of McGregor s Theory Y. 

Management styles, as they might affect the health of people at work, have already been dealt with to some degree in the section above. They are generally broken down into McGregor s Theory X, autocratic, and Theory Y, participative/democratic. 

Douglas McGregor, who specialized in human behavior in organizations, is famous for his formulation of Theory X (authoritarian management) versus Theory Y (participative management [2]). 

Another well-known use of this rhetorical device is the juxtaposition of Theory X and Theory Y in Douglas McGregor s 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise. The juxtaposition was used to encapsulate a fundamental distinction between two different management styles (authoritarian and participative, respectively), which turned out to be very influential. And there are, of course, even more famous examples, such as Galileo s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and the philosophical dialogue in the works of Plato. 

Theory Y is another basic philosophy, but this one theorizes that workers are basically good, or at least that workers are not inherently bad or lazy. Theory Y implies that if workers are lazy, indifferent, unwilling to take responsibility, uncooperative, and so on, the responsibility for this behavior lies in management s methods of organization and control. 

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