McGregor’s Theory X and Y

McGregor’s Theory X and Y PuzantBalozian PhD Student Baylor University 10 April 2012

Theory X and Theory Y • Theory X: the Authoritarian Management Style • Assumptions (McGregor, 1960): • The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can • Because of this human characteristic most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives • The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, wants security above all.

Theory XY • Theory Y: the Participatory Management Style • Assumptions (McGregor, 1960): • Man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed. Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards (ie satisfaction and self-actualization) • The capacity to exercise a high degree of ingenuity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population • Under the modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partially utilized.

Study 1/5 • McGregor advances his theoretical research in his book based on researches in industry during the 50s with his colleague Theodore Alfred (McGregor, 1960,p.v of preface) • McGregor, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill Book.

Study 2/5 • Katz tries to answer the question of “how and to what extent, do people become involved in an organization and committed to its goals”. The framework he proposes depicts analytics for understanding the complex environment in the process of achieving organizational motivation. • Katz, D. (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior. Behavioral Science, 9(2), 131.

Study 3/5 • Building on Theory Y, Willmott advocated that “practical autonomy” is conditional upon the development of strong corporate culture. A self disciplining form of employee subjectivity comprises the practical autonomy. • Willmott, H. (1993). Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 30(4), 515-552.

Study 4/5 • Adler and Borys proposed based on Theory X and Y a framework of respectively coercive and enabling formalization or bureaucracy in organizations. They point that sometimes the enabling should be discouraged to the benefit of the coercive orientation, as well as other times enabling orientation is most productive. • Adler, P. S. & Borys, B. (1996). Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41: 61-89.

Study 5/5 • Stead applies the communication process (sending encodingmessage channel  decoding  receiving) to the behavioral theory of McGregor and proposes that sometimes the message is encoded as “theory Y” but the decoding is done with “theory X”. • Stead, B. A. (1972). Berlo's communication process model as applied to the behavioral theories of maslow, herzberg and mcgregor. Academy of Management Journal, 15(3), 389-394.

Reasons for using this Theory (1) Combining Two perceptions toward employee motivation and compliance (Coercive and Enabling). (2) McGregor preferred Theory Y. The assumptions of this theory “indicate the possibility of human growth and development” (p.48) This resonates with awareness and training amply prevalent in our data. (3) McGregor didn’t deny the legitimacy of Theory X in some circumstances: “Physical coercion is a legitimate means of social control over certain forms of criminal behavior” (p.18) . This is also prevalent in our data. (4) Potential of moving from Theory Y to X , while dealing with negligent  Abusive  malicious insiders

Limitations (ie: In our data training shows to be mandatory, Theory X?)

IT manager 1 (all): Our role is also to protect the employees from the organization because the organization can overstep itself at times …in order to protect the organization you have to protect the employees sometimes from themselves but most of the time from the organization… IT manager1 (abusive/malicious):Technological controls I think prevent more of that then the other controls because it’s like a lock on the door, it’s like the stop sign if you’re not pushing the break and stop that doesn’t really matter. IT manager 1 (recurring problem): I can write all the policies of the world, if you choose not to follow them, I can have operational people monitoring stuff, but if they don’t respond to it and I know they are not going to, because you tested that, then it falls back into technology who keeps you prevents you going to these things. Change of Mgt Style Blended: XY Negligent Abusive Malicious

IS senior employee (against negligent):Making sure that everybody has their training…Administratively make sure that they're made aware of these things. IS senior employee (against abusive):You can make things more difficult for him by locking out ports, monitoring the logs, that type of thing, but also the administrative stuff you can try to convince it ain't worth his efforts because it's gonna cost him his job. Change of Mgt Style Blended: XY Negligent Abusive Malicious

IS Senior Educator/Coordinator:You can educate this person (negligent) , you may be able to educate this person (abuser), but you probably have to, by rule, control that person(abuser), that guy,(malicious)you just don't have – I mean, once somebody has gotten to the point of being that negative about the place they are that they've turned malicious, that's a whole different matter. But this guy (negligent) I can teach. This guy (abuser), maybe I can teach because maybe I'm abusing resources that I don't even realize that I shouldn't be doing it. So maybe I can teach, but I probably have to, by rule, control. Change of MgtStyle Blended: XY Negligent Abusive Malicious

Q and A or Comments

McGregor’s Theory X and Y