Theories X and Y

The Theories X and Y were proposed by social psychologist Douglas McGregor  in his classic book "The Human Side of Enterprise." McGregor's model suggests that there are two fundamental approaches to managing people:

Many managers tend towards Theory X, and generally get poor results—especially over the longer term. Enlightened managers mostly use Theory Y, which produces better performance and results, and allows people to grow and develop.

Let’s understand this theories in detail……

Theory X

Theory X assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working and this encourages an authoritarian style of management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things done.

Theory Y

Theory Y expatiates a participative style of management that is de-centralized. It assumes that employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility

Let us consider four different combination of employees and managers

Ca$e I:   Employee dislikes his work and manager assumes he is lazy.

This kind of a situation is seen in many organisations where lack of clear directive principles and ineffective goal setting leads to disillusionment and non-motivation among the employees to perform better.

Ca$e II:   Employee likes his work and manager assumes he is lazy.

This is probably the most dangerous out of all the four possible situations where the employee likes his work and finds himself highly motivated from within to work and contribute, however the manager still assumes he is lazy and thus is greatly harmful to the motivational growth of the employee and the organisation as a whole.

Ca$e III:  Employee dislikes his work and manager assumes he is not lazy.

In this case, even though employees dislike their work, there is a strong focus from management to think they can do better and perform much more to aid the organisation. Immense morale boosting attitude, a definite belief that employees will perform better given more optimistic managers at the helm, performance based incentives at all levels are some of the means of getting the employees up to speed. This kind of a workplace is where the Theory Y managers exhibit their true mettle and where the attitude they adopt crucially shapes the future of the organisation.

Ca$e IV:  Employee likes his work and manager assumes he is not lazy.

This is the most ideal case where the employee is focused and likes his work and performs it to the fullest extent. This is achieved as a result of hardworking employees working in an environment of synergy with the management who leave no stones unturned to motivate them through their positive attitude.Personally I was blessed to be belonging to this ca$e.