THEORY X AND THEORY Y

The famous X-Y theory was proposed by Douglas McGregor in his 1960 book ‘The Human Side Of Enterprise’. When it comes to the field of management & motivation these theory are still referred. McGregor’s X-Y theory remains central to organizational development, and to improving organizational development.

For Douglas McGregor, the X employees are lazy by nature and you have to threat them to make them work. The Theory Y employees are motivated by need, they want self-actualization.

To know more about Theory X & Theory Y manager concepts refer to link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Primarily Theory X and Theory Y have to do is with the perceptions manager hold on their employees, not the way they generally behave.

Q1. What is Theory X?

Theory X can be defined through following points:

1)      In this theory management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can and that they inherently dislike work.

2)      According to this theory, employees will show little ambition without an enticing incentive program and will avoid responsibility whenever they can.

3)      According to Michael J. Papa, if the organizational goals are to be met, theory X managers rely heavily on threat and coercion to gain their employees' compliance.

4)      Beliefs of this theory lead to mistrust, highly restrictive supervision, and a punitive atmosphere.

5)      They will blame the person first in most situations, without questioning whether it may be the system, policy, or lack of training that deserves the blame.

 

Q2. What is Theory Y?

Theory Y can be defined as

1)      In this theory, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control.

2)      They possess the ability for creative problem solving

3)      They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation. Many people interpret Theory Y as a positive set of beliefs about workers.

Broadly managers are divided into two categories based on how they perceive their employees. If a manager isn’t able to understand their employee it’s better to treat all employees as same & motivated. To give an example in my previous company I saw certain managers who used to judge performance of an employee by the no of hours in an organization & not by the quality of work that he/she delivered. He used to think that those who leave office early are lazy employee which in actual is false. If we see this is just a perception of mangers about these employees. Perception has nothing to do with reality here. Such a manager belongs to Theory X manager. A theory Y manager possess Positive attitude, inspiring, motivating, trusting employees etc.

Q: The most important question is to which category one should belong?

If a matrix is drawn between Theory X-Y manager & Lazy, Motivated employee then we get 4 categories which can be seen in figure below:

The obvious choice of any manager is to be part of category 4 in which both the employees & manager are motivated.

But if we look at category 2 where a manager treats a lazy employee as motivated employee, it seems to be very challenging task. 

CONCLUSION

In life there could be both lazy & motivated employees but I have seen lot of employees who were lazy but became motivated & are among the most valuable asset for an organization now. So be a Theory Y manager & if you fall into category 2 then take it as a challenge and convert lazy employee into motivated employees.

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