Copy Of Douglas Macgregor

Douglas Mcgregor (1906-1964)

Bibliography • Douglas McGregor was born on 1906 in Detroit, • •

•

America During high school, Douglas McGregor worked as a night clerk and played the piano and organ at the chapel services McGregor went to Oberlin College and then attended to Wayne University, where he had graduated in 1932. While at college, he was married and left his college work for about five years to save enough money to start a family. McGregor began as a gasoline station attendant in Buffalo and quickly progressed to

Bibliography • In 1935, he received a PhD degree from Harvard

University in Experimental Psychology. McGregor was a brilliant student at Harvard that; he achieved an A grade in every course.

• Then he was a psychology professor at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on management practises. In the book he identified two approaches to motivating workers, which he called Theory X and Theory Y.

Theories “X” – “Y”

Theory X • According to McGregor, most managers

tend 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 line of thought is that Theory X managers naturally adopt a more authoritarian style based on the threat of punishment.

Theory Y • In contrast, a Theory Y manager believes

that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work and that there is a pool of unused creativity in the workforce. They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation in and of itself. A Theory Y manager will try to remove the barriers that prevent workers from fully actualizing their potential.

Conclusion He suggested that management could use either set of needs to motivate employees but that better results could be obtained by meeting the Theory Y needs. Theory X and Theory Y are still important terms in the field of management and motivation. More recent studies have questioned the rigidity of the model, but McGregor's X-Y Theory remains a guiding principle of positive approaches to management, to organizational development, and to improving organizational culture.

• McGregor ideas were much informed by

Maslow's need satisfaction model of motivation. Needs provide the driving force motivating behaviour and general orientation. Maslow's ideas suggested that worker disaffection with work was due - not to something intrinsic to workers, but due to poor job design, managerial behaviour and too few opportunities for job satisfaction. • On the basis of these ideas about drives Maslow suggested a classification of needs related to the development of the person lower level needs giving way developmentally to higher order needs. Thus a hierarchy is suggested although not claimed by Maslow.

Douglas McGregor