Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor

Douglas McGregor was an American social psychologist. He proposed his famous XY theory in his 1960 book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’. McGregor’s XY theory remains a valid basic principle from which to develop positive management style and techniques. McGregor’s XY theory also remains central to organizational development, and to improving organizational culture. 

McGregor Theory X and Y is the outcomes of the Mayo and his associates work. They have developed the popular classification scheme of acceptable and unacceptable managerial styles in management literature. McGregor termed it as the theory of X and theory of Y. He believes that the manager tries to motivate employees by one of the two basic approaches. 

This theory is based on the natural rules for managing people. McGregor’s maintained that there are two fundamental approaches to managing people. Many managers tend towards theory X, and generally get poor results. Enlightened managers use theory Y, which produces better performance and results, and allows people to grow and develop. 

Assumptions of Theory X (Authoritarian Management Style) 

• The average people inherently dislike work and will avoid if it is possible. 
• Due to dislike of work, people must be forced to control, direct and threat with punishment to get them to perform work effectively. 
• The average human beings lacks ambition, avoids responsibility and seeks security and economic rewards above all else. 
• Most of the people are rigid to change and also lack creativeness.
• They are self centered, so they are not concerned with the goals of the organization. 

Thus, the central principle of theory X is that an organization is controlled and directed through the exercise of authority. McGregor firmly believed that attempts to control employees forced them towards organizational goals based on the assumptions of theory and may fail to motivate individuals to work towards organizations goals. 

For the people X, the manager has to exercise centralized control and supervision and emphasize on autocratic type of leadership style and downward communication. 

Assumptions of Theory Y (Participative Management Style) 

• According to this, a physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest. 
• People will apply self-control and self-direction in the pursuit of organizational objectives, without external control or the threat of punishment. 
• Commitment to objectives is a function of rewards associated with their achievement. 
• The average person learns under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility. 
• The capacity to use a high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in solving organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population. 
• Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average person are only partly utilized. 

The theory Y emphasized on creating opportunities, removing obstacles, encouraging growth and providing guidance. McGregor believed that for motivating the persons Y, decentralized organization, democratic leadership and two way communications will help to create the congenial environment to work.

McGregor’s Motivation Theory X and Theory Y

Theory of X (Some traditional assumptions about people)

Theory Y (Some modern assumptions about people)

-        Most people dislike work, and they will avoid it when they can. -          Most people like to be conceded to threaten my threatened with punishment before they will work. -          They require close direction. -          Most people prefer to be directed. They avoid responsibility and have little ambition. They are interested only in security.

-          Work is a natural activity like play and rest. -          People are capable of self direction and self control if they are committed to objectives. -          People will become committed to organizational objectives if they are rewarded for doing so. -          The average people can learn to both aspects and seek responsibility. -          Many people in the general population have imagination ingenuity and creativity.

Advantages/ Merits of Theory X and Theory Y 

• Employee commitment to objectives can be ensured if the rewards are associated with the achievement of objects.
• Employees are not lazy or passive or resistant to organizational objectives. 
• Management is responsible for organizing the resources of the enterprise for achieving organizational objectives. 
• Work is natural to employees, if managers can release and channelize, employee’s can out perform their full potentiality. 

Disadvantages/ Demerits of Theory X and Theory Y 

• McGregor suggests that the job itself is a motivator but it is not so in all the cases. Jobs alone cannot motivate equally to all the persons.
• It tends to over generalize or over simplify behavior of human beings. It is not easy and possible to classify people in two extreme categories. 
• Almost all the employees do not become good or bad because of the views that a manager has about them.

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Means for Effective Motivation

Motivation is a very complex phenomenon. In order to motivate people towards organizational goals and effective actions, management has to create a congenial physical, social and psychological atmosphere. Human behavior is influenced by a host of complex factors. Understanding these factors and adjusting them to suit the organizational need is essential for effective motivation.

The management can employ the following means for effective employee motivation:

1. Fair Remuneration: Most of the basic and many of the secondary human needs can be satisfied by fairly remunerating the employees. Nature of job, cost, cost of living, pay scales of other organizations, the wage structures and scales should properly be evaluated and determined.
2. Job Satisfaction: Management should place employees properly according to their merits, aptitudes, interests and capacities. The well placed employees take pride, interest and initiative in their work and derive job satisfaction. Job satisfaction leads to realization of goals.
3. Job Security: Job security is a great motivating factor. Security is a great psychological need of a man and hence must be satisfied for turning up the morale.
4. Fair Promotions: Everybody aspires for growth and development in his life. Organizational promotions satisfy various physiological, social and psychological needs of the people. Management should therefore, create arrange for promotional training and education to enable employees to get promotions.
5. Congenial Working Environment: Working conditions for the employees must be made congenial. The adequate provision of light, air, safety, sanitation, cleanliness, noise prevention, smoke and fume clearance should be made for physical health and mental health and satisfaction. Congenial environment releases tension and tiredness and motivate them to work.
6. Honest and Competent Leadership: If the leaders and managers are honest, impartial, sympathetic and capable of understanding employee hopes and aspirations, emotions and sentiments, prospects and problems, motives and attitudes, they would be able to win the control, maintain discipline and motivate their employees. They must treat employees with love and affection, but at the same time they must be able to maintain such distance that the discipline and respect are not at the slake.
7. Efficient System of Grievance Redressal: Employee grievance is a major factors detracting employee from work and forming an apathetic attitudes towards manage. If management introduces a perfect system of discovering the employee grievances, their causes and remedies and remove them honesty and regularly, it will win the confidence of the employees that the management is really interested in their well being and there is great desire in management to keep them happy and contented.
8. Freedom of Association, Mobility, Expression etc.: The need of association is a great need of human being. It is therefore, the management should satisfy their need by providing freedom to individuals to form their cultural and social associations whether formal or informal.
9. Efficient Organization, Coordination and Control: Efficient organization may include adequate and efficient physical facilities and organization of manpower. Proper delegation of authority and fixation of responsibilities avoid confusion and conflicts to bring unity in action and purpose. Similarly, efficient coordination of activities lead to harmonious relations and approach and the adequate system of control checks all splintering and cross purpose activities. To the great extent the feeling of security, certainty, fairness, confidence, interest and initiative is a result of efficient organization, coordination and control.
10. Democratic Management Technique: If the employees are given participation in management decisions, they began to feel themselves as a part and parcel of organization. It satisfies their instinct of belonging to the organization, gives them psychological satisfaction and fosters the feeling of team and cooperation. A sense of responsibility and duty is generated.
11. Other Incentives: Several other physical and psychological incentives may be offered by the management to tone up employee morale and motivate them towards stated objectives. The efficient training progress, the affectionate attitude of superiors towards their subordinates and such innumerable measures can motivate people.

Need for Motivation

Among the behavioral concepts, motivation has received the most attention in the study of organizational behavior. The following factors justify the need for and significance of motivation in organizations.

Organizations are run by people. Hence, managers cannot afford to avoid a concern with human behavior at work. This is because the motivated employees are more productive and quality-conscious than apathetic ones.  Motivation as a pervasive concept affects and is also affected by a host of factors in the organizational milieu. If enables managers to understand why people behave as they behave. Organizational effectiveness becomes, to some extent, the questions of management's ability to motivate its employees. Hence, an appreciation of motivation helps the managers how to motivate their employees.

Machines become necessary in case of complex technology. However, these remain inefficient vehicles of effective operations without man to operate them. Therefore, organizations need to have employees with required capability and willingness to use the advanced and complex technology to achieve the organizational goals.

Finally, the need for and significance of motivation for, an organization can be put as: If we compare management with driving, while the organization is the vehicle than motivation is the power or fuel that makes the vehicle moving.

Job Satisfaction : Concept and Its Consequences in Business Organization

Job satisfaction is a positive attitude towards one's job. Job satisfaction will be defined as the amount of overall positive affect (or feelings) that individuals have towards their job. It is important to mention that an individual may hold different attitudes towards various aspects of the job. For example, a university professor may like his job responsibilities but be dissatisfied with the opportunities for promotion characteristics if individual also influence the job satisfaction. Individuals with high positive affectionate are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. Reverse is true for individuals with high negative affectionate, there are three important dimensions to job satisfaction. There are; 

First, job satisfaction being an emotional response to a job, cannot be seen. As such it can only be inferred. 

Second, job satisfaction is often determined by how satisfactorily outcomes meet or exceed one's expectation. 

Third, job satisfaction represents an employee's attitude towards five specific dimensions of the jobs: pay the work itself, promotion opportunities, supervision and coworkers. 

Job satisfaction is one of the most important factors which have drawn attention of managers in the organization as well as academicians. Various studies have been conducted to find out the factors which determine job satisfaction and the way it influences productivity in the organization. Though there is no conclusive evidence that job satisfaction affects productivity directly, but productivity depends on so many variables. So it is still a prime concern for managers. Job satisfaction is the mental feeling of favorableness which an individual has about his job.

Some of the definitions about job satisfaction given by different experts are as follows:

“Job satisfaction is a result of employee’s perception of how well their job provides those things that are viewed as important.” – Fred Luthans

“Job satisfaction is an emotional response to job situation.” – Richard M. Hodgetts

“Job satisfaction is an individual’s general attitude towards his or her job.” – Stephen P. Robbins

From the above definitions, it can be concluded that job satisfaction is the amount of pleasure or contentment associated with a job. If you like your job intensely, you will experience high job satisfaction. If you dislike your job intensely, you will experience job dissatisfaction.

The requirement of job satisfaction is observed whenever actual job condition does not match with expectation about the job. The requirement of job satisfaction is clearly shown in the figure.

Ideas of Job Satisfaction

Consequences/ Importance of Job Satisfaction

No one can deny the importance of job satisfaction in our lives. The fact that we spend a huge amount of our working hours at work means job satisfaction will also play a huge role in our lives. While you look for the dream career or job that will make you happy, whatever job you are doing now must significantly contribute to your happiness. That is the crucial importance of job satisfaction.

Job satisfaction increases the performance level of any worker working in an organization. Some of the important points of job satisfaction are as follows:

Consequences / Importance of Job Satisfaction

1. Improve Physical and Mental Health

The degree of job satisfaction affects an individual’s physical and mental health. Since job satisfaction is a type of mental feeling, its favorableness or unfavorableness affects the individual psychologically which ultimately affects his physical health. For example, Lawler has pointed out that drug abuse, alcoholism and mental and physical health result from psychologically harmful jobs. Further, since a job is an important part of life. Job satisfaction influences general life satisfaction. The result is that there is spillover effect which occurs in both directions between job and life satisfaction.

2. Increase in Productivity

There are two views about the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity:

• A happy worker is a productive worker.
• A happy worker is not necessarily a productive worker.

The first view establishes a direct cause-effect relationship between job satisfaction and productivity; when job satisfaction increases, productivity increases; when job satisfaction decreases, productivity decreases. The basis behind this is that a happy worker will put more efforts for job performance. However, this may not be true in all cases. For example, a worker having low expectations from his jobs may feel satisfied but he may not put his efforts more vigorously because of his low expectations from the job. Therefore, this view does not explain fully the complex relationship between job satisfaction and productivity.

Another view, that is a satisfied worker is not necessarily a productive worker explains the relationship between job satisfaction and productivity. Various research studies also support this view. This relationship may be explained in terms of the operation of two factors: effect of job performance on satisfaction and organizational expectations from individuals for job performance.

3. Decrease Absenteeism

Absenteeism refers to the frequency of absence of a job holder from the workplace either unexcused absence due to some avoidable reasons or long absence due to some unavoidable reasons. It is the former type of absence which is a matter of concern. This absence is due to lack of satisfaction from the job which produces a ‘lack of will to work’ and alienate a worker from work as far as possible. Thus, job satisfaction is related to absenteeism.

4. Decrease Employee Turnover

Turnover of employees is the rate at which employees leave the organization within a given period of time. When an individual feels dissatisfaction in the organization, he tries to overcome this through the various ways of defense mechanism. If he is not able to do so, he opts to leave the organization. Thus, in general case, employee turnover is related to job satisfaction. However, job satisfaction is not only cause of employee turnover. The rate of turnover of computer software professionals is very high in India, however, these professionals left their organizations not simply because they are not satisfied but because of the opportunities offered from other sources particularly from foreign companies located abroad.

5. Increase Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction plays significant role in the organization. Therefore, managers should take concrete steps to improve the level of job satisfaction. These steps may be in the form of job redesigning to make the job more interesting and challenging, improving quality of work life, linking rewards with performance, and improving overall organizational climate.

Tools for Measuring Job Satisfaction 

There are a number of ways of measuring job satisfaction. The most common ways of measuring job satisfaction are (i) Single Global Rating and (ii) Summation Score. 

1. Single Global Rating

Under single global rating, the employees are asked to respond to one question. An example of single question may be considering all dimension of job, how satisfied are you with your job? Employees need to respond by reporting a figure based on rating scale. Rating scales may be from 1 to 5 as follows: 

• Highly dissatisfied 
• Dissatisfied 
• No comment 
• Satisfied 
• Highly satisfied 

Thus, the rating, based on above scale, to a question given by a employee is a reflection of magnitude or measurement of employees job attitude towards his/her job. 

2. Summation Score

The employees attitudes towards the various aspects of the job is considered in summation score. Nature of the work, supervision, pay, promotion, opportunities and relationship with coworkers are the important aspects of the job that are included in rating score. The scores given to each of these aspects are then added up to create and overall job satisfaction score of an individual employee. Besides, mentioned above heads, the following are the some ways of measuring job satisfaction. 

• Interview: This is yet another method of measuring of job satisfaction. Under this method, employees are interviewed personally. The responds given by them reverse their satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards their jobs. 
• Actions Tendencies: Under this method, information is gathered about how the employees were inclined to avoid or joined certain things relating to job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. 
• Critical Incidence: This method is based on Herzberg's two factors theory of motivation. In this approach, employees are asked to identify the specific incidence in their job in which they were particularly satisfied or dissatisfied. These incidences further analyzed to ascertain the aspect which were closely related with to positive and negative attitude of the employees towards incidence so identified.

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