A Biblical Application Of Theory X & Y

Charles M. Carson, (2005),"A historical view of Douglas McGregor's Theory Y", Management Decision, Vol. 43 Iss 3 pp. 450 - 460

The topic of the image of God is one essential to every human being because it will shape the way in which each individual will look at his or her life. A part of every human’s life is his or her vocation, which will also be changed by the view he or she holds about the image of God. The image of God is the footprint that God left in humans and in no other being in His creation, and it must shape the way in which everyone will look at his or her job.

motivation. Theory X represents a negative view on of human nature that assumes individuals generally

Is your workplace safe? Do you encourage camaraderie and team building exercises? Some examples might be: company picnics, luncheons or holiday pot-lucks. These lower level needs will need to be addressed and achieved in order for workers to move onto the issues that management wants to focus on such as productivity, innovation and efficiency. Looking at McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y I would determine if Marshall’s management is using the negative aspects of the classical management theory and making assumptions about the workers (p. 43). If I found that Marshall’s management was adhering to Theory X more than Theory Y I would suggest a shift towards Theory Y thinking and managing. Theory Y states that workers will seek out satisfaction of the higher-order needs if management treats them as such and if those lower-order needs are satisfied. I would focus particularly on point number five of Theory Y, which states: the capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population (p. 43). Looking at this point could address participation levels in the team management system. For example instead of allowing employees to elect the same people to represent each production area in the Marshall Team monthly meetings, perhaps try a

According to American Social Psychologist Douglas McGregor who formulated two models which were called Theory X, Y, and Z. He suggested to the

1. Discuss the contributions to the “human side of enterprise” as articulated by Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Abraham Maslow, and Douglas McGregor.

When managing people, McGregor’s model, indicated below, shows to styles of management. Theory X is directive, whereas Theory Y is enabling, and looks at employee engagement/ teamwork in order to achieve the

Theory Y, adopts the participative management style, which operates on the idea that people are inherently motivated to work if they find the job fulfilling

Theory X was labeled by McGregor as being a “hard” style of management, where hard meant that management would have close supervision on its workers, as well as having strong control and coercion. He determined that a hard style would not be effective for production and organization that practiced this style would have restricted output and workers would distrust management, therefore there would be a need for a softer side of management. McGregor based his evaluation of Theory X manager’s on Abrahams Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory (Barnett).

Old Testament II: A Small Scale Treatment on Theodicy- from the texts of Ecclesiastes and Job

There were at least 3 views of how the Old Testament was composed which include the critical view, the compositional view, and the common view. Each view was somewhat similar and different in the aspects that gave it it's own characteristics. The main point of this discussion is to focus on the similarities and differences of each view which are but not limited to how the bible was created, the process, and design.

On the other hand, here comes to the theory Y. On the contrary, it based on positive assumptions, and also more positive view of workers and the possibilities that create. For instance, they assumed that employees are ambitious, self-motivated and anxious to accept greater responsibility. Employees exercise self-control, self-direction, autonomy and empowerment, also exercise creativity and become forward looking. So, once the managers are adopted this theory, they believes that people want to do well at work, have a pool of unused creativity and that the satisfaction of doing a job

According to Kreitner and Kinicki (2013) McGregor contrasted two views on human nature by insisting that Theory Y assumes that people are more positive at work, and believed managers could accomplish more by viewing employees as such (p.9). The other outdated theory, is Theory X, which is a more negative and pessimistic assumption about workers.

Although Maslow and McGregor are thinking alike, as I mentioned earlier, The Human Side of Enterprise makes no concrete references to Maslow’s theories. He doesn’t seem to recognise the condition of lower level needs to be met for people to aspire to those of higher level. McGregor simply separates workers into different groups

theory, i.e. “he observed that the motivation factors on people at work are different not