Leadership and Management styles in The devil wears Prada

Theory X & Y was officially expounded (and named) by Douglas McGregor, a social psychologist at MIT in the 1960s. His idea was that there are two fundamentally different styles of management. Theory X is an authoritarian concept where one assumes that individuals work reluctantly, without motivation. On the other hand, Theory Y is a libertarian concept where one assumes that people will perform beyond their duties if they are motivated and are dedicated to the overall goals set forth for them.

“The Devil Wears Prada” is a movie about a naïve, yet smart young woman named Andrea Sachs, and her journey to becoming a journalist. Andrea, also known as Andy, graduated from Northwestern University and interviewed for a job at Runway, a major fashion magazine in New York City. Being a simple young woman, Andy wasn’t necessarily up to speed with the fashion industry, but ended up landing the job. Miranda Priestly, editor in chief at Runway hired Andy because she was “different” from any of her previous assistants. If Andy worked as an assistant to Miranda for at least a year, she was under the impression that she could easily be hired as a journalist in the future. The only problem was

The film The Devil Wears Prada is about the personal transition of Andrea Sachs who is played by Anne Hathaway. In the film, Andrea seeks to get a job working for Miranda Priestly, the Editor in Chief of Runway Magazine, who is played by Meryl Streep. Runway is a fashion magazine, and although Andrea shares no interest in fashion or the fashion industry, she wants the job because she was informed that anyone that works for Miranda for a year without being fired will be given the chance to be promoted to a job position of their dreams. Since, Andrea aspires to be a journalist for The New Yorker; she believes that working for Miranda for a year and with Miranda's contacts, she will able to obtain her dream job. However, with Miranda's

Andy is in the fashion business, and what captivates women about the movie or book in particular is the glamourous culture in which the job is based.

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

Movies often depict a glimpse into the inner workings of organizations which are complex and fascinating entities that consist of a group of people, who work together. Analyzing how the characters, as individuals and groups, interact with one another allows for an understanding of “how people think, feel and act” within an organization, also referred to as the study of organizational behaviour. The movie The Devil Wears Prada, set at Runway fashion magazine in New York City, is the story of Andrea "Andy" Sachs, an aspiring journalist who gets the job that “a million girls would kill for”. She is hired as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly, the powerful and ruthless executive of the magazine. The job is her stepping stone into the

Theory X and Theory Y, developed by Douglas McGregor, grew out of opposition towards classical management methods. Classical management theorists, such as Fredrick Taylor, focused on scientific training and efficiency and did not account for personal and behavioral issues, such as management styles or job satisfaction. McGregor saw these deficiencies in the classical school of management which lead him to develop a theory of management that would factor the importance of the individual worker. If a manager could tap into the feelings and attitudes of their workers, then the manager would be able increase their employee’s motivation which would then increase production. McGregor’s theory viewed the employee as a person and not as a machine

For example, even though Andy plans of possibly getting a journalistic position at Runway Magazine, she went ahead and accepted the personal assistant position, which instead made her have to cater to the needs of Miranda at all times.

Miranda’s leadership style in The Devil Wears Prada is pitiless as she wants her employees to do everything she wants without questioning. She keeps them on toes and for sure this helps the organization to expand in the fashion world. Miranda is a leader quick witted and ruthless and she never accepted anything less than perfect from her employees (Ryan, N. 2007.pp 20)

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.

A smart but naive college graduate Andrea has a big dream to become a journalist. Looking for a job she finds herself in the office of Miranda Priestley, ruthless and cynical editor-in-chief of the high fashion magazine the Runway. Hundreds of girls would kill for that job but Andrea finds it all bizarre – people running around trying to please a woman who picks belts for dresses. However, smart and determined to keep this job she tries to fit into this organization where people are evaluated based on their shoes.

Douglas McGregor was a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He introduced a new motivational theory in his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’, stating that all workers were divided into two groups: Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X workers were lazy, irrational and unreliable, and were only motivated by money and threatened by punishment. Theory Y workers were able to seek and accept responsibilities and fulfil any goals given.

Leadership is a concept most people feel informed enough to discuss, but that few are truly educated sufficiently to comment on. Therefore, it is instructive to consider the leadership styles of people with very different approaches both to better understand the diversity underlying leadership, as well as to appreciate the effective and less effective strategies that underlie different leadership outcomes. For that reason, this essay will consider the styles of two leaders who are less visible in this highly contentious presidential election season: Jill Stein (the Green Party nominee) and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. The leadership styles of both are very different, yet they are aligned in the sense that both are outsider candidates struggling to gain momentum from a disaffected electorate. This essay begins with a theoretical discussion of leadership more generally and then turns to the two leaders as case studies, comparing and contrasting them and drawing conclusions about how they both work within the same public sphere and for putatively similar ends (i.e., gaining votes).

To grasp the identity performance of a fashion blogger one has to understand the meaning of identity for a fashion blogger herself. Chiara Ferragni of ‘The Blonde

In this philosophy there was a large focus on rules and lack of discretion, thus meaning that the main focus of this philosophy is high control (DeNisi & Griffin, 2014) . This theory of Human resource management is thought to be best suited for X-type workers according to the McGregor X and Y Theory (Robbins & Judge, 2013). Human Resource Managers who would use this viewpoint intend on increasing Productivity by forcing workers to abide by the rules of a strict script because the workers are considered to be lazy and lacked motivation therefore they are need to pushed to perform tasks and have to be forcibly directed to doing tasks the do not like (French & Rees,