The Human Side Of Enterprise

Buchanan, A. H. (2001). Organizational Behaviour:An Introductory Text (4 ed.). (F. T. Hall, Ed.) Pearson Education.

McGregor first published his ideas in his book, The Human Side of Enterprise. One of the experiences he had that influenced his thoughts was from work that he did at his grandfather’s establishment for temporary workers in Detroit. Because he was a close acquaintance of Abraham Maslow, who developed “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” McGregor wished to counter the scientific approach on management (“Douglas McGregor,” 2008) and named Theories X & Y.

This book identifies three standards of employees which each may require a different method of leadership form the same leader. These employees

Human Relations is defined as “the skill or ability to work effectively through and with other people” by Lamberton, L. H., & Minor, L. (2014) . However, there are external and internal influencing forces regarding human behavior that impact how we interact with others or behave in the workplace. It is vital for all employees in a company (regardless if they work in the Human Relations Department or) to be aware of influencing factors so they can not only be successful with their performance, but be successful as a team and help bolster the company’s successes. Some of the most important influencing factors are organizational climate/culture, work/life balance, Supervisor/Management, conflict/resolution, job performance/responsibility, and personal characteristics.

Knights, D. & Willmott, H. 2007. Introducing organisational behaviour and management. Australia : Thomson, 2007, pp. 344-372.

The above model draws form ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Understanding and Managing Life at Work, EIGHTH EDITION by Gary Johns and Alan Saks and has been trifurcated stage wise in relation to the game, Forbidden Island.

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 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

This leadership style bases itself on McGregor’s Theory X, that regards team members to be careless and disliking work, assumes they attempt to avoid work as much as possible, and are in need of guidance from their leader.

To understand the problem of worker motivation we must understand Capitalism. Capitalism involves conflicts of interests between management and workers. According to Knights and Willmott (2012) Marxism is when workers are described as a ‘social animal rather than a self-seeking individual’. They further state that production is motivated by the ‘pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital’. This shows that managers are more interested in profit than workers needs. Similarly Taylor states that motivation comes from money and profit for management, whereas workers would want higher wages, thus suggests a conflict in capitalist society (Knights and Willmott, 2012). This conveys the importance of capitalism in regards to motivation in society and how workers are not seen as humans. Though in a modern society, Taylorism is viewed out-dated because workers are no longer motivated by just financial incentives, they are after

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.

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.

Bloisi, W., Cook, C. & Hunsaker, P.(2003). Management and Organisational Behavior: European Edition. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education

References:Huczynski, A. A. and Buchanan, D. A. (2007) Organizational behaviour: An introductory text. 6th ed., Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.

2007). Kermally (2005, p.36) explain that McGregor believed ‘how managers manage people in practice depends on what assumptions they make about workers’. It means that which kind of leadership managers choose, according to how managers perceive workers’ attitudes toward their job. Managers believe their workers related to Theory X and Y normally use strict supervision approaches to reduce workers’ control on their job, in contrary, managers allow workers to be innovative and willing to authorise more responsibility to Theory Y workers (Waddell et al. 2007).