Douglas Mcgregor's Theory Y On Managerial Thinking And Behavior

The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), A professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, president of Antioch College but Douglas McGregor was most famous for his Theory X and Theory Y, assumptions about motivation and human behaviour in the workplace particularly from administrative and leadership perspectives. McGregor practiced organisation/management consulting along with Richard Beckhard and played a major role in founding what we know today as organisation development. The Paper discusses McGregor's conceptualisation of Theory Y. What has been the impact of Theory Y on managerial thinking and behaviour since 1960? Is Theory Y merely an interesting idea that had a small impact or has Theory Y changed the course of how management works?

McGregor stresses that the traditional management style was more of power control and use of authority where the managers acted like they possessed the right of kings. McGregor (1960, p. 33) was attempting to modernise managers' thinking and change the idea “Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behaviour” into consensual decision making eventually a participative environment. because of this participative type of management McGregor defines Theory Y as “ An integration of individual and organisational goals” McGregor also suggest that participative management can be practiced in a variety of way and there no particular guideline to be followed.

The paper further provides a glimpse into the differences and similarities between Theory X, Y and a conceptual model developed by Argyris (1971) that combined assumption with management style. While McGregor’s was more of assumptions which weren’t linked to

All types of status differences seem to be minimised. Participative management and shared decision making seem to be the way of running the company. These are typically the reason to why the participative system was very successful. when people are involved in decision making and when new responsibilities are shared they’re internally motivated to work. When there is minimised difference in status there a new level of transparency and better relationships amongst the workers. Probably that is why the quoted example says “Absenteeism was less than 1 percent, and productivity had exceeded original expectations” (King,