Theory X, Theory Y

Theories X and Y were developed by Douglas McGregor to indicate the two major belief systems managers held about the basic nature of workers under their supervision. Descriptions of the two differing concepts of supervisor attitudes and discussion of the positive effects of adopting the human approach to management of Theory Y were discussed in his classic work, The Human Side of Enterprise.

McGregor's definitions of the two theories came from the analysis of manager behavior in many business organizations during the 1950s. McGregor concluded that manager beliefs about employees' attitudes toward their jobs affected the productivity of those workers. Supervisors who believed their employees were lazy, uncommitted, and needed coercion to force them to perform their duties were defined as Theory X managers. Productivity was not optimal in those groups. Other supervisors who believed their employees were interested in work, sought responsibility, and were committed to helping the organization succeed were identified as Theory Y managers. Productivity of these groups was usually maximized.

McGregor characterized the Theory X supervisor as one who believed in traditional authoritarian scientific management principles: (a) The average person has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if possible; (b) because they dislike work, people must be coerced, controlled, directed, and threatened with punishment to get them to put forth effort necessary to accomplish the organizational objectives; (c) the average person prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and desires security above all else.

Supervisors who established meaningful and productive relationships with their workers McGregor labeled Theory Y managers. Their beliefs about employees were: (a) The expenditure of mental and physical effort in work is as natural as play or rest; (b) if committed, employees will exercise self-direction and self-control to achieve objectives for the organization; (c) worker commitment to accomplishing objectives is connected with the rewards associated with achievement, two of which are ego satisfaction and selfactualization; (d) the average person not only learns to accept responsibility, but actually seeks it; (e) the capacity to engage in creative acts using imagination and ingenuity is distributed widely throughout the population and not just among a few special people; and (f) present organizations are designed to tap into only a small percentage of potential available in the population.

McGregor wanted to demonstrate that the principles of scientific management were ineffective, but even more, he wanted to advance new understandings of management concerns such as motivation, an internal force not dependent on external factors of authority or coercion; employee evaluation procedures; and the structure of employee compensation plans. Theory Y included a fourth element, integration, the concept that the needs of the organization could be met as well as the needs of the individual. Integration was a most important consideration for changing the behavior of both supervisors and workers because the human approach to supervision significantly increases worker levels of commitment to the organization and their productivity. This idea was not considered possible or important by the practitioners of scientific management. McGregor defined the concepts as theories to encourage additional study, analysis, and development of his ideas, and in this endeavor, he was highly successful. Not only did his work receive wide recognition for its significance in understanding principles of successful management, his models provided a large portion of the theoretical underpinning for the field of organizational development and the emphasis on human resource management practiced in most organizations for 30 years prior to release of his ideas. As awareness of the significance of these theories grew, managers reduced their adherence to the concepts of scientific management that had been promoted by Frederick Taylor a generation earlier.

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