McGregor maintained that there are two fundamental approaches to managing people. Many managers tend towards theory x, and generally get poor results.
Enlightened managers use theory y, which produces better performance and results, and allows people to grow and develop.
•Theory X Propositions:
A manager from the Directory holding to these would be inclined to believe and state that: On average the Next staffs want to work.
Tasks need to be well specified. Even then many need pushing and more direction and control so that they apply adequate effort towards what has to be achieved.
Indeed most people prefer to be directed. They do not really wish to carry the burden of responsibility indeed they tend to avoid this. They have little ambition and prefer a secure, steady life.
If such a thing occurs then Next’s manager would give close supervision and defines jobs and systems that structure how a worker allocates and applies their time. They place stress on workers being calculative.
The above statements are spin-offs from McGregor's originals but the sense remains the same. McGregor felt that such managerial views led to behaviours and organisational systems which relied on rewards, promises, incentives, close supervision, rules and regulations, even threats and sanctions all designed to control workers.
•Theory Y:
A Theory Y manager from Next tends to believe that:
- Given the right conditions for employees, their application of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as rest or play. Work is play, offers satisfactions and meaning.
- There are alternatives to reliance on external controls, pushing and threats - implied or real. These are not the only means for linking individual effort with organisational objectives. If people feel committed, they will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of the firm's objectives.
- Their objectives will complement the firm's and commitment is a function of the "intrinsic" rewards associated with their achievement i.e. not just extrinsic rewards/punishments.
- The Theory Y manager recognises the influence of learning. He/she believes that if the right conditions are created the average person learns not to accept and seek responsibility.
- The capacity to exercise imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organisational problems is widely not narrowly distributed in the work force
At Next the intellectual potential of the average person are only partially utilised. People are capable of handling more complex problems.
Like Herzberg and Maslow, Douglas McGregor carried out his research in the late 1950’s but his ideas continued to have a great influence. Most modern managers know about McGregor’s ideas. As a result of research into styles of management McGregor identified two types of managers — Theory X and Theory 1’ managers.
These two types of managers have different views about employee’s attitudes to work. A management style is the typical characteristics and behaviours of a manager over a period of time. Typically, their ideas will fall into the Theory X or the Theory Y category and this will shape the way that they manage. The Theory X manager will be inclined to be autocratic — telling employees what needs to be done, punishing and telling off when they step out of line, and giving rewards for conforming to requirements. The Theory Y manager will be more democratic, giving more responsibility to employees, and trusting them to work independently The Theory X manager is most likely to create acclimate based on simply meeting Maslow’s lower order needs, focusing on what Herzberg termed movement and hygiene factors. The Theory Y manager will seek to create opportunities for employees to be motivated through fulfilment of higher order needs and genuine motivators’.
•Frederick Herzberg:
Frederick Herzberg would not have seen fear as a motivating force. Herzberg’s ideas were very influential in the second half of the twentieth century in providing a useful rationale for workplace motivation. His essential message was that real motivation comes from within.
Herzberg’s ideas were a direct rejection of the Scientific Management ideas that prevailed at the start of the 20th century.
In the early years of the twentieth century, approaches to managing employees were radically different to those used by enlightened managers today The first few decades of the twentieth century saw the creation of an Industrial system in which machinery was seen as the predominant factor of production. Huge new industrial systems were created such as Henry Ford’s pioneering Ford Motor Company.
Ford was the ultimate control freak. He created a mass production system for producing cars in which ordinary workers did not have to think. They did not have to understand the processes that they were involved in — they simply had to follow routine manual operations. The role of the manager working in this system was to plan and control work and to give orders, while other employees were meant simply to carry out orders. The belief was that workers were only motivated by money
In his Two Factor Theory Herzberg identified:
A range of dissatisfies which can lead to bad feelings about work. These factors are ones, which surround the job — rather than the job itself. There are nine of these:
- Company policy and administration.
- Pay
- Working conditions.
- Relationships between different levels in the hierarchy
- Relationships at the same level in the hierarchy
- Management and supervisory practices.
- Unfair treatment.
- Feelings of inadequacy
- Impossibility of growth and development.
Herzberg regarded each of these factors to be important. He called them hygiene factors’ because if they are tended to carefully then employees will not be dissatisfied in their work. However, removing dissatisfies does not create motivation.
Motivation stems from a range of satisfiers or motivators. These are:
- Recognition of effort and performance.
- The nature of the job itself— does it provide the employee with the appropriate degree of challenge
- Sense of achievement.
- Responsibility
- The opportunity for promotion and improvement
On the basis of his research, Next suggests that jobs could be given more meaning if they incorporated elements of responsibility, a more creative use of abilities and opportunities for a sense of achievement.
Frederick Herzberg’s ‘Two factor Theory:
Frederick Herzberg carried out some important research into motivation. He identified a range of dissatisfies associated with the context and satisfiers associated with the content of jobs.
Dissatisfies include the following:
- Autocratic or arbitrary company policy and administration.
- Low pay.
- Poor working conditions.
- Antagonistic relations between different levels of employees.
- Unfriendly relationships within the hierarchy.
- Unfair management and supervisory practices.
- Unfair treatment of employees.
- Feelings of inadequacy.
•Impossibility of growth and development.
McGregor sees the potential to make organisations far more effective by unleashing the people who work for them. Organisations need to see themselves as interacting groups of people enjoying supportive relationships’ with each other.
Ideally, members of an organisation will see the organisation’s objectives as being personally significant to them.
Herzberg suggested that the existence of the above, to any great extent, would cause dissatisfaction which would, in turn, lead to absenteeism, poor levels of output, resistance to change and negativity in the workplace.
In contrast, Herzberg identified a range of satisfiers associated with the content of the work that would encourage motivation:
These are:
- Recognition of effort and performance.
- The nature of the job itself — does it provide the employee with the appropriate degree of challenge?
- Sense of achievement.
- Assumption of responsibility.
- Opportunity for promotion and responsibility.
Next may use some of these theories but are not likely to, as they would come up with there own ways of doing things and handling them.
