PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT: X & Y Theory of Douglas Mc Gregor

During the course the development of scientific management different scientists working in the management field left their footprints, which are still followed.  One of the prominent management expert was Professor Douglas Mc Gregor.

Approach adopted by Professor Douglas Mc Gregor was totally different at that time because he was a decisive advocate to the humanitarian thinking towards the workers & employees. 

This approach was pragmatic but was very contradictory during those early stages in the field of management. His view was to take the help of scientific principles & techniques for solving management based problems, related with workers & employees.  After a long study, proposed two different theories, known as X Theory & Y Theory.

Both the theories gained due importance for finding solutions to labor oriented problems. A summarization is given below:-

X Theory:  

This theory endorses that man is very selfish, neither ambitious nor adaptive to changes, not diligent, prepared to give very minimum effort towards work, runs away from responsibilities, and always emphasizes on security by nature, and does not visualizes and peruses the goals of the organization. Discussing the negative side of man, hence it is a negative theory.

So management should take stern action against workers, making them committed towards the achievement of organizational goal. if needs be then worker should be demoted and punished as well. Management must exercise strict control over worker’s action thereby trying to get the best effort from them. In this theory, Douglas Mc Gregor tried to establish that is was the only way to get work done by workers & employees.   

Y Theory:  

In this theory, a U-turn view regarding workers has been adopted. The workers capable, willing to perform, having ambition & hope, decisive & enterprising, and give as much as possible towards the attainment of pre planned organizational goals.

In this case the management has to make use of the willingness and capableness of workers & employees. Mostly workers are experienced should be motivated with incentives and fringe benefits to get the best possible result. Better conditions & opportunities must be provided to develop their education & skills. This theory is based on total positive aspect and hence it is a positive theory.  

X theory is based on negative & punishment features with centralization of power, for getting job done. At present time it has no utility and the theory has become redundant.

On the other hand, Y theory assimilates and supports appraisal, motivation, incentives & rewards, mutual understanding & cooperation between management & workers. The best part of this theory is that worker is a factor of production with human nature & feelings so should be persuaded willfully to give their best and achieve the organizational goals. This is the modern approach and is popularly in use.