MCGREGOR'STHEORY -X AND THEORY -Y

The management's action of motivating

human beings in the organisation,
according to McGregor, involves certain
assumptions, generalisations and
hypotheses relating to human behaviour
and human nature
McGregor has characterised these
assumptions in two opposite points,
Theory X and Theory Y.

 Theory X.
This is the traditional theory of human
behaviour.
McGregor has certain assumptions about
human behaviour.
Assumptions are as follows:

1). Management is responsible for

organising the elements of productive
enterprises-money, materials, equipment;
people-in the interest of economic ends.
2.) With respect to people, this is a process
of directing their efforts, motivating them,
controlling their actions, modifying their
behaviour to fit the needs of the
organisation.

3) Without this active intervention by

management, people would be passive
even resistant-to organisational needs.
They must be persuaded, rewarded,
punished, controlled, and their activities
must be directed. This is management's
task. We often sum it up by saying that
management consists of getting things
done through other people.

4) The average man is by nature indolent-he

works as little as possible.
5) He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility,
and prefers to be led.
6)He is inherently self-centered, indifferent
to organisational needs.
7) He is, by nature, resistant to change.
8) He is gullible, not very bright, the ready
dupe of charlatan and the demagogue.

 Theory Y. The assumptions of Theory Yare described by

McGregor in the following words:
1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work
is natural as play or rest. The average human being does
not inherently dislike work. Depending upon controllable
conditions, work may be a source of satisfaction or a
source of punishment.
2. External control and the threat of punishment are not
the only means for bringing about effort towards
organisational objectives. Man will exercise self direction
and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is
committed.

3) Commitment to objectives is a function of the

reward associated with their achievement. The
most significant of such awards, e.g. the
satisfaction of ego and self-actualisation needs,
can be direct product of effort directed towards
organisational objectives.
4) The average human being learns under proper
conditions not only to accept, but to seek
responsibility. Avoidance of responsibility, lack of
ambition, and. emphasis on security are
generally consequences of experiences, not
inherent human characteristics.

 5. The capacity to exercise a relatively

high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and
creativity in the solution of organisational
problems is widely, not narrowly,
distributed in the population.
6. Under the conditions of modern
industrial life, the intellectual potentialities
of the average human being are only
partially utilised.