Management Practices

Maslow Hierarchy of needs

McGregor Theory X Y
Born in 1906, in Detroit, and died in 1964, in Massachusetts. He was the first full time professor of Psychology at MIT University. In 1960, he wrote the book The Human Side of Enterprise, where he identifies and develops his renowned Theory X and Theory Y.

His Theory
Theory Y and Theory X are theories of human motivation that have been used for human resource management, organizational behaviour and organizational development. They describe two very different attitudes toward workforce motivation, and are based upon Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in that he grouped the hierarchy into "lower order" (Theory X) needs and "higher order" (Theory Y) needs. He suggested that management could use either set of needs to motivate employees

Theory X
The role of management is to coerce and control employees: People have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible. People must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment in order to get them to achieve the organizational objectives. People prefer to be directed, do not want responsibility, and have little or no ambition. People seek security above all else.

Theory Y
The role of management is to develop the potential in employees and help them to release that potential towards common goals: Work is as natural as play and rest. People will exercise self-direction if they are committed to the objectives (they are NOT lazy). Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement. People learn to accept and seek responsibility. Creativity, ingenuity, and imagination are widely distributed among the population. People are capable of using these abilities to solve an organizational problem. People have potential.

Theory Z
Theory Z is developed by William Ouchi, the name applied to the so-called "Japanese Management" style popularized during the Asian economic boom of the 1980s. It contasts with theories X and Y because it focuses on increasing employee loyalty to the company by providing a job for life with a strong focus on the well-being of the employee, both on and off the job.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Carrot and stick

People are self-interested and are motivated By the desire to avoid pain and find pleasure Any worker will work only if the reward is big enough, or the punishment sufficiently unpleasant

Murphys Law
If anything can go wrong, it will. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. Everything goes wrong all at once. Murphy's Constant - Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value Everything takes longer than you think. Every solution breeds new problems. The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.

Murphys Law
The

chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. You will always find something in the last place you look. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper. The other line always moves faster. Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought. Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work. In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence, and then remains there. Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening. Murphy's golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.