Theory X and Y

Douglas murray Mcgregor, a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the author of The Human Side of enterprise, gave the theory X and Y in which he  identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authority, direction and control or integration and self-control.

According to theory X, management assumes that the employees are lazy and don’t want to do work. In this system of management, the chance of employees actually willing to work is taken as nil and a requirement of closely supervising them at all times is felt. Management never questions itself but blames the employees for anything wrong and accordingly apply the so-called “get the work done” management techniques.

According to theory Y, management assumes that the employees are driven, ambitious and they know their responsibilities well. Employees are supposedly like to give back to the company and want to remain at the fore-front of problem solving. Management tries to bring out the best of the employees who are supposedly hindered by policies practiced by management.

Depending upon these two theories, we can have four possible scenarios in an organisation which are:

Type I	Lazy Employee	Theory X Manager
Type II	Good Employee	Theory X Manager
Type III	Lazy Employee	Theory Y Manager
Type IV	Good Employee	Theory Y Manager

Type I Scenario

According to my work-experiences, this situation leads to improper goal-setting and inappropriate action-plan, even worse execution and many delays in delivery of product. Although the employees are already lazy but upon that management does nothing to motivate them and ultimately it creates problems for both management and employees.

  

Type II Scenario

I have personal experience of this scenario. One of my seniors used to think of my team as unskilled-laborers and treat us without any consideration and thought to our structure of thought and problem-understanding capability. This led us to a difficult situation where we can't even communicate with our seniors because here even though we were hard-working and motivated, the perceptions of management dissuaded us from performing and demotivated us which lead to company’s loss of valuable resources, as our productivity went down because of undeserved destructive criticism and ultimately productivity of entire unit went down.

Type III Scenario

In this situation, even though employees are lazy, management thinks positive of them, tries to motivate them and always tries to bring them at par. Here, the positive attitude and beliefs of management are really put to test and their determination shapes the future of organisation.

Type IV Scenario

This situation is like a win-win for everybody. Both management and employees want to grow and take themselves to higher levels, it can be termed as the ideal condition for the organisation as far as internal environment is concerned as here everybody is motivated.

Taking all the four scenarios together, for the management to be of theory Y type is superficial but it has to become like that if it wants to get best out of the employees.