What is Theory X? What is Theory Y?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Theory X includes the following leadership and managerial assumptions:
• The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid work if possible.
• Because of the dislike for work, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, or
threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement
of objectives.
• The average human being is self-centered, prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid
responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and wants security above all.
McGregor suggested that Theory X leaders and managers did not account for critical
factors associated with motivation. These factors include a few simple generalizations
about human beings. First, human beings are “wanting” animals. As soon as one need is
satisfied, it is replaced with another. Second, human needs are organized in a hierarchy of
importance. Third, a satisfied need is not a motivator of behavior. According to McGregor,
Theory X leaders and managers ignore these generalizations. They direct and control
through the exercise of authority.
Theory Y leaders and managers, on the other hand, operate with a different set of assumptions
regarding human behavior. Theory Y assumptions include the following:
• The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
• External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort
toward objectives. People will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives
to which they are committed
• Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.
• The average human being learns, under proper conditions, to accept as well as seek
responsibility.
• The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity
in the solution to problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
• Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average
human being are only partially realized.
Theory Y assumptions are dynamic rather than static, and they represent significantly different
implications for leadership and management than do Theory X assumptions. Theory Y
assumptions focus on human growth. Theory X leaders and managers blame followers and
workers for failure to achieve goals. Theory Y implies that poor productivity is more often the
result of poor leadership and management. Theory Y focuses on the integration of goals: the
creation of conditions through which members of a group or organization may achieve their own
goals as well as the goals of the enterprise. Thus, motivation, the potential for growth, the ability
to assume responsibility, and the readiness to work
toward individual as well as group goals are present in all people. The leader’s responsibility is
to recognize, harness, and channel these characteristics toward common goals by creating a
climate and methodology conducive to success.