Theory X and Theory Y

What motivates employees to go to work each morning? Many people get great satisfaction from their work and take great pride in it. Others may view it as a burden, and simply work to survive.

heory X and Theory Y was an idea devised by Douglas McGregor in his 1960 book “The Human Side of Enterprise”. It encapsulated a fundamental distinction between management styles and has formed the basis for much subsequent writing on the subject.

Theory X assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working, and this encourages an authoritarian style of management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things done. This style of management assumes that workers:

• Dislike working.
• Avoid responsibility and need to be directed.
• Have to be controlled, forced, and threatened to deliver what's needed.
• Need to be supervised at every step, with controls put in place.
• Need to be enticed to produce results; otherwise they have no ambition or incentive to work.

 Theory Y is a participative style which assumes that people would exercise self-direction and self-control in order to achieve the organization's objective.it is believed that employees would remain committed to their jobs and it's management's task to maximize that commitment.