Douglas McGregor, a social psychologist, and professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studied the work environment during the Depression, World War II, and the booming prosperity of the 1950s. McGregor’s 1960 publication, The Human Side of Enterprise, summarized the results of his research and added Theory X and Theory Y management concepts to the manager’s toolbox.
The Reason for Theory X
A Theory X manager believes that people hate to work, they need to be closely watched and controlled. This approach was developed by Industrial Age managers from the 1880’s.
Consider the Industrial Age working conditions. Assembly-line factories were brutal, characterized by scant light, poor ventilation, unsafe and unsanitary working conditions. Some workers had to relieve themselves at their workstations.
Many of the factory workers were recently arrived immigrants, with no industrial work skills and limited ability to read or write English. Many were children. No wonder they had to be coerced and threatened to keep up their productivity!
“Without this active (Theory X) intervention by management, people would be passive—even resistant—to organizational needs. They must therefore be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled—their activities must be directed”
McGregor wrote his book because the continuing use of Theory X management was destroying productivity in the post-war era. The working conditions in the factory have dramatically improved since the 1880s. Employees were no longer indolent carbon-based factory tools paid poverty wages. These are the workers that out-produced Germany and Russia to win World War II.
Sadly, many emergency service managers still depend on corrosive Theory X techniques to “manage” subordinates – the beatings will continue until morale improves.
How “bad” is Type X management
In the black-and-white world of vocational training and promotional exams, Theory X is bad and Theory Y is great, based on Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. An analysis of McGregor’s theories noted three changes that have occurred since 1960:
- Many workers find themselves in an environment that inspires neither satisfaction nor job loyalty
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory has more critics than supporters
- Research on human motivation no longer defines “creativity” simply as “innovation”
Management science research shows that Theory Y management has not produced measurable improvement in job performance, satisfaction or quality. (Bobic & Davis 2003)
Looking at management style, Richard Yu (Yu 2017) made this observation
The distinctions of (Theory X and Theory Y) actually act as an indicator for the increasing shifts in workplace management philosophies with respect to the role and needs of the individual employee across different generations.
Consider how Theory X’s strong control and use of external incentives such as a stable job and a paycheck emphasize the career over the individual.
The two most corrosive issues of Theory X Management
The most corrosive aspect is management’s feeling that workers are lazy. The process of providing employee oversight can quickly deteriorate into a hostile workplace, with the manager speaking to employees in a demeaning and belittling fashion.
The manager is not coaching or training the employee to perform better. The manager is comparing the “lazy” employee with the manager’s performance at the equivalent point in his career.
Instead of providing training, the manager is micromanaging and tightly controlling job tasks. Claiming that the employee lacks the experience, skill or intellectual capacity to independently complete the job task.
Coaching The Corrosive Theory X Manager
The manager’s boss can respond to these issues by performing a one-to-one with the manager to analyze their preconceptions, identify performance measurements and require supervisory activities to change this manager’s behavior.
It appears that corrosive Theory X managers are unaware of the impact their behavior has on the organization. For example, an ambulance service expanded its service with a new contract before they finished hiring additional caregivers. That required the use of per-diems and overtime to meet the contract requirements.
No one signed up to cover the vacancies on the corrosive Theory X manager’s shift. On the other shifts, the EMS Supervisors did a lot of persuasions and approved flexible assignments to keep the agency in contract compliance.
When this situation was reviewed by the EMS Administrator, the corrosive Type X EMS Supervisor said this was caused by lazy caregivers not wanting to work additional hours and the other supervisors doing “sweetheart deals.” The corrosive supervisor could not conceive that his managerial behavior was the root cause of this issue.
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Factory photo from Working Conditions During the Industrial Revolution
McGregor, Douglas (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill
Baime, Albert J. (2014) The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm An American At War. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Maslow, Abraham (1954) Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.
Bobic, MP & Davis WE (2003) A Kind Word for Theory X: Or Why So Many Newfangled Management Techniques Quickly Fail. Journal of Public Administration and Theory. (13)3, 239-264.
You RK (2017) Keys to Management Style, Communication, and Workplace Efficiency. Medium.com. Accessed June 30, 2019 https://medium.com/swlh/keys-to-management-style-communication-and-workplace-efficiency-f3238da3f9d2
Feature Image: Staged photo for Company Officer: Scope and Practice, 3rd edition