I am interested in Douglas McGregor because of his tremendous impact on what later became Total Quality Management. I am always interested to learn that a major thinker in management philosophy was a strong Christian with foundational beliefs. I am convinced that Douglas McGregor operated on those beliefs. The editors of the essays in McGregor's book, Leadership
and Motivation, include the following:
Doug's great grandfather set a standard for the McGregors as a Scotch Presbyterian minister, and his son, Thomas, made a living selling pianos and organs around Ohio, taking livestock for payment, and selling the livestock too. Not content with this, Thomas raised money from businessmen in Toledo to start a mission for transient laborers, with concern for their salvation as
well as providing shelter and food. His dream was to build homes for homeless men in each of the industrial cities around the Great Lakes. He died of pneumonia after digging a foundation for what later became the McGregor Institute in Detroit. Tracy McGregor, Thomas's oldest son (and Doug's uncle) continued his father's work and started many other philanthropies in the Detroit area and, in fact, helped Doug finance his graduate education.
I have no empirical data or stated confession from McGregor regarding his relationship with Jesus, but I offer the following passage written by McGregor's wife, Caroline, about McGregor which you may find in his book Leadership and Motivation: Doug's father became Director of the McGregor Institute in 1915. Family life revolved around this work – a chapel service every evening as well as the feeding and housing of as many as 700 men who were low on the totem pole of human dignity. Dad conducted service, played the organ, and Doug sometimes accompanied him on the piano, and Mother, who had a lovely contralto voice, occasionally sang. Both Doug and his brother worked in the office and at the desk out of school hours. Many of the staff were rehabilitated homeless men. Mother often had groups of the men for social evenings at the house.
Dad held strong religious beliefs, was a zealous Bible scholar and a lay preacher in his own right. As I look back on my first contacts with Doug's family, I am impressed with the deep concern for mankind, which Doug shared, and an equally deep pessimism in respect to man's potential goodness and strength, which Doug continued to challenge in his work and writings. It is significant that he chose to work with leaders in our society rather than the failures.
Although religion had a stern quality, there was a rich enjoyment of music by the entire family. Doug studied piano and "picked up" a number of other instruments.
He was a skilled accompanist and traveled during summer breaks with an evangelist. This is perhaps where he learned to sing Onward Christian Soldiers. Later, at Oberlin, he directed a church choir for extra income.
The evidence, above, is more than circumstantial. Douglas McGregor's upbringing and values contributed markedly to his management philosophy. He wrote The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960, and changed the way managers view their own assumptions and behavior. McGregor detailed and identified Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor meant Theory X to show how
managers thought and Theory Y to show how employees really think.
Theory X states that employees will not work if left to their own devices; employees are inherently bad and must be forced and coerced into work. Theory Y states that employees find work as natural as play and will work diligently to the firm's aims if the goals, beliefs, and values of the firm match their own. (Greater depth in the assumptions follow later in quoted passages
from The Human Side of Enterprise.) McGregor's famous theories are, I believe, the most quoted and the least read by management professors.
Management professors continually teach that there are Theory X and Theory Y employees. Not so. McGregor wrote that management erroneously believed people act as if they are Theory X, however, all people are Theory Y in belief.
Here is a series of quotations from McGregor:[1]
Theory X provides an explanation of some human behavior in industry. These assumptions [Theory X and Theory Y] would not have persisted if there were not a considerable body of evidence to support them. Nevertheless, there are many readily observable phenomena in industry and elsewhere which are not consistent with this view of human nature.
Such a state of affairs is not uncommon. The history of science provides many examples of theoretical explanations which persist over long periods despite the fact that they are only partially adequate. Newton's laws of motion are a case in point. It was not until the development of the theory of relativity during the present century that important inconsistencies and inadequacies in Newtonian theory could be understood and corrected.
The growth of knowledge in the social sciences during the past quarter century has made it possible to reformulate some assumptions about human nature and human behavior in the organizational setting which resolve certain . . . inconsistencies inherent in Theory X. While this reformulation is, of course, tentative, it provides an improved basis for prediction and control of
human behavior in industry (p. 35).
Regarding motivation: at the core of any theory of the management of human resources are assumptions about human motivation. Man is a wanting animal -- as soon as one need is satisfied, another appears in its place.
Human needs are organized in a series of levels – a hierarchy of importance.
A satisfied need is not a motivator of behavior.
When man's physiological needs are satisfied and he is no longer fearful about his physical welfare, his social needs become important motivators of his behavior. These are such needs as those for belonging, for association, for acceptance by one's fellows, for giving and receiving friendship and love.
Management knows today (1960) of the existence of these needs, but it often assumes quite wrongly that they represent a threat to the organization (p. 37). (emphasis mine)
Theory X explains the consequences of a particular managerial strategy; it neither explains nor describes human nature although it purports to (p. 42).
Assumptions of Theory Y:
1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
2. External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward organizational objectives. Man will exercise selfdirection and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.
3. Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.
4. The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.
5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
6. Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partially utilized (pp. 47-48).
Theory X offers management an easy rationalization for ineffective organizational performance -- it is due to the nature of the human resources with which we must work. Theory Y, on the other hand, places the problems squarely in the lap of management. If employees are lazy, indifferent, unwilling to take responsibility, intransigent, uncreative, or uncooperative, then Theory Y implies that the causes lie in management's methods of organization and control (p. 48).
The central principle of organization which derives from Theory X is that of direction and control through the exercise of authority -- what has been called "the scalar principle." The central principle which derives from Theory Y is that of integration -- the creation of conditions such that the members of the organization can achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts toward the success of the enterprise. These two principles have profoundly different implications with respect to the task of managing human resources, but the scalar principle is so firmly built into managerial attitudes that the implications of the principle of integration are not easy to perceive (p. 49).Acceptance of Theory Y does not imply abdication or "soft" management or "permissiveness." As was indicated above, such notions stem from the acceptance of authority as the single means of managerial control, and from attempts to minimize its negative consequences.
Theory Y assumes that people will exercise selfdirection and self-control in the achievement of
organizational objectives “to the degree that they are committed to those objectives." If that commitment is small, only a slight degree of self-direction and self control will be likely, and a substantial amount of external influence will be necessary. If it is large, many conventional external controls will be relatively superfluous, and to some extent self-defeating.
Managerial policies and practices materially affect this degree of commitment (p. 54). McGregor's other famous book, Leadership and Motivation (1966), is a collection of thoughts and concepts developed after The Human Side of Enterprise. McGregor writes that he was impressed with Joseph Scanlon's work. Scanlon is well known for his efforts in human resource management and benefit plan development. He is not well known for his beliefs on people management. His work mirrors that of McGregor.
McGregor on Scientific Management
Despite protests to the contrary, the approach of scientific management has been to treat the worker as a "hand" rather than a human being. The consequences of so doing have been attributed to the "natural" cussedness (meanness) of workers and explained as the price of technological efficiency.
Pleasant working surroundings and fringe benefits have been used to alleviate the negative aspects of assembly-line jobs. Fancy communications programs and Madison Avenue sales gimmicks have been used to persuade the worker of the vital importance of his tiny contribution to the enterprise.
These are understandable but largely ineffective palliatives. However, work simplification and all the other paraphernalia of the industrial engineer -- consistent with a view of the worker as a glorified machine tool -- remain the commonly accepted way to utilize human effort in industry.[2]
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