Theory X v/s Theory Y

Theory 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.

First let us understand what is the difference between Theory X and Theory Y and how it can be applied in our lives.

The underlying assumptions harbored by executive decision-makers drive an org’s processes/policies. And those processes/policies influence an org’s social and financial performance. 

 Theory X

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.

X-Type organizations tend to be top heavy, with managers and supervisors required at every step to control workers. There is little delegation of authority and control remains firmly centralized.
McGregor recognized that X-Type workers are in fact usually the minority, and yet in mass organizations, such as large scale production environment, X Theory management may be required and can be unavoidable.

Theory Y

Theory Y expounds a participative style of management that is de-centralized. It assumes that employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility. It assumes that workers:

• Take responsibility and are motivated to fulfill the goals they are given.
• Seek and accept responsibility and do not need much direction.
• Consider work as a natural part of life and solve work problems imaginatively.

This more participative management style tends to be more widely applicable. In Y-Type organizations, people at lower levels of the organization are involved in decision making and have more responsibility.

Comparing Theory X and Theory Y 

 

• Motivation
  Theory X assumes that people dislike work; they want to avoid it and do not want to take responsibility. Theory Y assumes that people are self-motivated, and thrive on responsibility.
• Management Style and Control
  In a Theory X organization, management is authoritarian, and centralized control is retained, whilst in Theory Y, the management style is participative: Management involves employees in decision making, but retains power to implement decisions.
• Work Organization
  Theory X employees tend to have specialized and often repetitive work. In Theory Y, the work tends to be organized around wider areas of skill or knowledge; Employees are also encouraged to develop expertise and make suggestions and improvements.
• Rewards and Appraisals
  Theory X organizations work on a ‘carrot and stick’ basis, and performance appraisal is part of the overall mechanisms of control and remuneration. In Theory Y organizations, appraisal is also regular and important, but is usually a separate mechanism from organizational controls. Theory Y organizations also give employees frequent opportunities for promotion.
• Application
  Although Theory X management style is widely accepted as inferior to others, it has its place in large scale production operation and unskilled production-line work. Many of the principles of Theory Y are widely adopted by types of organization that value and encourage participation. Theory Y-style management is suited to knowledge work and professional services. Professional service organizations naturally evolve Theory Y-type practices by the nature of their work; Even highly structure knowledge work, such as call center operations, can benefits from Theory Y principles to encourage knowledge sharing and continuous improvement.

 Similarly workers can also be of two types - 

1. Lazy worker Or Bad worker
2. Non-lazy worker Or Good worker

So we can  have 4 Manager-Worker combinations-

Implications of above 4 possibilities in an organization -
1st Quadrant - 
Worker is Lazy. But manager is motivated to work. In this case manager has to keep motivating the worker to work. The manager will try to understand what are the obstacle which are impeding the employee to work.


2nd Quadrant - 
Worker is Lazy. And manager is also feels that employees are not motivated to work.This is the worst possible scenarion for any organization. Such organizations cannot progress.

3rd Quadrant -
This is the best combination to work. Here both the worker and manager are happy and feel motivated to work. The organizations progresses to achieve its targets.

4th Quadrant - 
Worker is non-lazy. But manager feels that employees are not motivated to work. Such situation will create unrest among the workers in an organizations as any amount of work done the worker is not recognized by the manager. This will create a negative environment in the work place.

So the best possible situation is that in 3rd quadrant and worst possible situation is in 2nd quadrant.

My experience with X and Y managers -
 I have come across both X and Y type of managers. During my experience in a software company, my project manager was a Y-type manager. She helped us in our difficult situations and always tried to solve our concerns. I was motivated to work and to put in more efforts.
Also, I used to be very comfortable in discussing my concerns with her. This created an environment of positivity and the work didn't seem to be a burden.
Moreover, I was continuously made aware about the short term and long term goals of team and organization. I was involved in the decision making process in the team. This participative style of management was really appreciative.



At the same time my technical Lead was a X-type of manager. His continuous intervention in my work was very annoying. It made me feel agitated and I didn't felt like working when he was around. Such situations also aroused some rebellious attitude within me to not perform and finish my work.

So with my personal experience also I can say that organizations like software industries should try to nurture the Y-type of managers. This would create a conducive environment to work and everyone would get benefitted.

What type of manager am I-
I am a Y type of manager. During my work in a software company, I took training of my junior batches in a particular technology. I was awarded the best trainer award. Similarly in my team, I had 4 freshers working under me whom I trained and helped them to skill up according to project requirements. I used to coordinate the everyday activities between onshore and offshore. So during my appraisal I was given a very positive feedback about my attitude towards work and team handling skills.


 

Organization v/s Craftsmanship

It is fascinating to see that everything around us is made up of small blocks be it the Universe made up of Galaxies, Galaxies made up of Solar system, Solar system made up of planets or our human body made up of cell, molecules , organs. 
Similarly, though individual human beings can do the work which are required for individual sustainence still human beings come together to form organizations. So the question arises that what is the need of such organizations, what is the difference between an craftsmanship and organizations, the 3 E's of Organization etc. So in this blog I attempt to answer above questions. 

What is an Organization - 
Organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals.

Why do we need organizations - 

Organizations are required when we want to have economies of scale, profits, need to reach to the masses and so on. The concepts like scale, purpose, impact etc doesn't exist in case of a crafsmanship.

Below is the structure of a any Organization - 

So by looking at the above organization chart we can differentiate between Crafsmanship and Organization as below - 

Craftsmanship	Organization
Only one person doing all the job	More than one person do the job
No parallel processing of the work. Work is done serially	Parallel processing of the work is done.
Specialization in a each particular part of the work by craftsman is difficult	Smallest of the work being done by one person repeatedly. This is called specialization.
Dexterity is low. So time taken to complete a task is high.	Specialization leads to dexterity. As dexterity increases time decreases.
The whole work done by craftsman is black box. So how the job is done is known only to the craftsman.	The complete work is divided into different tasks and elements and the organization has complete knowledge about how each task is achieved.
Worker is the controller of all the tasks and elements	Non-worker i.e. the boss or manager is the controller of all the tsaks and activities.
The complete act  of doing the work is an act of skill i.e only that particular person has the skill to do that particular job	This is an act of deskilling. When we break the job into small parts skill required to get the work done is decreased.
Person based work	Process based work
Delegation of the work or replacement is not easy.	Delegation of the work or replacement is easy.
It has very simple structure.	It has very complex structure.
Worker has high satisfaction related to work.	It increases alienation towards work.So worker has lower level of satisfaction.

 Challenges in an Organizational structure:

  1. Workers in an organization feel alienated towards work.So worker has lower level of satisfaction. 

  Also the process of deskilling dehumanizes people. So have to remunerate the workers to keep them     motivated and satisfied.

2. As the levels of organization increases the channels of communication becomes complex. Also if the communication is not proper and effective then it can lead to chaos in the organization.

To demonstrate this our professor Dr. Mandi did one excercise. 

He asked one person to come up and create the tower of wooden blocks. 

 The rule were like below- 

1. It should be  single blocks tower.

2. Each movement of the block has to with a single block only. One cannot carry multiple blocks.

The person who came to create the tower could make the tower of 16 wooden blocks successfully.

Then professor Dr. Mandi asked a team of 7-8 people. The aim was same- to create a tower of wooden blocks.

But there was a twist in the rules this time -

1. There will be only one worker who can create the tower.

2. The worker will be blind-folded.

3. One person will give direct instructions to the worker.

4. The rest 6 people are senior managers who would also direct the worker from some farther distance.

This time the tower was created of only 8 blocks. 

 At the end of the activity we found the person who was the worker in the task about his feedback and his words were - there were too many voices from all directions that he couldn't concentrate on the work.

Learnings :

1.) Effect on Productivity - 

If the communication is not proper and effective in an organization then it can lead to chaos in the organization. There is considerable decrease in the productivity. Like in our case the number of blocks built decreased from 16 to only 8 blocks when we moved from craftsmanship to organizational structure.

2.) Loss of clarity -

 When a worker was made blindfold he was unable to see in which direction he is moving. And he was directed to work according to his supervisor's instructions. Similarly in an organization if a person doesn't has complete view of the organization he doesn't know that he is headed towards which direction. There no clarity about the vision, mission and direction of the organization. He is required to work as instructed by its supervisors which has a negative effect on the targets and overall health of the organization.

The 3 E's of Management- 

What should be the aim of an management. Even though there are some challenges and disadvantages in creating organizations, the organizations main objective is to achieve excellence. To achieve excellence, effectiveness and efficiency is required  in our actions.  Excellence, effectiveness and efficiency together make the 3 E’s of Management, and the co-relation between these three is as follows:

 

Excellence = Effectiveness x Efficiency

In other words it can excellence can also said -

 SPEED * DIRECTION

  In this equation, effectiveness corresponds to DIRECTION and Efficiency corresponds to SPEED.

Efficiency - Its a measurable quantity. It can be defined as the ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system.

“More out of less is Efficiency”

 Effectiveness- It is difficult to measure.  Effectiveness corresponds to DIRECTION i.e. Effectiveness means the direction in which our organization will move. Its more of a strategic and decision making function.

The decision like what is the right thing to do at a particular point of time. For example decision by Nokia to expand its losing mobile phone market with introduction of Nokia Lumia Windows phone was a Effectiveness decision taken by its management.

So, “More out of less for more is Excellence”

Aaj ki roti aaj kamaana

There are many firsts in our life. But some firsts are the ones most cherished about. NITIE gave me a plethora of those firsts, one among them being writing the blog for the first time. So this is a brief view of my first day experience in NITIE.

Like many other students, I also entered the class with mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness. I sat there expecting some professor to come and start lecturing but what I saw was a person who strolled down my class with jubilance like a small child and distributed some toys among the students to play. He took me back to my KG classes where we were allowed to play and enjoy in a class. I experienced two extremes in the class. At one end there were students playing around with the toys, clicking photos, making videos, passing the sponge balls around. And on the other end we were learning the quintessential lesson that we are here to LEARN TO EARN. Each day our stay at NITIE is worth Rs. 2500/- per day. So instead of procrastinating the things my agenda has to be
"AAJ KI ROTI AAJ KAMAANA". 
What a wonderful trigger to start the MBA journey. Just as a player learns cricket by holding the bat and practicing and not by learning the theories of cricket outside the field, so should I as an aspiring manager should learn to practice the teachings from the very first day. He introduced us to the concept of Student enterprises - The enterprises started and managed by the students. We also sang this jingle in unison  -
"SOCHO BECHO.. BECHO SEEKHO.. SEEKHO SOCHO...." - the perfect epitome of many management concepts.

He made us realize that if each one of the educated students wrote even 10 blogs about any subject it would form such a huge online library for those who cannot afford to go to such educational institutes. When I pondered deep about it, I exclaimed "What a thought !! "
I laughed  that ours so called hi-tech generation still doesn't know how to make the effective use of the advanced technology. If  even a few of us do that then it could change the complete face of education and fate of our country. So one of my learning was that we need to THINK BIG.

We have to empower ourselves and this we will not be for anyone else but for ourselves. Our every action should justify the Rs. 2500/- per day opportunity cost.

It reminded me of the lines of the poet Robert Frost : 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.