Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y in organizational motivation

¶ … Theory X and Theory Y brought, and how this affected management science\'s way of understanding motivation in the workplace. Also, address the ways in which Theory X and Theory Y asked questions and conducted research, and analyze how the approaches differed from those that preceded X and Y. Provide at least one seminal reference and two peer-reviewed articles to support your ideas.

The response to the questions related to the management science\'s Theory X & Y that emerged in the 1960s proposes four points to address the different components of the prompt that was given. The first point mentioned is that Douglas Mcgregor was the first to consider the human element of the workforce and how the individual motivations of employees could affect performance measures from a variety of perspectives. The response highlights briefly the implications that employee motivation could have on an organization\'s structuring as well as briefly introduces some of the implications for future research. Although the response does touch on many of the contributions of the theory, it does not fully illustrate the extent of the contribution that the consideration of employee motivations had on the development of the field.

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Theories X & Y represent two theories that are opposites in relation to how they account for the motivation to work whereas theory X states that workers are not intrinsically motivated to perform work in their role in the organization, while theory Y took the opposite stance by stating that workers were in fact intrinsically motivated and could operate independently and without significant supervision. Although the response touches briefly on how this builds upon Maslow\'s famous psychological theory, it does not fully illustrate that connection, which is vital to understanding the later developments in the field. For example, employees who are motivated to work to meet their most basic of needs in the hierarchy would likely be focused on the transactional nature of the employment arrangement and the compensation they receive as opposed to their individual contributions to the organization\'s broader objectives.

By contrast, employees who are seeking to fulfill higher level needs may be intrinsically motivated to provide their best performances without being directly coerced by transactional rewards or punishments. The previous attempts to study organizational effectiveness in the field did not begin with the employees\' internal motives and how these motives could influence job design or organizational structures. However, virtually all theories related to organizational performance that followed this innovative perspective somehow dealt with the role of motivation in their models.

For example, some of the leadership models that followed include models such as trait theory, situational theory, transformational leadership, behavioral theory, competencies theory, network theory of leadership and many more which all offered alternate views as to how an organization might optimize their employees\' performances (Turner & Muller, 2005). Furthermore, beyond the leadership model, likeability and positivity display by the leaders or managers in an organization were also influential psychological factors that have been argued to be important to employees (Bergman, Westerman, & Daly, 2010). Before the Theory of X & Y introduced the role of employee motivation into the organizational performance equation, this crucial element necessary to explain how individual performance contribute to collective objectives.

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