Theory X and Theory Y of Douglas McGregor:

Introduction:

This article is going to be based on the motivational theories that have followed by the
organizations to motivate their employees. Even though, several theories have been
newly found the traditional and the famous Theory X and Theory Y of Douglas
McGregor is still famous even today. The advantage of this theory is that it compares and
contrasts two different opinions those are opposite sides of the coin. That is, any
organization can follow either theory X or theory Y and they can't pretend to follow both.
It is a normal human attitude in the psychological perspective that he always expects to
be taken care and motivated. Even though, the organization focus on self motivation, but
still they have not succeeded hundred percent in that. Self-motivation can occur only after
high experience and passing through lot of problems and learning using the failures. So
for any newly joined employee, he should always be motivated and the company should
know the way of getting the maximum output from him and for that that should be
standard set of inputs or the internal and external environmental factors should facilitate
him or motivate him to reach the stage where he'll be a money cow continuously
producing more for the company.

Here, the organization we are going to study is Muddle Corporation, where they are
suffering due to high financial problems, planning cost cutting, freezing employee salary
and are highly affected due to the lethargic and lazy attitude of the employees. More over
they are also facing problems due to excessive wastage of their resources by the
employees like sitting in internet for their personal use for a very long time.

This theory is mostly followed in some of the automobile companies. This study is
particularly suitable for very large manufacturing companies because the production,
operations, and the number of employees in these companies or quite large and it become
very difficult to control and coordinate the activities of the employees. The managers find
it very difficult to individually monitor the activities of a particular employee, understand
their problems and take steps to motivate them because that'll be quite a lot of functional
units or production units and in each section of the unit that will be thousands of
employees working. So, if he has to study each and every employee it will take at least a
year for him.

Mostly, in such old companies the employees get involved in a lot of physical work and
strain like the employees of coal mines or huge bottling unit or car production unit or
steel cooling unit, they have two put in a lot of physical work and at times they get lot of
physical strain and get de motivated. In these cases, sometimes they start to hate they
work. That is the dislike doing it, continue to work without any motivation goals.

The main business strategies followed here are,

Going as per the rules book

Several rules are laid and the employees and they are asked to follow these rules. They
are monitored whether they are following or not. Discipline can be laid only by the rules
and regulations. When they are not met, these rules are enforced by punishments. They
should not be allowed to use Social networking sites with in the company and if found
using, they should be punished severely.

Suggestions to improve this

Even do, several rules were laid sometimes they are also human beings and some
exceptions to happen. For example if the employees should wear uniforms daily to their
factory and if a particular employee can't ware due to unavoidable circumstance like his
uniform gets damaged, then in those situations which are exceptional they can be
forgiven.

Using an excellent enterprise resource planning software or a human resource

management software using which all operations can be monitored and stored in a
database like, the number of days and employee is absent or failure to follow a rule, and
so on. When, the employee fails in certain aspects, and continues to repeat the mistake,
then in those cases punishment is the only solution. The punishment should not be very
severe and it can be like cutting is salary for a particular day or suspension for a week or
so on. Only in case he continues to repeat the mistake again and again they can think
about dismissing him from the firm.

Since, these employees are mostly not much educated. They should be clearly taught all
the principles of the organization. These peoples mostly resist the change and are not
ready to accept any change because sometimes they don't understand the importance of
that.
In these cases, the change has to be forced on them, if they are not ready to accept it.
By connecting meetings and explaining the situation to them is the first step and even
though they are not ready to accept the change, then the only way is to force them to
follow the rule or else go for punishment.

Since, most of these work involved in a manufacturing sectors are lot of hardship and bad
environmental condition certain effort can be taken to improve the working condition.
The employees get a fear of the life because they might work with hot chemicals or
burning Furnace or very difficult condition. Efforts can be taken to improve their safety
and security standards like offering them very good uniforms that a very much resistant
to fire or chemicals and offering them gloves with steel petals in them, preventing cutting
of the fingers when working with machines like lathe cutters.

Here they have a fear of loosing job and salary. This can be avoided by explaining to
them the current situation and giving a positive scope to them stating that the current
situations can be over come by only cooperation and willing to work. The meetings
should be made compulsory to share their views and how the problems are going to be
met.

They should be given some primary education and to think laterally when they are not
educated. They are mostly self-centered and only way to overcome this is to organize
outside parties and the events where they get to know about other fellow employees,
share knowledge, understand their problems so that they will come out of self-centered
thinking or focusing always about them. They should be clearly taught that they've
growth only depends upon the growth of the firm.

Conclusion
Thus, the theory X of Douglas McGregor was explained clearly and focus was laid on
way that suit that particular type of organization like production companies or
manufacturing companies or companies that involves a lot of physical work. Suggestions
were given how the process can be still improved further to achieve more productivity
and then more profit to over come the current situations.

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