User:Scout26/Douglas McGregor

An outline of the changes that should be made:


 * Move the 'Personal Life' section to above the 'Legacy' section instead of in between to two big sections about his career
 * Add the concepts of Theory X and Theory Y; not in detail but an introduction to them because the article talks about them but never states what they mean
 * Add some of the previous management theorists that influenced the ultimate definition of his theories
 * His death should be included in 'Personal Life'
 * 'Legacy' should include a little bit more information about the influence his theories have had not just on business but in business school curriculum
 * Add a picture of him

The Human Side of Enterprise[edit]
In the book The Human Side of Enterprise, McGregor identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative direction and control or integration and self-control, which he called theory X and theory Y, respectively. Having an attitude that workers generally lack motivation, enjoyment, and responsibility in their work is a manager that subscribes to Theory X. Having an attitude that workers are content, motivated, and long for responsibility is manager that subscribes to Theory Y.  He is responsible for breaking down previous management styles with The X and Y Theory which created a new role for managers to assume. Theory Y is the practical application of Dr. Abraham Maslow's Humanistic School of Psychology, or Third Force psychology, applied to scientific management.

He is commonly thought of as being a proponent of Theory Y, but, as Edgar Schein tells in his introduction to McGregor's subsequent, posthumous (1967), book The Professional Manager: "In my own contacts with Doug, I often found him to be discouraged by the degree to which theory Y had become as monolithic a set of principles as those of Theory X, the over-generalization which Doug was fighting....Yet few readers were willing to acknowledge that the content of Doug's book made such a neutral point or that Doug's own presentation of his point of view was that coldly scientific".

Graham Cleverley in Managers & Magic (Longman's, 1971) comments: "...he coined the two terms Theory X and theory Y and used them to label two sets of beliefs a manager might hold about the origins of human behaviour. He pointed out that the manager's own behaviour would be largely determined by the particular beliefs that he subscribed to....McGregor hoped that his book would lead managers to investigate the two sets of beliefs, invent others, test out the assumptions underlying them, and develop managerial strategies that made sense in terms of those tested views of reality. "But that isn't what happened. Instead McGregor was interpreted as advocating Theory Y as a new and superior ethic – a set of moral values that ought to replace the values managers usually accept."

The Human Side of Enterprise was voted the fourth most influential management book of the 20th century in a poll of the Fellows of the Academy of Management.

Personal life
He got married at age 19. McGregor was very close to Abraham Maslow. In class, he had a very relaxed teaching style which led his students to enjoy his classes. He would often put his feet up on the desk and lecture at the same time. In 1964, McGregor died at the age of 58 in Massachusetts. McGregor died suddenly, age 58, in Massachusetts.

Legacy
Since the mid-1950s, Procter & Gamble used Theory X and Theory Y to set up plants in Augusta, Georgia, even hiring McGregor to help. Warren Bennis, leadership expert, researcher, author, and educator, said of McGregor, "Just as every economist, knowingly or not, pays his dues to Keynes, we are all, one way or another, disciples of McGregor."

In 1964, the School of Adult and Experiential Learning at Antioch College was renamed the "McGregor School" in his honor. It was later renamed "Antioch University McGregor" and then "Antioch University Midwest." The Douglas McGregor Memorial Award was founded in 1966 in McGregor's honor to recognize a leading paper published in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.