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Security Management
home page > Unit 7: Motivating!
Theory X and Theory Y (Douglas McGregor, 1960)
- managers' assumptions about people, especially employees influence how work is structured and the employee-management relationship.
- Theory X:
average person dislikes work, will avoid it if possible, so they must be coerced, controlled,, threatened, and punished to get them to perform -- not even promises of rewards will work. Average person wants to be directed, avoid responsibility, and has little ambition -- security is most important - Theory Y:
working hard is as nature as playing, so work may be source of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Individuals don't have to be controlled or threatened: they'll show self-direction and self-control to meeting objectives to which they are committed. people will normally seek responsibility. and most have the capacity to exercise imagination, ingenuity and creativity. - Given these descriptions, how do you think the two types of managers would view workers and how to motivate them?
Yet
another example of how you can't compartmentalize parts of management
"firms or managers will invariably think about their customers,
clients and suppliers with the same assumptions they apply to
their employees. ... individuals who accept Theory X as a premise
for human behavior tend to hold negative and cynical views toward
almost everyone. Theory X managers, for example, consider native
feedback from customers as disengenuous or habitual and ignore
important information. Theory X firm owners and managers may
not see the value of pursuing excellence in service and generally
may not find value in intrinsic rewards for delivering a quality
product or service."
- Scanlan
(1973) says that managers motivate in fundamentally different
ways depending on which theory they embrace:
- X: blame employees for shortcomings in earnings, try to learn "tricks" to motivate workers, emphasize catching errors, mistakes, and threaten or punish, keep very tight control over them, with narrowly defined tasks.
- Y: accept responsibility when they don't meet goals, try to motivate by seeking better ways to organize tasks, give recognition and rewards ,and try to upgrade skills. Give workers responsibility, some latitude, and try to capitalize on their distinctive skills and backgrounds. "In effect, Theory Y managers motivate individuals by meeting their basic psychological job-related needs" such as variety, respect from coworkers, latitude, desirable future.
- "This concept is easy to apply to private security firms. To allow their natural motivation do develop, employees must be given a level of responsibility that they can manage, appropriate freedom from supervision, a change to develop and improve their skills, and recognition and rewards. Poor performance and mistakes need to be dealt with by supervisors, but negative reinforcement should not the the primary tools to direct employees. Excessive reliance on negative reinforcement, punishment, verbal admonishments, and so on, will motivate employees to duck responsibility, become skilled at covering their backsides, and pass blame up the chain of command. In effect, excessive reliance will create a negative work environment in which employees will spend their ingenuity and creativity on minimizing rather than maximizing their contributions to the agency's objectives."
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory:
According to Maslow, people naturally try to fulfill their basic
needs, and seek opportunities to meet those needs. Employers
can motivate employees by giving them opportunities in the workplace
to meet those needs. The needs are hierarchical -- lower ones
must be met before they will try to meet higher-order ones:
- physiological: food, shelter, clothing
- security: both economic and physical.
- social: the workplace may be
one's primary opportunity to meet social goals. "An employee
can achieve social needs in the workplace only if accepted as
part of the work group's social system."
- company can help by a formal socializing process that emphasizes corporate values and principles.
- psychological: these are met by receiving status, recognition, personal prestige. Managers can tap this by giving employees more discretion, responsibility and trust-- through promotions or other recognition. Egotistical managers may have a hard time providing this kind of support, because they need excessive recognition themselves.
- self-fulfillment needs: these are the highest. People seek to grow in skills and ability and capacity to contribute to greatest extent. May be difficult to offer these opportunities in a security firm only offering lowest level services (for example, a guard who wants to progress may become bored simply watching monitors, do it more sporadically.
Reading:. pp. 211-222