A major limitation of the classical approach to management was failure to analyze the human element. While some innovators in the early 1900s noted that human factors had a direct bearing on company efficiency, it was not until the 1950s that behavioral scientists paid attention to the work and management experience, shedding light on four major areas: human nature and management, motivation, work groups, and leadership.

Early in the 1950s, Douglas McGregor wrote what was later to be considered a landmark in management education, The Human Side of Enterprise. He described the conventional view of management in three broad propositions, based on five observations of human nature, as Theory X.

1. Management is responsible for organizing the elements of productive enter prise-money, materials, equipment, and people in the interest of economic gain.

2. With respect to people, this is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, and modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the organization.

3. Without the active intervention by management, people would be passive-even resistant to organizational needs. They must therefore be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled-their activities must be directed. This is management’s task-in managing subordinate managers or workers. We often sum it up by saying that management consists of getting things done through people. Less explicit, but widespread:

4. The average man is by nature indolent-he works as little as possible.

5. He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, and prefers to be led.

6. The average person is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs.

7. Most people are by nature resistant to change.

8. He is gullible, not very bright, the ready victim of the schemer.

McGregor believed that administration ranged from a “hard” or “strong” approach to a “soft” approach. Hard management was a force that bred counterforce: restriction of output, militant unionism, and antagonism. Soft management led to abdication and indifferent performance In the 1950s, the prevalent doctrine was to be “firm but fair,” like Teddy Roosevelt’s “speak softly but carry a big stick McCiregor also recognized certain human needs that Theory X management failed to take into account. These related to self-fulfillment, ego satisfaction, and the social needs of the individual. To meet these human needs in business, McGregor suggested a counterapproach to management, which he called Theory X.

Management is responsible for organizing the elements of productive enterprise in the interest of economic ends. People are not by nature passive or resistant to organizational needs. They have become so as a result of experience in organizations.

The motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming responsibility, and the readiness to direct behavior toward organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is the responsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize and develop these characteristics for themselves.

The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.

While Theory X, the conventional view, relies wholly on external control of human behavior, Theory Y relies on self-control and direction. McGregor believes that after generations of Theory X, Theory Y would have to be implemented slowly, but that parts of it are already successfully being used, including decentralization and delegation, job enlargement, participation and conductive management, and performance appraisal. Many writers have turned their attention to the nature of human behavior in relation to the management function. Implicit in the approaches of McGregor and others is the need to recognize and understand human behavior and motivation.

Psychologists generally believe that all behavior is motivated, that people have reasons for doing the things they do in the ways they do them. Motives are generally classified as primary, or unlearned, such as the need for food, water, and sleep; and secondary, or learned through society and the environment. For example, a deodorant is used not to exist but to be acceptable in society.

Though all human beings have the same primary needs, secondary or learned needs vary with social conditioning. The satisfaction of needs seems never to end. Once a need is satisfied another takes its place. Seldom does one have only a single need at a time, and needs vary in intensity from time to time and person to person. Abraham Maslow constructed a framework that has been widely accepted for analytical purposes. His hierarchy of needs is based on two fundamental points:

1. Man is a wanting animal whose needs depend on what he already has. Only needs not yet satisfied can influence behavior; a satisfied need is not a motivator.

2. Man’s needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance. Once one need is satisfied, another emerges and demands satisfaction.

The hierarchy of needs is a useful tool in analyzing motivation. His wide base rising to a narrow and perhaps unattainable peak describes rather well the way we see the progression of need satisfaction. Although we may strive mostly to reach the upper levels of the hierarchy, the basics, hunger or thirst, bring us back down-at least for a time-from the quest for esteem. If we think of Maslow’s pyramid in connection with McGregor’s Theory Y, we can readily see how management can use need satisfaction or motivation to attain its goals. If needs are not satisfied through work, frustration may result in open or concealed action that will harm the organization. Frustration may bring out various responses: sublimation, repression, compensation, or rationalization. Sub limation is the finding of a substitute for the object desired. Repression is forcing the unsatisfied need down out of sight; Compensation is doing something else harder or better in order to ease the frustration. And rationalization is seeking “reasons” why a need should not be satisfied. The manager would do well to understand these responses and harness them in his approach to motivating action. The more a manager understands human nature, the greater his chance of success.