CLASSIC
The Human Side
of Enterprise
Douglas McGregor
I
t has become trite to say that the most significant developments of the next
quarter century will take place not in the physical but in the social sciences,
that industry—the economic organ of society—has the fundamental know-how
to utilize physical science and technology for the material benefit of mankind,
and that we must now learn how to utilize the social sciences to make our
human organizations truly effective.
Many people agree in principle with such statements; but so far they represent a pious hope—and little else. Consider with me, if you will, something
of what may be involved when we attempt to transform the hope into reality.
I
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First published in Adventure in Thought
and Action, Proceedings of the Fifth Anniversary Convocation of the School of Industrial Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, April 9,
1957. Cambridge, MA: MIT School of Industrial Management, 1957; and reprinted in The Management Review, 1957,
46, No. 11, 22–28.
© 1966 by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. From Leadership and Motivation, Essays of Douglas McGregor, edited by
W. G. Bennis and E. H. Schein (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1966): 3–20. Reprinted
with permission.
Let me begin with an analogy. A quarter century ago basic conceptions of the
nature of matter and energy had changed profoundly from what they had been
since Newton’s time. The physical scientists were persuaded that under proper
conditions new and hitherto unimagined sources of energy could be made
available to mankind.
We know what has happened since then. First came the bomb. Then, during the past decade, have come many other attempts to exploit these scientific
discoveries—some successful, some not.
The point of my analogy, however, is that the application of theory in this
field is a slow and costly matter. We expect it always to be thus. No one is
impatient with the scientist because he cannot tell industry how to build a
simple, cheap, all-purpose source of atomic energy today. That it will take at
least another decade and the investment of billions of dollars to achieve results which are economically competitive with present sources of power is understood and accepted.
It is transparently pretentious to suggest any direct similarity between the
developments in the physical sciences leading to the harnessing of atomic energy and potential developments in the social sciences. Nevertheless, the analogy is not as absurd as it might appear to be at first glance.
To a lesser degree, and in a much more tentative fashion, we are in a position in the social sciences today like that of the physical sciences with respect to atomic energy in the thirties. We know that past conceptions of the
nature of man are inadequate and in many ways incorrect. We are becoming
quite certain that, under proper conditions, unimagined resources of creative
human energy could become available within the organizational setting.
We cannot tell industrial management how to apply this new knowledge
in simple, economic ways. We know it will require years of exploration, much
costly development research, and a substantial amount of creative imagination
on the part of management to discover how to apply this growing knowledge
to the organization of human effort in industry.
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McGREGOR
May I ask that you keep this analogy in mind—overdrawn and pretentious
though it may be—as a framework for what I have to say this morning.
The Human Side of Enterprise
Management’s Task: Conventional View
The conventional conception of management’s task in harnessing human energy to organizational requirements can be stated broadly in terms of three
propositions. In order to avoid the complications introduced by a label, I shall
call this set of propositions “Theory X”:
1. Management is responsible for organizing the elements of productive enterprise—money, materials, equipment, people—in the interest of economic ends.
2. With respect to people, this is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the
needs of the organization.
3. Without this 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 other people.
Behind this conventional theory there are several additional beliefs—less explicit, but widespread:
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The average man is by nature indolent—he works as little as possible.
He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, prefers to be led.
He is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs.
He is by nature resistant to change.
He is gullible, not very bright, the ready dupe of the charlatan and the
demagogue.
The human side of economic enterprise today is fashioned from propositions
and beliefs such as these. Conventional organization structures, managerial
policies, practices, and programs reflect these assumptions.
In accomplishing its task—with these assumptions as guides—management has conceived of a range of possibilities between two extremes.
The Hard or the Soft Approach?
At one extreme, management can be “hard” or “strong.” The methods for directing behavior involve coercion and threat (usually disguised), close supervision, tight controls over behavior. At the other extreme, management can be
“soft” or “weak.” The methods for directing behavior involve being permissive,
satisfying people’s demands, achieving harmony. Then they will be tractable,
accept direction.
This range has been fairly completely explored during the past half century, and management has learned some things from the exploration. There
are difficulties in the “hard” approach. Force breeds counterforces: restriction
of output, antagonism, militant unionism, subtle but effective sabotage of
management objectives. This approach is especially difficult during times of
full employment.
There are also difficulties in the “soft” approach. It leads frequently to the
abdication of management—to harmony, perhaps, but to indifferent performance. People take advantage of the soft approach. They continually expect
more, but they give less and less.
Currently, the popular theme is “firm but fair.” This is an attempt to gain
the advantages of both the hard and the soft approaches. It is reminiscent of
Teddy Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
REFLECTIONS , Volume 2, Number 1
Bill O’Brien
Retired President and CEO
Hanover Insurance Companies
Partner Emeritus, Center for Generative Leadership
Commentary
by Bill O’Brien
It was 1972, 28 years ago. Jim Clunie
ambled into my office and said, “You gotta
read this,” and threw a copy of The Human
Side of Enterprise on my desk. Jim was a fellow manager at Hanover Insurance, and we
often reflected on the diseases produced by
the prevailing hierarchical management
practices of that time.
The book was a major enlightenment for
me. I knew instinctively that McGregor’s assessment of the traditional view of management, which he names Theory X, was true
because I had worked in X environments for
years, trying to run Y divisions. McGregor’s
six assumptions of Theory Y and his ideas of
integrating individual and organization
goals are congruent with the main planks in
my philosophy of life now and at that time.
I believe each human life is special and has
a unique purpose, that all work has dignity,
and that work and family are the principal
platforms for human growth. I felt
McGregor had articulated what was etched
within my moral nature, but I didn’t have
the words to express it. He provided me a
cohesive theory for what was an assortment
of impulses that leaned toward Theory Y. He
gave me intellectual nourishment to design
and implement a values-based, visiondriven philosophy of governance that was
appropriate to the circumstances I found
myself in at Hanover.
McGregor’s book was published in 1960.
It took 12 years for it to come to my attention, and his lingo didn’t enter the mainstream of vocabulary until the early eighties.
It takes a long time for even seminal ideas to
move from conception to widespread acceptance. I see, over time, McGregor’s ideas
about human motivation, Argyris’s ideas
about conversation, Forrester’s ideas about
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The Human Side of Enterprise
the interaction of large-scale systems, and
Senge’s five disciplines all converging into a
comprehensive theory of organizational governance that will replace the worn-out theories of command and control. It will take time.
What might speed up the gestation period
of making the rich thought that has emerged
in the social sciences during the past 50 years
more prevalent in actual corporate practices? I
nominate two for consideration. First, raise
the level of moral expectation for people who
hold positions of power at every level. Why?
Humans are moral animals. Unlike lower animals, they pursue truth, think about freedom,
strive to create a better future, and seek to
love and be loved. As our moral faculties are
developed, we become more fully human. It is
congruent with our nature to advance morally
as it is to learn or mature physically. Thus, in
corporate settings, we ought to strive to live
out our values at their most advanced level
just as we seek best practices in engineering,
financial, or marketing functions, not just perceive values as boundaries or limits on our behaviors as is widely the case today.
Second, our whole system of financial certification needs to be overhauled. The process
of certifying and attesting to financial performance has to do a better job of sorting the
plunderers and quick flippers from those who
build enduring economic value.
Is the Conventional View Correct?
The findings which are beginning to emerge from the social sciences challenge
this whole set of beliefs about man and human nature and about the task of
management. The evidence is far from conclusive, certainly, but it is suggestive. It comes from the laboratory, the clinic, the schoolroom, the home, and
even to a limited extent from industry itself.
The social scientist does not deny that human behavior in industrial organization today is approximately what management perceives it to be. He has,
in fact, observed it and studied it fairly extensively. But he is pretty sure that
this behavior is not a consequence of man’s inherent nature. It is a consequence rather of the nature of industrial organizations, of management philosophy, policy, and practice. The conventional approach of Theory X is based
on mistaken notions of what is cause and what is effect.
“Well,” you ask, “what then is the true nature of man? What evidence
leads the social scientist to deny what is obvious?” And, if I am not mistaken,
you are also thinking, “Tell me—simply, and without a lot of scientific verbiage—what you think you know that is so unusual. Give me—without a lot
of intellectual claptrap and theoretical nonsense—some practical ideas which
will enable me to improve the situation in my organization. And remember,
I’m faced with increasing costs and narrowing profit margins. I want proof that
such ideas won’t result simply in new and costly human relations frills. I want
practical results, and I want them now.”
If these are your wishes, you are going to be disappointed. Such requests
can no more be met by the social scientist today than could comparable ones
with respect to atomic energy be met by the physicist fifteen years ago. I can,
however, indicate a few of the reasons for asserting that conventional assumptions about the human side of enterprise are inadequate. And I can suggest—
tentatively—some of the propositions that will compose a more adequate
theory of the management of people. The magnitude of the task that confronts
us will then, I think, be apparent.
II
8
Perhaps the best way to indicate why the conventional approach of management is inadequate is to consider the subject of motivation. In discussing this
subject I will draw heavily on the work of my colleague, Abraham Maslow of
Brandeis University. His is the most fruitful approach I know. Naturally, what I
have to say will be overgeneralized and will ignore important qualifications. In
the time at our disposal, this is inevitable.
Physiological and Safety Needs
Man is a wanting animal—as soon as one of his needs is satisfied, another appears in its place. This process is unending. It continues from birth to death.
Man’s needs are organized in a series of levels—a hierarchy of importance.
At the lowest level, but preeminent in importance when they are thwarted, are
his physiological needs. Man lives by bread alone, when there is no bread.
Unless the circumstances are unusual, his needs for love, for status, for recognition are inoperative when his stomach has been empty for a while. But when
he eats regularly and adequately, hunger ceases to be an important need. The
sated man has hunger only in the sense that a full bottle has emptiness. The
same is true of the other physiological needs of man—for rest, exercise, shelter, protection from the elements.
A satisfied need is not a motivator of behavior!
This is a fact of profound significance. It is a fact that is regularly ignored in
the conventional approach to the management of people. I shall return to it
later. For the moment, one example will make my point. Consider your own
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The Human Side of Enterprise
need for air. Except as you are deprived of it, it has no appreciable motivating effect upon your behavior.
When the physiological needs are reasonably satisfied,
needs at the next higher level begin to dominate man’s behavior—to motivate him. These are called safety needs.
They are needs for protection against danger, threat, deprivation. Some people mistakenly refer to these as needs for
security. However, unless man is in a dependent relationship
where he fears arbitrary deprivation, he does not demand
security. The need is for the “fairest possible break.” When
he is confident of this, he is more than willing to take risks.
But when he feels threatened or dependent, his greatest need
is for guarantees, for protection, for security.
The fact needs little emphasis that, since every industrial employee is in a dependent relationship, safety needs
may assume considerable importance. Arbitrary management actions, behavior
that arouses uncertainty with respect to continued employment or which reflects
favoritism or discrimination, unpredictable administration of policy—these can be
powerful motivators of the safety needs in the employment relationship at every
level from worker to vice president.
© Emily Sper
Social Needs
When man’s physiological needs are satisfied and he is no longer fearful about
his physical welfare, his social needs become important motivators of his behavior—for belonging, for association, for acceptance by his fellows, for giving and receiving friendship and love.
Management knows today of the existence of these needs, but it often assumes quite wrongly that they represent a threat to the organization. Many
studies have demonstrated that the tightly knit, cohesive work group may,
under proper conditions, be far more effective than an equal number of separate individuals in achieving organizational goals.
Yet management, fearing group hostility to its own objectives, often goes
to considerable lengths to control and direct human efforts in ways that are
inimical to the natural “groupiness” of human beings. When man’s social
needs—and perhaps his safety needs, too—are thus thwarted, he behaves in
ways which tend to defeat organizational objectives. He becomes resistant,
antagonistic, uncooperative. But this behavior is a consequence, not a cause.
Ego Needs
Above the social needs—in the sense that they do not become motivators until
lower needs are reasonably satisfied—are the needs of greatest significance to
management and to man himself. They are the egoistic needs, and they are of
two kinds:
1. Those needs that relate to one’s self-esteem—needs for self-confidence,
for independence, for achievement, for competence, for knowledge.
2. Those needs that relate to one’s reputation—needs for status, for recognition, for appreciation, for the deserved respect of one’s fellows.
Unlike the lower needs, these are rarely satisfied; man seeks indefinitely
for more satisfaction of these needs once they have become important to him.
But they do not appear in any significant way until physiological, safety, and
social needs are all reasonably satisfied.
The typical industrial organization offers few opportunities for the satisfaction of these egoistic needs to people at lower levels in the hierarchy. The
conventional methods of organizing work, particularly in mass-production industries, give little heed to these aspects of human motivation. If the practices
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McGREGOR
of scientific management were deliberately calculated to
thwart these needs—which, of course, they are not—they
could hardly accomplish this purpose better than they do.
The Human Side of Enterprise
Self-Fulfillment Needs
Finally—a capstone, as it were, on the hierarchy of man’s
needs—there are what we may call the needs for self-fulfillment. These are the needs for realizing one’s own potentialities, for continued self-development, for being
creative in the broadest sense of that term.
It is clear that the conditions of modern life give only
limited opportunity for these relatively weak needs to obtain expression. The deprivation most people experience
with respect to other lower-level needs diverts their energies into the struggle to satisfy those needs, and the needs
for self-fulfillment remain dormant.
III
© Emily Sper
10
Now, briefly, a few general comments about motivation:
We recognize readily enough that a man suffering
from a severe dietary deficiency is sick. The deprivation of
physiological needs has behavioral consequences. The
same is true—although less well recognized—of deprivation of higher-level needs. The man whose needs for
safety, association, independence, or status are thwarted
is sick just as surely as is he who has rickets. And his sickness will have behavioral consequences. We will be mistaken if we attribute his resultant passivity, his hostility,
his refusal to accept responsibility to his inherent “human nature.” These
forms of behavior are symptoms of illness—of deprivation of his social and
egoistic needs.
The man whose lower-level needs are satisfied is not motivated to satisfy
those needs any longer. For practical purposes they exist no longer. (Remember my point about your need for air.) Management often asks, “Why aren’t
people more productive? We pay good wages, provide good working conditions, have excellent fringe benefits and steady employment. Yet people do not
seem to be willing to put forth more than minimum effort.”
The fact that management has provided for these physiological and safety
needs has shifted the motivational emphasis to the social and perhaps to the
egoistic needs. Unless there are opportunities at work to satisfy these higherlevel needs, people will be deprived; and their behavior will reflect this deprivation. Under such conditions, if management continues to focus its attention
on physiological needs, its efforts are bound to be ineffective.
People will make insistent demands for more money under these conditions. It becomes more important than ever to buy the material goods and services that can provide limited satisfaction of the thwarted needs. Although
money has only limited value in satisfying many higher-level needs, it can
become the focus of interest if it is the only means available.
The Carrot and Stick Approach
The carrot and stick theory of motivation (like Newtonian physical theory)
works reasonably well under certain circumstances. The means for satisfying
man’s physiological and (within limits) his safety needs can be provided or
withheld by management. Employment itself is such a means, and so are
wages, working conditions, and benefits. By these means the individual can be
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The Human Side of Enterprise
controlled so long as he is struggling for subsistence. Man lives for bread alone
when there is no bread.
But the carrot and stick theory does not work at all once man has reached
an adequate subsistence level and is motivated primarily by higher needs.
Management cannot provide a man with self-respect, or with the respect of his
fellows, or with the satisfaction of needs for self-fulfillment. It can create conditions such that he is encouraged and enabled to seek such satisfactions for
himself, or it can thwart him by failing to create those conditions.
But this creation of conditions is not “control.” It is not a good device for
directing behavior. And so management finds itself in an odd position. The
high standard of living created by our modern technological know-how provides quite adequately for the satisfaction of physiological and safety needs.
The only significant exception is where management practices have not created confidence in a “fair break”—and thus where safety needs are thwarted.
But by making possible the satisfaction of low-level needs, management has
deprived itself of the ability to use as motivators the devices on which conventional theory has taught it to rely—rewards, promises, incentives, or threats
and other coercive devices.
Neither Hard Nor Soft
The philosophy of management by direction and control—regardless of whether
it is hard or soft—is inadequate to motivate, because the human needs on which
this approach relies are today unimportant motivators of behavior. Direction and
control are essentially useless in motivating people whose important needs are
social and egoistic. Both the hard and the soft approach fail today because they
are simply irrelevant to the situation.
People deprived of opportunities to satisfy at work the needs that are now
important to them behave exactly as we might predict—with indolence, passivity, resistance to change, lack of responsibility, willingness to follow the demagogue, unreasonable demands for
economic benefits. It would seem that we are caught in a
web of our own weaving.
In summary, then, of these comments about motivation:
Management by direction and control—whether
implemented with the hard, the soft, or the firm but fair
approach—fails under today’s conditions to provide effective motivation of human effort toward organizational objectives. It fails because direction and control are useless methods of motivating people whose
physiological and safety needs are reasonably satisfied and whose social, egoistic, and self-fulfillment needs are predominant.
But the carrot and stick theory does
not work at all once man has reached
an adequate subsistence level and is
motivated primarily by higher needs.
IV
For these and many other reasons, we require a different theory of the task of
managing people based on more adequate assumptions about human nature
and human motivation. I am going to be so bold as to suggest the broad dimensions of such a theory. Call it “Theory Y,” if you will.
1. Management is responsible for organizing the elements of productive enterprise—money, materials, equipment, people—in the interest of economic ends.
2. People are not by nature passive or resistant to organizational needs. They
have become so as a result of experience in organizations.
3. The motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming
responsibility, the readiness to direct behavior toward organizational goals
are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is a re-
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sponsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize
and develop these human characteristics for themselves.
4. 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.
This is a process primarily of creating opportunities, releasing potential, removing obstacles, encouraging growth, providing guidance. It is what Peter Drucker
has called “management by objectives” in contrast to “management by control.”
And I hasten to add that it does not involve the abdication of management, the absence of leadership, the lowering of standards, or the other characteristics usually associated with the “soft” approach under Theory X. Much
on the contrary. It is no more possible to create an organization today which
will be a fully effective application of this theory than it was to build an atomic
power plant in 1945. There are many formidable obstacles to overcome.
Some Difficulties
The conditions imposed by conventional organization theory and by the approach of scientific management for the past half century have tied men to limited jobs which do not utilize their capabilities, have discouraged the
acceptance of responsibility, have encouraged passivity, have eliminated meaning from work. Man’s habits, attitudes, expectations—his whole conception of
membership in an industrial organization—have been conditioned by his experience under these circumstances. Change in the direction of Theory Y will
be slow, and it will require extensive modification of the
attitudes of management and workers alike.
People today are accustomed to being directed, manipulated, controlled in industrial organizations and to
finding satisfaction for their social, egoistic, and self-fulfillment needs away from the job. This is true of much of
management as well as of workers. Genuine “industrial
citizenship”—to borrow again a term from Drucker—is a
remote and unrealistic idea, the meaning of which has not
even been considered by most members of industrial organizations.
Another way of saying this is that Theory X places exclusive reliance upon
external control of human behavior, whereas Theory Y relies heavily on selfcontrol and self-direction. It is worth noting that this difference is the difference between treating people as children and treating them as mature adults.
After generations of the former, we cannot expect to shift to the latter overnight.
Theory X places exclusive reliance upon
external control of human behavior,
whereas Theory Y relies heavily on
self-control and self-direction.
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V
Before we are overwhelmed by the obstacles, let us remember that the application of theory is always slow. Progress is usually achieved in small steps.
Consider with me a few innovative ideas which are entirely consistent
with Theory Y and which are today being applied with some success.
Decentralization and Delegation
These are ways of freeing people from the too-close control of conventional
organization, giving them a degree of freedom to direct their own activities, to
assume responsibility, and importantly, to satisfy their egoistic needs. In this
connection, the flat organization of Sears, Roebuck and Company provides an
interesting example. It forces “management by objectives” since it enlarges the
number of people reporting to a manager until he cannot direct and control
them in the conventional manner.
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Job Enlargement
The Human Side of Enterprise
This concept, pioneered by I.B.M. and Detroit Edison, is quite consistent with
Theory Y. It encourages the acceptance of responsibility at the bottom of the
organization; it provides opportunities for satisfying social and egoistic needs.
In fact, the reorganization of work at the factory level offers one of the more
challenging opportunities for innovation consistent with Theory Y. The studies
by A. T. M. Wilson and his associates of British coal mining and Indian textile
manufacture have added appreciably to our understanding of work organization. Moreover, the economic and psychological results achieved by this work
have been substantial.
Participation and Consultative Management
Under proper conditions these results provide encouragement to people to direct their creative energies toward organizational objectives, give them some
voice in decisions that affect them, provide significant opportunities for the satisfaction of social and egoistic needs. I need only mention the Scanlon Plan as
the outstanding embodiment of these ideas in practice.
The not infrequent failure of such ideas as these to work as well as expected is often attributable to the fact that a management has “bought the
idea” but applied it within the framework of Theory X and its assumptions.
Delegation is not an effective way of exercising management by control.
Participation becomes a farce when it is applied as a sales gimmick or a device for kidding people into thinking they are important. Only the management
that has confidence in human capacities and is itself directed toward organizational objectives rather than toward the preservation of personal power can
grasp the implications of this emerging theory. Such management will find and
apply successfully other innovative ideas as we move slowly toward the full
implementation of a theory like Y.
Performance Appraisal
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© Emily Sper
Before I stop, let me mention one other practical application of Theory Y
which—though still highly tentative—may well have important consequences.
This has to do with performance appraisal within the ranks of management.
Even a cursory examination of conventional programs of performance appraisal
will reveal how completely consistent they are with Theory X. In fact, most
such programs tend to treat the individual as though he were a product under
inspection on the assembly line.
Take the typical plan: substitute “product” for “subordinate being appraised,” substitute “inspector” for “superior making the appraisal,” substitute
“rework” for “training or development,” and, except for the attributes being
judged, the human appraisal process will be virtually indistinguishable from the product-inspection process.
A few companies—among them General Mills, Ansul
Chemical, and General Electric—have been experimenting
with approaches which involve the individual in setting
“targets” or objectives for himself and in a self-evaluation
of performance semiannually or annually. Of course, the
superior plays an important leadership role in this process—one, in fact, that demands substantially more competence than the conventional approach. The role is,
however, considerably more congenial to many managers
than the role of “judge” or “inspector” which is forced
upon them by conventional performance. Above all, the
individual is encouraged to take a greater responsibility for
planning and appraising his own contribution to organiza-
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The Human Side of Enterprise
tional objectives; and the accompanying effects on egoistic and self-fulfillment
needs are substantial. This approach to performance appraisal represents one
more innovative idea being explored by a few managements who are moving
toward the implementation of Theory Y.
VI
And now I am back where I began. I share the belief that we could realize substantial improvements in the effectiveness of industrial organizations during
the next decade or two. Moreover, I believe the social sciences can contribute
much to such developments. We are only beginning to grasp the implications
of the growing body of knowledge in these fields. But if this conviction is to
become a reality instead of a pious hope, we will need to view the process
much as we view the process of releasing the energy of the atom for constructive human ends—as a slow, costly, sometimes discouraging approach toward
a goal which would seem to many to be quite unrealistic.
The ingenuity and the perseverance of industrial management in the pursuit of economic ends have changed many scientific and technological dreams
into commonplace realities. It is now becoming clear that the application of
these same talents to the human side of enterprise will not only enhance substantially these materialistic achievements but will bring us one step closer to
“the good society.” Shall we get on with the job?
Commentary
by Iva M. Wilson
When McGregor wrote this article in 1957, I was in a college of engineering in Yugoslavia. While in Germany finishing my doctorate and hoping to get to America, my focus
was on engineering sciences, specifically, control systems. Twenty-five years later, I got
hooked on the “fifth discipline” because I identified the concept of systems thinking
with my training and experience in systems engineering. From then until now, I have focused on better understanding what is required to create a new context for leadership.
I had never read this McGregor paper until now, but always viewed McGregor as having made a major contribution to our understanding of how leaders should be, think, and
act so they can motivate others. I consider myself a leader who was influenced by his
ideas. McGregor wrote about Theory X and Y by thinking about industrial management.
His work, as well as his references to Maslow’s work from 1957, resonate with many experiences I had as a manager and leader that helped me both create desired outcomes
and experience disappointments. I base my commentary on the following beliefs:
14
Iva M. Wilson
Retired President, Philips Display Components
Philips North America
Theory Y was appropriate when it was created and remains so today.
Maslow’s approach offers as much now as in 1957.
McGregor said that the changes suggested by Theory Y would be slow, with many formidable obstacles to overcome. The question is: What are those obstacles? Are we any
closer to overcoming them? I agree wholeheartedly with McGregor’s views on social sciences and the insights to gain by integrating them with management theories. The field
of organizational development has been greatly informed by the work of social scientists and continues to provide the insights needed to change how people are managed.
How are those ideas penetrating mainstream businesses? How effectively are they used
to improve the outcomes businesses are to create? Business organizations are still considered mostly economical constructs, machines producing profits. Where do OD ideas
fit into those machines?
Reflecting on my own experiences with the then innovative ideas of “decentralization and delegation,” “job enlargement,” “participation and consultative management,”
and in particular, “performance appraisal,” I would say that the application of those
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ideas met with mixed success. While there are many examples of positive financial results, the satisfaction of people in organizations remains low. Since McGregor’s first
writings, we have also introduced “total quality,” “reengineering,” “process management,” and recently, “organizational learning.” The quality movement in the late eighties
had a major impact on many industrial enterprises and yielded positive financial results.
Given the widespread popularity of the cartoon strip, “Dilbert,” it appears that the satisfaction of human needs has not shown commensurate positive change.
In the early nineties, the concept of the “learning organization” came to the attention of leaders like me. The tools and methods underlying this concept gave me great
hope for the espoused Theory Y. The tools and methods of organizational learning can
help us become better leaders, but each of us has to practice the tools based on our individual needs. More importantly, we as leaders have to accept that the most effective
work we can do is with ourselves. The ultimate control anyone has is over himself or
herself; trying to change others by preaching, teaching, and reforming is the recipe for
failure. The most we can do is to learn and, as a result, change our thinking along with
our actions and behaviors so we influence others to change themselves. It all comes
back to understanding the self and others and continuing to learn from all experiences.
At present, researchers create new theories. Consultants bring tools and methods
based on those theories to business people who use them and expect better results. As
researchers and consultants write about their ideas and experiences, they analyze what
we in business do and draw conclusions about why certain things work. Most books on
organizational learning are written by academics and consultants. They see the experiences of practitioners through their lenses. Although they tell practitioners’ stories, they
do not always include the deep learning that can be obtained only through the reflection and learning of practitioners. Unfortunately, business people often think that they
do not have the time to reflect.
Business people need to reflect more on their practices and share their experiences,
especially those that did not create the expected results. We need to be more involved
in the process of testing and improving theory. To speed up the realization of Theory Y
and overcome the obstacles, business people responsible for the results need to be more
active in this process.
There is no “one size fits all” theory or practice; there are no Ten Commandments for
motivating people. It is easy to talk about how to create a workplace where people can
fulfill their aspirations. Without learning in the context of practice, very little can be accomplished. We can send people to courses and engage the best consultants and researchers, but it will not be enough. We business people need to realize that while doing
and learning we will sometimes fail, and the best hope we have is to learn from our
mistakes by first admitting them.
15
REFLECTIONS , Volume 2, Number 1
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Karl Marx
Estranged Labour
||XXII| We have proceeded from the premises of
political economy. We have accepted its language and
its laws. We presupposed private property, the
separation of labor, capital and land, and of wages,
profit of capital and rent of land – likewise division of
labor, competition, the concept of exchange value, etc.
On the basis of political economy itself, in its own
words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the
level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most
wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the
worker is in inverse proportion to the power and
magnitude of his production; that the necessary result
of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few
hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more
terrible form; and that finally the distinction between
capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller
of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that
the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes
– property ownersand propertyless workers.
Political economy starts with the fact of private
property; it does not explain it to us. It expresses in
general, abstract formulas the material process
through which private property actually passes, and
these formulas it then takes for laws. It does
not comprehend these laws – i.e., it does not
demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of
private property. Political economy throws no light on
the cause of the division between labor and capital,
and between capital and land. When, for example, it
defines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the
interest of the capitalists to be the ultimate cause, i.e.,
it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain.
Similarly, competition comes in everywhere. It is
explained from external circumstances. As to how far
these
external
and
apparently
accidental
circumstances are but the expression of a necessary
course of development, political economy teaches us
nothing. We have seen how exchange itself appears to
it as an accidental fact. The only wheels which political
economy sets in motion are greed, and the war
amongst the greedy – competition.
Precisely because political economy does not grasp
the way the movement is connected, it was possible to
oppose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to the
doctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of craft freedom to
the doctrine of the guild, the doctrine of the division of
landed property to the doctrine of the big estate – for
competition, freedom of the crafts and the division of
landed property were explained and comprehended
only as accidental, premeditated and violent
consequences of monopoly, of the guild system, and of
feudal property, not as their necessary, inevitable and
natural consequences.
Now, therefore, we have to grasp the intrinsic
connection between private property, greed, the
separation of labor, capital and landed property; the
connection of exchange and competition, of value and
the devaluation of man, of monopoly and competition,
etc. – the connection between this whole estrangement
and the money system.
Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial
condition as the political economist does, when he
tries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains
nothing; it merely pushes the question away into a
grey nebulous distance. The economist assumes in the
form of a fact, of an event, what he is supposed to
deduce – namely, the necessary relationship between
two things – between, for example, division of labor
and exchange. Thus the theologian explains the origin
of evil by the fall of Man – that is, he assumes as a fact,
in historical form, what has to be explained.
We proceed from an actual economic fact.
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth
he produces, the more his production increases in
power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper
commodity the more commodities he creates.
The devaluation of the world of men is in direct
proportion to the increasing value of the world of
things. Labor produces not only commodities; it
produces itself and the worker as acommodity – and
this at the same rate at which it produces commodities
in general.
This fact expresses merely that the object which
labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it
as something alien, as a power independent of the
producer. The product of labor is labor which has been
embodied in an object, which has become material: it
is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its
objectification. Under these economic conditions this
realization of labor appears as loss of realization for
the workers[18]; objectification as loss of the object and
bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement,
as alienation.[19]
So much does the labor’s realization appear as loss
of realization that the worker loses realization to the
point of starving to death. So much does
objectification appear as loss of the object that the
worker is robbed of the objects most necessary not
only for his life but for his work. Indeed, labor itself
becomes an object which he can obtain only with the
greatest effort and with the most irregular
interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the
object appear as estrangement that the more objects
the worker produces the less he can possess and the
more he falls under the sway of his product, capital.
All these consequences are implied in the statement
that the worker is related to the product of labor as to
an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the
more the worker spends himself, the more powerful
becomes the alien world of objects which he creates
over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his
inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his
own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into
God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his
life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs
to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this
activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever
the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the
greater this product, the less is he himself.
The alienation of the worker in his product means not
only
that
his labor
becomes
an
object,
an external existence, but that it exists outside him,
independently, as something alien to him, and that it
becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means
that the life which he has conferred on the object
confronts him as something hostile and alien.
||XXIII/ Let us now look more closely at
the objectification, at the production of the worker;
and in it at the estrangement, the loss of the object, of
his product.
The
worker
can
create
nothing
without nature, without the sensuous external world.
It is the material on which his labor is realized, in
which it is active, from which, and by means of which
it produces.
But just as nature provides labor with [the] means of
life in the sense that labor cannot live without objects
on which to operate, on the other hand, it also
provides the means of life in the more restricted sense,
i.e., the means for the physical subsistence of
the worker himself.
Thus
the
more
the
worker
by
his
labor appropriates the external world, sensuous
nature, the more he deprives himself of the means of
life in two respects: first, in that the sensuous external
world more and more ceases to be an object belonging
to his labor – to be his labor’s means of life; and,
second, in that it more and more ceases to be a means
of life in the immediate sense, means for the physical
subsistence of the worker.
In both respects, therefore, the worker becomes a
servant of his object, first, in that he receives an object
of labor, i.e., in that he receives work, and, secondly,
in that he receives means of subsistence. This enables
him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as
a physical subject. The height of this servitude is that
it is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as
a physical subject and that it is only as a physical
subject that he is a worker.
(According to the economic laws the estrangement
of the worker in his object is expressed thus: the more
the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the
more values he creates, the more valueless, the more
unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product,
the more deformed becomes the worker; the more
civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the
worker; the more powerful labor becomes, the more
powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious
labor becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker
and the more he becomes nature’s slave.)
Political economy conceals the estrangement
inherent in the nature of labor by not considering
the direct relationship
between
the worker (labor) and production. It is true that
labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for
the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces –
but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for
the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines,
but it throws one section of the workers back into
barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section
into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the
worker, stupidity, cretinism.
The direct relationship of labor to its products is the
relationship of the worker to the objects of his
production. The relationship of the man of means to
the objects of production and to production itself is
only a consequence of this first relationship – and
confirms it. We shall consider this other aspect later.
When we ask, then, what is the essential relationship
of labor we are asking about the relationship of
the worker to production.
Till now we have been considering the estrangement,
the alienation of the worker only in one of its aspects ,
i.e., the worker’s relationship to the products of his
labor. But the estrangement is manifested not only in
the result but in the act of production, within
the producing activity, itself. How could the worker
come to face the product of his activity as a stranger,
were it not that in the very act of production he was
estranging himself from himself? The product is after
all but the summary of the activity, of production. If
then the product of labor is alienation, production
itself must be active alienation, the alienation of
activity, the activity of alienation. In the estrangement
of the object of labor is merely summarized the
estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labor
itself.
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker,
i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in
his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but
denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy,
does not develop freely his physical and mental energy
but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker
therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in
his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when
he is not working, and when he is working he does not
feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but
coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the
satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy
needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly
in the fact that as soon as no physical or other
compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.
External labor, labor in which man alienates himself,
is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the
external character of labor for the worker appears in
the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that
it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to
himself, but to another. Just as in religion the
spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the
human brain and the human heart, operates on the
individual independently of him – that is, operates as
an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the
worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It
belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels
himself freely active in his animal functions – eating,
drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in
dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no
longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.
What is animal becomes human and what is human
becomes animal.
Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also
genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly,
separated from the sphere of all other human activity
and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are
animal functions.
We have considered the act of estranging practical
human activity, labor, in two of its aspects. (1) The
relation of the worker to the product of labor as an
alien object exercising power over him. This relation is
at the same time the relation to the sensuous external
world, to the objects of nature, as an alien world
inimically opposed to him. (2) The relation of labor to
the act of production within the labor process. This
relation is the relation of the worker to his own activity
as an alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity
as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as
emasculating, the worker’s own physical and mental
energy, his personal life – for what is life but activity?
– as an activity which is turned against him,
independent of him and not belonging to him. Here we
have self-estrangement, as previously we had the
estrangement of the thing.
||XXIV| We have still a third aspect of estranged
labor to deduce from the two already considered.
Man is a species-being [20], not only because in
practice and in theory he adopts the species (his own
as well as those of other things) as his object, but –
and this is only another way of expressing it – also
because he treats himself as the actual, living species;
because he treats himself as a universal and therefore
a free being.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals,
consists physically in the fact that man (like the
animal) lives on organic nature; and the more
universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is
the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just
as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute
theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as
objects of natural science, partly as objects of art – his
spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment
which he must first prepare to make palatable and
digestible – so also in the realm of practice they
constitute a part of human life and human activity.
Physically man lives only on these products of nature,
whether they appear in the form of food, heating,
clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man
appears in practice precisely in the universality which
makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch
as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the
material, the object, and the instrument of his life
activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that
is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on
nature – means that nature is his body, with which he
must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to
die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to
nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for
man is a part of nature.
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself,
his own active functions, his life activity, estranged
labor estranges the species from man. It changes for
him the life of the species into a means of individual
life. First it estranges the life of the species and
individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in
its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species,
likewise in its abstract and estranged form.
For labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears
to man in the first place merely as a means of
satisfying a need – the need to maintain physical
existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the
species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character
of a species, its species-character, is contained in the
character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity
is man’s species-character. Life itself appears only as
a means to life.
The animal is immediately one with its life activity.
It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life
activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of
his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life
activity. It is not a determination with which he
directly merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes
man immediately from animal life activity. It is just
because of this that he is a species-being. Or it is only
because he is a species-being that he is a conscious
being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only
because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged
labor reverses the relationship, so that it is just
because man is a conscious being that he makes his life
activity, his essential being, a mere means to
his existence.
In creating a world of objects by his personal
activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man
proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a
being that treats the species as his own essential being,
or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly
animals also produce. They build themselves nests,
dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an
animal only produces what it immediately needs for
itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man
produces universally. It produces only under the
dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man
produces even when he is free from physical need and
only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal
produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole
of nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to
its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his
product. An animal forms only in accordance with the
standard and the need of the species to which it
belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in
accordance with the standard of every species, and
knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard
to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in
accordance with the laws of beauty.
It is just in his work upon the objective world,
therefore, that man really proves himself to be
a species-being. This production is his active specieslife. Through this production, nature appears
as his work and his reality. The object of labor is,
therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for
he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness,
intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore
he sees himself in a world that he has created. In
tearing away from man the object of his production,
therefore, estranged labor tears from him his specieslife, his real objectivity as a member of the species and
transforms his advantage over animals into the
disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken
from him.
Similarly, in degrading spontaneous, free activity to
a means, estranged labor makes man’s species-life a
means to his physical existence.
The consciousness which man has of his species is
thus transformed by estrangement in such a way that
species[-life] becomes for him a means.
Estranged labor turns thus:
(3) Man’s species-being, both nature and his spiritual
species-property, into a being alien to him, into
a means of his individual existence. It estranges from
man his own body, as well as external nature and his
spiritual aspect, his human aspect.
(4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is
estranged from the product of his labor, from his life
activity, from his species-being, is the estrangement of
man from man. When man confronts himself, he
confronts the other man. What applies to a man’s
relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to
himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other
man, and to the other man’s labor and object of labor.
In fact, the proposition that man’s species-nature is
estranged from him means that one man is estranged
from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential
nature.
The estrangement of man, and in fact every
relationship in which man [stands] to himself, is
realized and expressed only in the relationship in
which a man stands to other men.
Hence within the relationship of estranged labor
each man views the other in accordance with the
standard and the relationship in which he finds
himself as a worker.
||XXV| We took our departure from a fact of political
economy – the estrangement of the worker and his
production. We have formulated this fact in
conceptual terms as estranged, alienatedlabor. We
have analyzed this concept – hence analyzing merely a
fact of political economy.
Let us now see, further, how the concept of
estranged, alienated labor must express and present
itself in real life.
If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts
me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong?
To a being other than myself.
Who is this being?
The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the
principal production (for example, the building of
temples, etc., in Egypt, India and Mexico) appears to
be in the service of the gods, and the product belongs
to the gods. However, the gods on their own were
never the lords of labor. No more was nature. And
what a contradiction it would be if, the more man
subjugated nature by his labor and the more the
miracles of the gods were rendered superfluous by the
miracles of industry, the more man were to renounce
the joy of production and the enjoyment of the product
to please these powers.
The alien being, to whom labor and the product of
labor belongs, in whose service labor is done and for
whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can
only be man himself.
If the product of labor does not belong to the worker,
if it confronts him as an alien power, then this can only
be because it belongs to some other man than the
worker. If the worker’s activity is a torment to him, to
another it must give satisfaction and pleasure. Not the
gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this
alien power over man.
We must bear in mind the previous proposition that
man’s
relation
to
himself
becomes
for
him objective and actual through his relation to the
other man. Thus, if the product of his labor, his labor
objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object
independent of him, then his position towards it is
such that someone else is master of this object,
someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and
independent of him. If he treats his own activity as an
unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity
performed in the service, under the dominion, the
coercion, and the yoke of another man.
Every self-estrangement of man, from himself and
from nature, appears in the relation in which he places
himself and nature to men other than and
differentiated from himself. For this reason religious
self-estrangement necessarily appears in the
relationship of the layman to the priest, or again to a
mediator, etc., since we are here dealing with the
intellectual world. In the real practical world selfestrangement can only become manifest through the
real practical relationship to other men. The medium
through which estrangement takes place is
itself practical. Thus through estranged labor man not
only creates his relationship to the object and to the
act
of
production
as
to
powers [in
the
manuscript Menschen (men)
instead
of Mächte (powers). – Ed.] that are alien and hostile to
him; he also creates the relationship in which other
men stand to his production and to his product, and
the relationship in which he stands to these other men.
Just as he creates his own production as the loss of his
reality, as his punishment; his own product as a loss,
as a product not belonging to him; so he creates the
domination of the person who does not produce over
production and over the product. Just as he estranges
his own activity from himself, so he confers upon the
stranger an activity which is not his own.
We have until now considered this relationship only
from the standpoint of the worker and later on we
shall be considering it also from the standpoint of the
non-worker.
Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the
worker produces the relationship to this labor of a man
alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship
of the worker to labor creates the relation to it of the
capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master
of labor). Private property is thus the product, the
result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor,
of the external relation of the worker to nature and to
himself.
Private property thus results by analysis from the
concept of alienated labor, i.e., of alienated man, of
estranged labor, of estranged life, of estranged man.
True, it is as a result of the movement of private
property that we have obtained the concept
of alienated labor (of alienated life) in political
economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomes
clear that though private property appears to be the
reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its
consequence, just as the gods are originally not the
cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion.
Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.
Only at the culmination of the development of
private property does this, its secret, appear again,
namely, that on the one hand it is the product of
alienated labor, and that on the other it is themeans by
which labor alienates itself, the realization of this
alienation.
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