Douglas and mcgregors theories free essay sample

American psychologist and a founder of humanistic psychology who developed a hierarchical model of human motivation, in which a higher need, ultimately that for self-actualisation, is expressed only after lower needs are fulfilled. Self-actualisation needs Self-actualization is the fulfilment of the person’s dreams and aspirations. â€Å"Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he or she, individually, is fitted for. Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poet’s must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization. For example, British Gas and EDF employees need to have self-actualization for the work value. The company’s are committed to helping their employees fulfil their potential. They are committed to identify potential, proving development and career opportunities, empowering them to make a difference in their business. The company’s will support their workers with ongoing general and specialist training, accessible learning and development to give their employees a chance for professional qualifications. The invest in people and take development very seriously as their success simply depends on them. British Gas has an Academy to train and support new employees. They helped to develop and refocus training facilities to handle the extra training equipment in recruiting. British Gas also offers an arrangement for Service employees to work form home. EDF have put a range of world class development programmes in place at varying levels within the company to develop employee skills and competencies. EDF Energy workers have access to a suite of made to measure international programmes in their Corporate University. These are delivered in conjunction with leading business school around the world. Esteem and status needs Esteem and status is when a person respects themselves and is respected. â€Å"All people in our society (with few pathological expectations) have need or desire for a stable, firmly based, usually high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect or self-esteem, and for the esteem for others. These needs may therefore be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, mastery and competence, confidence in the face of world, and independence and freedom. Second, we have what we may ca;; the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), status, fame and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity, or appreciation â€Å". British Gas and EDF, both have open, honest culture that’s based on mutual trust and respect. British Gas provides feedback system, which id build on receiving feedback from its employees and listening to their needs, trying to satisfy them in order to achieve company progression. EDF offers an annual survey for its workers to better their work place. Belonging needs When they are unsatisfied, a person will feel keenly the absence of friends, mate, or children. Such a person will hunger for relations with people in general for a place in the group or family-and will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal. Attaining such a place will matter more than anything else in the world and he or she may even forget that once, when hunger was foremost, love seemed unreal, unnecessary, and unimportant. Now the pangs of loneliness, ostracism, rejection, friendlessness, and rootlessness are pre-eminent. „Both British Gas and EDF make sure that the workplace is as much friendly as it can be they emphasise on teamwork and communication which gives the employees greater sense of belonging. They often organize land trips or short holidays to boost the workers libido and bring them closer together in obvious reason to maximise the company’s profits. Safety and security needs Examples of safety and security are a roof overhead and a locked safe. If the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety needs. † For British Gas, health, safety and security of their employees is their priority. Their occupational health teams and well established systems are gathered to support a worker in maintaining a productive and healthy life with their company. It is a company that makes a good workplace. Inside the firm, the image is very rosy, with staff among the happiest on the country list. The company also has a reputation for paying well (last year it ranked third overall in that category) and for high levels of job satisfaction. They offer an employee discount for energy prices, healthy eating plan. It also includes healthy-living resources for staff working in a variety of environments, including those based in offices and those working in the field. EDF offers flexible working arrangements, generous levels of maternity and adoption pay, career breaks. Pensions at EDF Energy employees with a final salary pension scheme, which is often seen as the gold standard in pension provision. Running this scheme means our employees can plan for their retirement with confidence. They also provide protection for your family upon your retirement by providing pensions for your dependents and life assurance at four times your pensionable pay, bonus schemes. They offer annual surveys for employees to better the work place. Physiological needs Physiological needs are things we need to do merely to survive. Survival activities include eating, sleeping, and breathing that is, anything the physical organism needs to survive, very fundamental life or death needs. Here again, we could mention British Gas offering its employees a healthy eating plan. Both EDF and British Gas offers free drinking water at every office, hot beverage, they are providing workers with uniforms, toilet and bathroom facilities. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Maslows Hierarchy of Needs What are the advantages? The advantage of this theory is that it motivates individuals to move from fundamental needs toward higher needs, providing a clear map for personal growth. Physiological-the managers should give employees appropriate salaries to purchase the basic necessities of life. Breaks and eating opportunities should be given to workers. Safety needs-the managers should provide the employees job security, safe and hygienic work environment, and retirement benefits so as to retain them. Social needs-the management should encourage teamwork and organize social events. Esteem needs-the managers can appreciate and reward employees on accomplishing and exceeding their targets. The management can give the deserved employee higher job rank / position in the organization. Self-actualization needs-the managers can give the employees challenging jobs in which the employees’ skills and competencies are fully utilized. Moreover, growth opportunities can be given to them so that they can reach the peak. The managers must identify the need level at which the employee is existing and then those needs can be utilized as push for motivation. What are the disadvantages? It fails to explain why some individuals prefer to ignore lesser needs in search of higher ones, such as when individuals choose to forgo paying rent in order to take a vacation. Also, people can fulfil their higher-level needs when unexpected circumstances may suddenly threaten their much shorter-term needs, furthering complexity. Therefore, such an approach is easier on a small scale than a large group. The most basic needs are physiological, hence the need for food, air to breathe, go to toilet and to have sex are the most basic of these needs. On this level, the disadvantage of the Hierarchy of needs is, for example the strong urge to have sex can and does result in some bizarre situations. Smart people have done stupid things for sex. Presidents have been shamed, famous people have been found in compromising situations, careers have been lost and lives have been broken because of this strong sexual need. This is a huge disadvantage of the Hierarchy of needs. A team of psychologists have updated a cornerstone of modern psychology — Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of needs. According to experts, Maslow’s time-tested pyramid, first proposed in the 1940’ s, needed to be updated to reflect the last 50 years of research. The revising of Maslow’s pyramid reflects new findings and theory from fields like neuroscience, developmental psychology or evolutionary psychology. According to Maslow, if you are starving and craving food that will trump all other goals. But if you are satisfied on one level, you move to the next. So, once you are well fed, you worry about safety. Once you are safe, you worry about affection and esteem and so forth. Perhaps most famously, at the top of Maslow’s pyramid sat the need for self-actualization – the desire to fulfil one’s own unique creative potential. The bottom four levels of the new pyramid are highly compatible with Maslow’s, but big changes are at the top. Perhaps the most controversial modification is that self actualization no longer appears on the pyramid at all. At the top of the new pyramid are three evolutionarily critical motives that Maslow overlooked – mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting. For humans reproduction is not just about sex and producing children. It’s also about raising those children to the age at which they can reproduce as well. Consequently, parenting sits atop the revamped pyramid. For Maslow, once a need was met, it disappeared as the individual moved on to the next level. In the reworked pyramid, needs overlap one another and coexist, instead of completely replacing each other. For example, certain environmental cues can make them come back. If you are walking down the street thinking about love, art or the meaning of life, you will revert quickly to the self-protection level if you see an ominous-looking gang of young men headed your way. Douglas McGregor, an American social psychologist, proposed his famous X-Y theory in his 1960 book The Human Side Of Enterprise. McGregors ideas suggest that there are two fundamental approaches to managing people. Many managers tend towards theory x, and generally get poor results. Enlightened managers use theory y, which produces better performance and results, and allows people to grow and develop. Theory x (authoritarian management style)-centralised structure The average person dislikes work and will avoid it he/she can Therefore most people must be forced with the threat of punishment to work towards organisational objectives The average person prefers to be directed; to avoid responsibility; is relatively unambitious, and wants security above all else For example, working for British Gas or EDF- the manager has to be under close supervision and controlled through reward and punishment therefore the employee might become demotivated from too much pressure. Under Theory X, managers leadership styles are likely to be autocratic, which may create resistance on the part of subordinates. Communication flow is more likely to be downward from manager to the subordinates. In regard to control, Theory X is likely to result in external control, with the manager acting as a performance judge, the focus is generally on the past. Theory y (participative management style)-decentralized structure Effort in work is as natural as work and play People will apply self-control and self-direction in the pursuit of organisational objectives, without external control or the threat of punishment Commitment to objectives is a function of rewards associated with their achievement People usually accept and often seek responsibility The capacity to use a high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in solving organisational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population. In industry the intellectual potential of the average person is only partly utilised. For example the EDF or British Gas-manager stimulates the employees, arranging organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals by directing their efforts toward organizational objectives, hence the de-centralised power. Given the opportunity, employees will display self-motivation to put forth the effort necessary to achieve the organizations goals. EDF’s Energy’s commitment to equal opportunities and outlines the company’s intention to develop and apply procedures that do not discriminate on the grounds of colour, disability, ethnic origin, gender, gender reassignment, marital status, nationality, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation or on the basis of part time working. It aims to prevent discrimination against employees, third party workers such as contractors and agency staff, suppliers, customers and members of the public. Thus, avoiding responsibility is not an inherent quality of human nature; individuals will actually seek it out under the proper conditions. Theory Y also assumes that the ability to be innovative and creative exists among a large, rather than a small segment of the population. Finally, it assumes that rather than valuing security above all other rewards associated with work, individuals desire rewards that satisfy their self-esteem and self-actualization needs which are so widely described in a Maslow theory. Example, British Gas which provides a flexible and comprehensive reward package to recruit, reward and retain high-calibre people. Theory Y leadership should increase communication flow, especially in the upward direction and approaches to the management included decentralization of decision-making authority, delegation, job enlargement, and participative management. How does it all work in today’s word? McGregors work on Theory X and Theory Y has had a significant impact on management thought and practice. In terms of the practice of management, the workplace of the early twenty-first century, with its emphasis on self-managed work teams and other forms of worker involvement programs, is generally consistent with the precepts of Theory Y. There is every indication that such programs will continue to increase, at least to the extent that evidence of their success begins to accumulate. These were two different theories of motivation-Maslow and McGregor theories. The first is based on needs and the second one on motivation/stimulation. Although, motivation is the key to achieving every small aspect of our lives, it is crucial to motivate people to work in order to reach goals. Motivation is good. Apart from the benefit and moral value of an altruistic approach to treating colleagues as human beings and respecting human dignity in all its form, research and observations show that well motivated employees are more productive and creative. The inverse also holds true. The schematic indicates the potential contribution the practical application of the principles this paper has on reducing work content in the organisation. The Times Business case of studies (online), Economist (online), Psychology about (online),Deeprmind (online, entered on the 5th of Feb 2014