¶ … Incentives and Performance
Kopelman, R., et al. (2012); Further Development of a Measure of Theory X and Y Managerial Assumptions. Journal of Managerial Issues. 24 (4): 450-62.
Certainly, there is no one best way to ensure that either employees or managers are properly motivated. Most scholarship, in fact, indicates that motivation is a balance between the task-relevant behavior and the maturity and acumen of the group in which the individual manages or participates in. In fact, motivation is the basic driving force that helps individuals work, change and actualize to achieve their goals. This motivational behavior may be intrinsic or extrinsic, depending upon the individual and the manner in which that individual's personality uses different sets of motivation to incur actualization. Much of the basic theory of motivation tends to be based on the work of Benjamin Maslow, not only on human needs, but on the manner in which those needs are met within the cultural context of that individual's world -- or in the modern world, likely the workplace (Hersey and Blanchard, 1977). Research shows that regardless of the organization, whether it be public, private, entrepreneurial or corporate, various types of motivation revolve around two overall predispositions toward motivation -- individual are inherently demotivated and avoid work and must be aggressively motivated and individuals who are highly self-motivated and ambitious. Of course, these are two ends of a continuum and most people fall in between one or the other ends. They theory behind this level of motivation is that Theory X is the more autocratic and authoritarian model, while Theory Y is the more egalitarian and self-motivational paradigm. We are then asked to attempt to understand which of these models or their permutations become are more effective from a managerial point-of-view and what assumptions are made regarding their overall efficacy (Kopleman, et al., 2012).
Theory X assumes that managers rely on threat and coercion to gain employee compliance and to fulfill job requirements. Typically, the Theory X manager believes that the sole motivation for work is fiscal, and that it is only through salary, bonuses, and wages that work gets done. Theory Y managers believe that the satisfaction of doing great work is a good motivator, and that managers need to be open to other forms of motivation (compliments, greater responsibility, etc.) to get results. Thus, incentives range from purely monetary to a broad range of emotional and attitudinal issues that allow for the individual to complete tasks. For managers, applying Y principles, workers receive independence and responsibility for work -- opportunities to excel and less direct supervision. They X managers believe in close supervision and a clear chain of command to motivate; maintaining a distance and less personal relationship with employees (Sahin, 2012).
The issue of motivational theory is important because it relates to the very nature of the manner in which organizations work, fine tune, and work within the 21st century. The relevancy to the field is quite obvious -- managers in the 21st century have a different type of employee and different type of motivational activities. In particular, this study will help us understand how the XY Theory has undergone changes and issues over time, and how the new brand of employee, manager, and stakeholder has a different set of reactions and motivations based on a more continuum of motivations than being simply all X or all Y.
The hypothesis for the study is stated clearly, and looks at The Human Side of Enterprise from 1960 and asks what has changed during the past 50 years in managerial theory: what assumptions are now necessary to ensure motivation in a global economy, and what has changed about managers that needs to be identified and elucidated that might change the manner in which 50 years of research have uncovered a number of limitations and preconceptions that are of relatively little value in the current century, or, as one author put it, "we have not yet found a good enough measure of the X-Y dimension" (Schein, 2011).
This study does assume that the reader has at least a partial experience with X/Y theories of motivation; but not necessarily the 50 years' worth of secondary material and other research. In this case, the literature review section is rather week, consisting of only a few paragraphs that summarize decades of study. However, because the assumption is that the reader has a broad enough background in the previous
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