Imagine that you are a part of a work team consisting of five individuals. Only four of the five team members – including yourself – are reliable members. The fifth person is basically “dead wood” who...

Imagine that you are a part of a work team consisting of five individuals. Only four of the five team members – including yourself – are reliable members. The fifth person is basically “dead wood” who seldom shows up for team meetings, contributes very little, if anything, to group discussions, and has been very slack when it comes to handing in progress reports on the project that your team is trying to complete. Your task is to apply the principles of Theory X, Theory Y, Equity Theory and Expectancy Theory to try to explain the behavior of this non-contributing group member.

Theory X and Theory Y  meaning:

Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human work motivation and management. They were created by Douglas McGregor while he was working at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1950s, and developed further in the 1960s. McGregor's work was rooted in motivation theory alongside the works of Abraham Maslow, who created the hierarchy of needs. The two theories proposed by McGregor describe contrasting models of workforce motivation applied by managers in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational communication and organizational development. Theory X explains the importance of heightened supervision, external rewards, and penalties, while Theory Y highlights the motivating role of job satisfaction and encourages workers to approach tasks without direct supervision. Management use of Theory X and Theory Y can affect employee motivation and productivity in different ways, and managers may choose to implement strategies from both theories into their practices.