MGMT 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Human Resource Management, Theory X And Theory Y
ORGANISATIONAL SYSTEMS
• Open-system organisations take resources from the external environment and
convert these into products and services
• Organisational systems comprise of other systems, all linked to systems within the
environment (e.g. HR with finance, marketing, IT)
• Human resource management (HRM)
• Recruitment (suitable employees)
• Selection (assigning duties and roles)
• Retention
• Development (enhance and update skills and knowledge)
• Schools of thought
• Hard HR (Taylor)
• Michigan
• People are resources: they must be managed or will seek to rule
• Aim: efficiency and performance
• Assumptions:
• People merely want instructions and the resources and training
to achieve these
• Attracted by good pay, clear objectives and unambiguous job
duties
• Soft HR (Mayo)
• Harvard
• People are more than resources: they seek fulfilment and meaning
• Aim: performance and engagement
• Assumptions:
• Work is an integral part of life and should provide a fulfilling,
empowering and positive experience for employees
• Attracted by opportunities for growth and feeling valued
• McGregor’s theories
• Theory X (Taylor) is a managerial orientation that views employees as lazy,
self-interested and requiring control
• Theory Y (Mayo) is a managerial orientation that views employees as
motivated by feelings of self-worth, and seek autonomy, fulfillness and
meaningfulness
• Strategic HRM contributes to organisational objectives through ensuring:
• Key HRM functions (recruitment, selection, retention, development) are
consistent with business strategy
• People understand and abide by the strategic intentions of the organisation
• Corporate strategy
• Strategic HRM is critiqued over how strategy can be planned and measured. As
strategic objectives eventually no longer represent what they were originally intended
to, they can become meaningless
• Industrial relations are relations between employees and employers
• Individual agreements are where employment agreements are negotiated
between the individual employee and employer
• Collective agreements are an interventionist ideology where a union
negotiates a common agreement between employees and employers
