3. Commitment to organizational objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their attainment. This assumption does not preclude the use of autocratic management procedures.
4. Under the right conditions, the average human learns to both accept and seek responsibility. Managers holding this assumption tend to encourage participative management programs.
5. The capacity to exercise a high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the general population. This assumption, if accepted, promotes the use of participative management techniques.
6. In the contemporary organizational environment, the intellectual potentialities of the average person are only partially utilized. Managers accepting this assumption tend to encourage the use of participative management programs.
Based on the conflicting assumptions of Theory X and Theory Y, it may be postulated that, in general, a Theory X manager believes that he or she must somehow force unwilling employees to do the work necessary to reach organizational goals (Sisk, 1992, p. 77). By contrast, it may be postulated that the Theory Y manager believes that employees will voluntarily exert the effort required to reach organizational goals, if the manager makes it known to employees that all of them will be adequately rewarded, if the goals are attained.
Theory Z is William Ouchi's answer to Japanese management for American organizations (Daft, 1994, p. 102). Japanese management techniques more closely resemble Theory Y than they do Theory X, and the same is true for Theory Z. Theory Z is an approach to corporate culture. With respect to decision making, it relies on a consensual approach, as opposed to a directive approach. Theory Z, however, rejects authoritarian decision making (Ouchi and Jaeger, 1978, pp. 301 322).
A special type of leadership is required in contem...