14 quotes
Classical organization theory suffers from "ethnocentrism": It ignores the significance of the political, social, and economic milieu in shaping organizations and influencing managerial practice.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
Man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
The key question for top management is what are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
Above all, it is necessary to recognize that knowledge cannot be pumped into human beings the way grease is forced into a machine. The individual may learn; he is not taught.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
It is probable that one day we shall begin to draw organization charts as a series of linked groups rather than as a hierarchical structure of individual "reporting" relationships.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
If there is a single assumption which pervades conventional organizational theory, it is that authority is the central, indispensable means of managerial control.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operations so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
Delegation means that he will concern himself with the results of their activities and not with the details of their day-to-day performance. This requires a degree of confidence in them which enables him to accept certain risks. Unless he takes these risks there will be no delegation.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
Management cannot provide a man with self-respect or with the respect of his fellows or with the satisfaction of needs for self-fulfillment. It can create conditions such that he is encouraged and enabled to seek such satisfactions for himself, or it can thwart him by failing to create those conditions.
Douglas McGregor (1957)
Formal theories of organization have been taught in management courses for many years, and there is an extensive literature on the subject. The textbook principles of organization — hierarchical structure, authority, unity of command, task specialization, division of staff and line, span of control, equality of responsibility and authority, etc. — comprise a logically persuasive set of assumptions which have had a profound influence upon managerial behavior.
The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)