If managers are at the fourth level and the
managed are at the second level the situation is worse. Leaders
believe the followers should participate in decisions and the
follower believes he should be told. The manager waits for
participation and the managed wait for direction. In this hopeless
combination of dissimilar incongruent value systems the
organization is stifled. It dies.
Today many managers, too many of them, for
reasons that cannot now be detailed, tend to remain somewhere in
the region of third and fourth level existence while many of the
managed are beginning to move through and beyond the level of
existence of their managers. The managed are beginning to behave
in the manner described by McGregor’s Theory Y but many of their
bosses cannot accept the insights necessary to lift themselves to
the level of Responsive or Integrative management. On the one
hand, the fixated third level manager cannot overcome the fear of
loss of his power and the fourth level manager’s energy is
consumed in the fear of being disliked. The former are increasing
Directive Managerial controls and the latter are regressing
thereto. These managers who blame their problems on labor that too
powerful, on government that intervenes, on foreigners that
compete, or on unreasoning workers whose demands are ridiculous
might better ask: "How do my values clash with the values of
those whom I manage?"
Having illustrated the hypotheses, I hope, that
managerial controls must be congruent with the values of the
managed, let me give thought, within this theory, to the problems
of creative innovation versus the conservation of traditional
values, to the resolution of value conflicts, to revolutionary
versus evolutionary transformation of values and to institutional
decision processes.
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