ABSTRACT
The quality of leadership is a critical factor in the workplace, in every worker’s career, and in an organization’s success or failure. The ways in which leaders behave—the specific actions by which they play out their leadership roles—are based on certain assumptions about human nature. Scientific management regarded workers simply as extensions of the machinery they operated. No consideration was given to the employees as human beings, as people with different needs, abilities, and interests. Most modern organizations regard the satisfaction of employee needs as a legitimate corporate responsibility. This changed view, called the human relations approach, arose in the 1920s and 1930s under the impact of the Hawthorne studies, which focused attention on workers instead of on the needs of the production equipment. The scientific management and human relations approaches to leadership behavior were given formal expression by Douglas McGregor as Theory X and Theory Y.
