ABSTRACT
Douglas McGregor studied what managers actually did on a day-to-day basis; he observed their interactions with both their own managers and their subordinates. He determined that managers' assumptions about human behavior greatly influenced their interactions with their subordinates. McGregor was a proponent of humanistic management. He learned from Elton Mayo that workers value belonging to a group more than they value monetary rewards. Mayo argued that worker satisfaction was dependent on cooperation and socialization within the working environment. McGregor's theoretical underpinning came from Abraham Maslow's A Theory of Human Motivation, which describes Maslow's hierarchy of needs and his concept of self-actualization. McGregor based his argument for the sort of perspective on human behavior that managers should have on Maslow's hierarchy. During the II World War time, McGregor and others who aligned themselves with behavioral management challenged the scientific management theories that stipulated that workers need to be strictly controlled.
