To explain these contrasting outlooks, McGregor mined the back end of the alphabet. He called the first view Theory X and the second Theory Y. If your starting point was Theory X, he said, your managerial techniques would inevitably produce limited results, or even go awry entirely. If you believed in the “mediocrity of the masses,” as he put it, then mediocrity became the ceiling on what you could achieve. But if your starting point was Theory Y, the possibilities were vast—not simply for the individual’s potential, but for the company’s bottom line as well. The way to make business
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