Читать книгу Foundations of management - Juan Antonio Pérez López - Страница 22

All these theories clearly point in a single direction and enable one to speak of a common paradigm—the psycho-sociological paradigm—for the analysis of companies. This paradigm includes ideas on motivation that correspond to an image of man reduced to his physical and psychological properties. Both the theories we have discussed in the foregoing pages and other similar theories are flawed due to a series of ambiguities due to the following two characteristic limitations:

a) The limitation of inductive methodology in advancing the understanding of human phenomena.

b) The use of a psychological model of human beings that lacks an anthropological basis. This basis is absolutely necessary in order to address explicitly the essential issues already mentioned by Chester Barnard (person, freedom, etc.).

Using as our starting point the discoveries made by these authors, in the following pages we will attempt to set forth a theory of motivation, developed on an anthropological foundation, which will enable us to complement the insights contained in these authors' works.

By taking this step, we enter a new model or paradigm for conceiving of the human organization: the anthropological or humanistic model. Using this model, we will be able to address the explanation of phenomena such as people's identification with the organization, the development of loyalty towards organizations, and relationships between authority and leadership. In our times, these are the issues that perhaps most concern both business managers and theorists.

1 A great number of books and articles have been written on the content and meaning of those investigations. We consider particularly interesting Fritz Roethlisberger's own summary and interpretation, written almost forty years after his initial work, in Chapter 4 of his posthumous work, The Elusive Phenomena (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1977).

2 The quote is taken from the beginning of Chapter 2 of The Functions of the Executive (Harvard University Press).

3 A. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1954)

4 Frederick Herzberg, Work and Nature of Man (New York: Crowell, 1966). The theory had already been suggested in Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, The Motivation to Work (New York: Wiley, 1959)

5 D. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw Hill, 1960)

6 D. McGregor, Leadership and Motivation (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1966), pp. 259 ff.