Page 364 - Cultures and Organizations

Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 329

that the expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as
play or rest, and that under proper conditions, people will not only accept
but even seek responsibility and exercise effort toward achieving organi-
zational objectives. McGregor evidently defended Theory Y. 43
In the 1980s Geert was invited to speak at a seminar on human resource
development in Jakarta, Indonesia. Someone suggested he should address
the problem of how to train Indonesian managers to replace Theory X

by Theory Y. This suggestion led him to reflect on what basic, unspoken
cultural assumptions are present in both Theories X and Y. He arrived at
the following list:

1. Work is good for people. It is God’s will that people should work.
2. People’s capacities should be maximally utilized. It is God’s will that
people should use their capacities to the fullest extent.
3. There are “organizational objectives” that exist apart from people.
4. People in organizations behave as unattached individuals.

These assumptions reflect the value positions of an individualist, masculine

society, such as the United States, where McGregor grew up. None of them
applies in Indonesia or other Southeast Asian cultures. Southeast Asian
assumptions would rather be these:

1. Work is a necessity but not a goal in itself.

2. People should find their rightful place, in peace and harmony with
their environment.
3. Absolute objectives exist only with God. In the world, persons in
authority positions represent God, so their objectives should be
followed.
4. People behave as members of a family and/or group. Those who do
not are rejected by society.

Because of these different culturally determined assumptions, McGregor’s
Theory X–Theory Y distinction is irrelevant in Southeast Asia. A distinc-
tion more in line with Southeast Asian cultures would not oppose mutually
exclusive alternatives that disrupt the norm of harmony. The ideal model
would be one in which opposites complement each other and fi t harmoni-
ously together. Let us call them Theory T and Theory T , in which T
stands for “Tradition.”