Mariah Anderson
COMM 2170
Philosophy of Management
March 20, 2014
The Training Table is a Utah locally owned restaurant that has been in business for 35 years. This is a
family owned and operated organization. The owners are Kent and Stephanie Chard, and my store
supervisor was Taylor. This paper will determine and analyze my stores organizational communication
theory and Taylor’s managerial philosophy.
Lecture Review
My supervisor, Taylor, would express Theory Y traits when managing our store location in West Jordan.
Theory Y fashioned by Douglas McGregor (1960) when he formulated an alternative perspective to the
Theory X manager. Listed are the summarized assumptions that McGregor developed of Theory Y
(Andrews & Herschel, pp. 68-69):
1) Work is natural and can be enjoyable.
2) Employee’s that commit to organizational goals are capable of self-direction and self-control.
3) Self-actualization can be realized if the managers design the work appropriately.
4) In certain conditions workers will seek out responsibilities.
5) Many attributes and talents are distributed among the population.
The managerial behavior changes embraced from Theory Y helped managers understand the untapped
creative potential of their employees (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 69). The extreme changes in Theory Y
management styles would make the managers share their power in decision making and some
leadership responsibilities, they would seek upward communication, use effective listening skills with
their employees, keep an open-mind about feedback from employees’ in regards to opinions and advice
(Andrews & Herschel, pp. 69). The managers will offer workers more responsibility, job enlargement,
and job enrichment to help workers achieve self-actualization. Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs (Andrews &
Herschel, pp. 69) pyramid is applicable to all the organization’s employees, from the bottom to the top,
to motivate them and achieve self-actualization.
McGregor’s Theory Y gained credibility when multiple studies showed supporting information that his
managerial methods of empowerment worked. The concept of “automatic responsibility” practices at
the Marshall Space Flight Center in the 1960s was an example of Theory Y at work, noted by Phillip
Tompkins (1993) (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 70). The automatic responsibility is when an individual
assumes automatic responsibility for any problem that occurs within his area of competence, regardless
of the circumstance and if he lacked the abilities to fix the problem, he than would assume the
responsibility for communicating the problem up the line of management to find a solution. In addition
the scholars at the Center for Creative Leadership conducted a study contrasting successful with
unsuccessful corporate executives (McCall & Lombardo, 1983). The key attribute of the successful
executives was their ability to empower others, this helped them succeed in projects and help them
move up in their organization. In Richard Preston’s (1991) book, American Steel, where the theory Y
approaches was applied to Nucor, a large steel manufacturing company. When the company was about
to become bankrupt the organization adopted the Theory Y approach. They started to encourage
worker ideas and suggestions, peer management, and self-management this helped the company grow.
Theory Y has shown that the philosophy can still be useful in our modern day organizations. McGregor
believed that once the management adopted the assumptions about their workers outline in the Theory
Y management style. They would “naturally” (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 71) manage in a supporting way
to empower their workers.
Communication Analysis of Training Table
Training Table owners managed like McGregor’s Theory X, but the location I worked at under Taylor was
managed by McGregor’s Theory Y (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 69). This paper will concentrated on
Taylor’s managerial philosophy and how he ran the Training Table store location where I worked.
The organizational communication style was downward communication (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 144)
where all messages came from the owners flowing down to the lower organizational levels. Out of the
five general downward communication categories the Training Table used two of them. They would
communicate job instructions and kind of attempt to motivate (Andrews & Herschel, pp. 144).
The job instructions would include policy, required certificates (like food handlers permit), and
organizational changes. The owners would decide all organization decisions and set the policies. The
messages would start from the owners, communicated to the district managers, moving next to the
store managers to implement instructions, than to the supervisors to monitor employee adherence, and
to its final destination of the workers to perform all instructions. This also is a quick description of the
Training Table’s organizational structure being a traditional centralized organization form (Andrews &
Herschel, pp. 139). The minor attempts to motivate were unmet promises to increase wages and
promote more employees, which rarely happened.
Our store location was unique in the sense that the store manager put Taylor in charge to freely manage
how he wished. Taylor expressed many of the assumptions described in Theory Y management style.
He believed his workers would be motivated if he got to know them on a personal level, allowed them
to be self-directed most of the tie, and expressed alternative opportunities while still working and
getting paid. He created lead positions for morning and night schedules, trained the leads in minor
supervisor roles, left leads in charge for a portion of their scheduled time, and allowed flexibility in
workers schedules, and listened to worker concerns and criticism. The communication flow with Taylor
was in all directions upward, downward, horizontal, and external feedback from the customers. The
store manager took advantage of Taylor’s acceptance of additional responsibilities and left Taylor in
charge much of the time.
Taylor was successful in gaining employee’s trust and dedication, but he still lacked the power to
promote workers or properly discipline them. These were two very important managerial
characteristics needed to successfully motivate employees. He was still able to be an affective manager
since he has good interpersonal communication skills, he was other-oriented, and use empowerment
methods to motivate. It could be said that Taylor became more productive since he was empowered by
additional tasks.
Taylor new he lack some managerial power so to make up for these drawbacks he created additional
informal job roles that would distribute some of his supervisor tasks, and encourage them to participate
in activities outside of work with him. This improved relationships and created trust between manager
and subordinates, while providing some growth and promotions. By leaving the shift leads in charge he
helped them reach self-actualization. His ability to provide constructive feedback and listen to
employee feedback made him the top choice of manager at the Training Table organization.
The use of theory Y by Taylor was noticed when the organization started to fail. Our store location was
only one of the few locations still producing marginal profits. When other stores started to close down
many of the employees were fighting to move to our store location to work under Taylor.
Working under Taylor I was still attending College and he was willing to adjust my work schedule to my
school schedule. He told me that he wanted everyone to succeed and he would help in any way
possible. This is a typical empowering conversation he would give to all of his subordinates, which really
made me excited and motivate to work for him.
Recommendations
Although, the employees enjoyed working under Taylor, his managerial style had its drawbacks since he
had little or no authority to discipline and promote the workers. This would cause problems when he
was trying to work with uncooperative workers or unsatisfied workers wanting pay raises. Being unsure
what the store manager’s roles were in the organization I would recommend disbanding the supervisor
position and allowing the store managers to take on the additional supervisor duties to reduce
hierarchal barriers to properly promote and discipline employees.
Working under Taylor and seeing how well his management philosophy, similar to theory Y, worked I
push managerial training to adopt the theory Y management style for other stores. In general most of
the employees were around the ages of 16-18 years of age. These ages are more difficult to make the
job more enjoyable in a restaurant environment, but Taylor would create relationships with the
employees and informal communication to develop bonds between workers. This would create a work
place that made it easy to go to work and do your job well.
The problem with the Training Tables organizational managerial stance was that rather than looking at
Taylor’s method of managing as a positive improvement. It became an issue when the store was
audited by the owners, because they did not approve of the empowering managerial style or theory Y
style either. I would recommend that the owners and district managers attending communication
courses to understand the pros and cons in different managerial philosophies to determine which would
be most fitting for the Training table.
Work Cited
Andrews, & Herschel, Organizational Communication: Empowerment in a
technological society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (1996).
Clark, C. Audio taped lectures for organizational communication. (2007)
The Training Table. The Training Table a Utah Original. Utah Corporate Office
(2013)