Douglas McGregor on Knowledge
Browse 3 quotations attributed to Douglas McGregor, catalogued under knowledge, with dates where available.
This page displays 3 quotations attributed to Douglas McGregor and filed under "knowledge" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Douglas McGregor, entry #205142: "Above all, it is necessary to recognize that knowledge cannot be pumped into human beings the way grease is forced into a machine. The individual may learn; he is not taught."
Attributed to Douglas McGregor, entry #237517: "The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the …"
3 Quotes by Douglas McGregor on Knowledge
"Above all, it is necessary to recognize that knowledge cannot be pumped into human beings the way grease is forced into a machine. The individual may learn; he is not taught."
"The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further."
"Knowledge accumulated during recent decades challenges and contradicts assumptions which are still axiomatic in conventional organizational theory. Unfortunately, those classical principles of organization — derived from inappropriate models, unrelated to the political, social, economic, and technological milieu, and based on erroneous assumptions about behavior — continue to influence our thinking about the management of the human resources of industry. Management's attempts to solve the problems arising from the inadequacy of these assumptions have often involved the search for new formulas, new techniques, new procedures. These generally yield disappointing results because they are adjustments to symptoms rather than causes. The real need is for new theory, changed assumptions, more understanding of the nature of human behavior in organizational settings."