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What Circuit City Learned About Valuing Employees

Harvard Business Review

In 1960, 11 years after he founded the company that became Circuit City, my father Sam Wurtzel was reading a book he couldn't put down: The Human Side of Enterprise , by MIT professor Douglas McGregor. The next morning, he called McGregor's office and asked for a meeting with him.

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Steve Jobs and The Bobby Knight School of Leadership

Harvard Business Review

It is the very opposite of the supportive and nurturing Theory Y management pioneered by MIT's Douglas McGregor over a half century ago. Or would an effort to temper their style taken the edge off and undercut their performance? Knight's treatment of players has been termed abusive. We don't know the answer.