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Dehumanizing with AI, Automation, and Technical Optimization

The Practical Leader

In the early 1900s, Frederick Taylor, used “Scientific Management” principles to make the new production lines more efficient. Over the next few decades, leading companies and human performance researchers found that empowering workers to use their heads, hearts, and hands significantly boosted morale and productivity.

McGregor 101
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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. You cannot manage a workforce by computer.

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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. Jobs would make decisive decisions on large and small issues and again and again would be proved right by the market or technology. Knight's treatment of players has been termed abusive.