Development and Empirical Examination of a Management/Behavioral Model Depicting William G. Ouchi's Theory Z Management Concept

摘要

William G. Ouchi's conceptual work, Theory Z: How American Business can meet the Japanese Challenge, suggests that the key to modern organizational productivity rests with worker motivation and job involvement. The essence of Ouchi's theory lies in the ability of the Japanese organizations to coordinate people, not technology, to improve productivity. Ouchi recognizes the Japanese ideal of employee motivation and proposes a management formula for revitalizing American industry. Theory Z seeks to shrink the traditional hierarchical gulf separating management and labor, replacing it with reciprocal employee--employer trust and subtlety, consensual decision-making, and congruency of goals in an intimate work environment. The results of the empirical testing conducted for this thesis helped confirm the validity of theory Z as a viable management concept. Multiple regression analysis revealed that a model of Theory Z, derived from Ouchi's descriptive remarks, was linearly related to both job satisfaction and job performance. High global trust was shown to be a significant predictor of job performance and a significant moderator of the job satisfication/relationship. Subtlety and intimacy, two variables seemingly unique to Theory Z, both emerged as significant predictors of job satisfaction and performance. (Author)