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Don Barr is a new manager at U. M. Lowell, Inc. He has been giving a great deal of thought recently to the issue of employee motivation. He has eight employees reporting directly to him, and would like to make his unit the most effective in the company.

What would you tell Don about how to motivate these employees to behave in organizationally desirable ways? Specifically, tell him how human needs operate, and how needs relate to the design of an effective reward system. In developing your answer, draw heavily on the frameworks presented by Maslow and Alderfer and McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y. What are the key characteristics of these theories? How are they different? Which of these approaches do you consider to be most relevant to Don's situation, and why?