To get an idea of how well her students were understanding the distinctions between the concepts of theory X and Theory Y management (MacGregor, 1960, especially chaps. 3-4) this business professor decided to use the Categorizing Grid. She began by jotting down a list of about a dozen terms and short phrases she associated with each concept . She made sure that item clearly related to one theory or the other, and she discarded those that could be categorized in either camp. She then made an overhead transparency with the concepts, Theory X and Theory Y, in large letters at the top , followed by a list of the two dozen terms in more or less random order. In class , she gave the students five minutes to sort the terms into two lists under the two concepts and then then collected their responses.