The Human Relations Movement
Elton Mayo
(1880-1949)
Scientific management, at least in its current form, was not embraced by American
workers.
When conflicts erupted, managers (and the government) quickly understood that they had to cater to workers'
QWL (quality of worklife) needs in order to improve productivity.
Employee representation/cooperation/improved communication are not new ideas.
Frequently (perhaps always), disgruntled employees will find ways to
circumvent and undermine the system, thereby expressing their dissatisfaction
with existing working conditions and management practices.
When changes in HRM practices are not underlain by a sound theory that
relates new HRM techniques to a long-term transformation of management
philosophy (a thought revolution), values and behaviors, the changes will have little staying
power. They will last until the unique circumstances that have caused
them disappear. |
Mayo's thesis (visual)
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THE PROBLEM
Our understanding of human problems of civilization should at least be equal to our understanding of material problems.
With the industrialization of society no improvement had come in the
social status of the worker, in fact the worker's situation
deteriorated.
Workers became cogs in the machine.
Consequenntly, conflict was growing in industry. As a result, the
danger of the collapse of society was mounting (e.g., WWII).
Through psychological investigation the irrational causes of conflict may be found and brought under rational control.
The problem lies with actors outside the work system -- with those in
charge of promulgating a wrong paradigm/philosophy about mankind and
the management-labor relationship
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HAWTHORNE
EXPERIMENTS (1924-'32)
What actually
happened was that six individuals became a team and the
team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the
experiment. The consequence was that they felt themselves to be
participating freely and without afterthought, and were happy in the
knowledge that they were working without coercion from above or limitation
from below (p. 72).
Compared to SM, this is a very different way to gain worker consent (harmony and cooperation) at work.
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| ...
the working group as a whole actually determined the output of
individual workers by reference to a standard, predetermined but never clearly stated,
that represented the group conception (rather than management's) of a fair day's work.
This standard was rarely, if ever, in accord with the standards of the efficiency
engineers (p. 79). |
...
problems of absenteeism, labor turnover, 'wildcat' strikes, show that we do not know how
to ensure spontaneity of cooperation; that is teamwork. Therefore, collaboration in an industrial society
cannot be left to chance... (p. 10).
Collaboration and harmony figure prominently in SM. Taylor also
argues that collaboration should not "be left to chance." However
his "new deal at work" is based on different ideas and principles.
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Man's
desire to be continuously associated in work with his fellows is a
strong, if not the strongest, human characteristic. Any disregard of it
by management or ill-advised attempt to defeat this human impulse leads
to some form of defeat for management itself (p. 111). ... the
eager human desire for cooperative activity still persists in the
ordinary person and can be utilized by intelligent and straightforward
management (p. 112).
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| Authority therefore in actual exercise demands a capacity for vision and
wise guidance that must be re-achieved daily: since the cooperation of others is a vital
element in it, social understanding and social skill are involved equally with
technical knowledge and capacity. ... we do nothing whatever to develop social insight or
to impart social skill. Indeed we provide an education that operates to hinder the
development of such skills. And the general public, business leaders, and politicians are
left with the implication that mankind is an unorganized rabble upon which order must be
imposed (p. 50). |
Mayo's thesis (visual)
QUESTIONS
What are the core assumptions about human beings that underlie Mayo's thesis?
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| Why do workers wish to be continuously associated with their fellow workers? |
| Why
did Mayo emphasize "informal" rather than "formal" groups? |
Do
we have to care about how we treat workers? Why?
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| Are communication, cooperation and informal groups that important?
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