HUMAN RELATIONS MANAGEMENT
"To make others happier and better is the highest ambition" (John Lubbock)
From its heyday period of 1929-1951, and even before and after, a diverse set of new ideas emerged out of many fields, primarily psychology and sociology, almost by accident, to change the shape of organizational science. The heyday period was really the first time that the orientations, feelings, and values of workers were seriously treated as being a valid and important part of organizational dynamics and deserving of incorporation in organizational theory. There were numerous contributors, along with numerous ideas, and no lecture note can ever hope to provide a comprehensive review. Hence, the selections below should be taken as only a sample of the human relations management style movement. Skipped is the usual introductory section where these lecture notes try to sort out the constructs and concepts involved in naming the movement. It goes by a lot of names: e.g., the social man movement, democratic management theory, participative management, etc., and the list could go on and on. What really matters are the ideas, and NOT so much who contributed what and what name was given to their contribution.
It's difficult to tell the story of the human relations movement in chronological order, although some attempt is made here. It is considered conventional to cite the father of the "human relations" movement as Elton Mayo (1880-1949), a Harvard professor trained in psychopathology who is most famous for the well-known "Hawthorne Studies" -- a series of 20-year experiments at a Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois which began in 1927. Originally, the Hawthorne Studies were intended to be a study in scientific management in the tradition of F. W. Taylor, and there were three major projects carried out:
(1) the illumination experiments;
(2) the relay assembly room study; and
(3) the bank wiring room study.
Out of these studies, a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect was discovered, and this phenomenon has been generalized to almost every theory in every field of study there is.
THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES
(1.) In the illumination experiments, the researchers were interested in determining how the level of lighting on the factory floor affected productivity. The researchers divided assembly line workers into four groups. In the first group, the level of lighting was kept constant. In the remaining three groups, the researchers manipulated the level of illumination in order to discover the optimum level of lighting that would increase productivity. The surprising result was that all four groups, regardless of the level of illumination, increased productivity. The "Hawthorne Effect" is the name given to the 112% increase in output by workers who perceive that they are being watched and studied somehow. It didn't hurt matters that Mayo and his good-looking male research assistants were studying an almost all-female group of workers. They found that output increased even when the lighting levels were decreased, even when salaries were adjusted downward, and even when worker complaints were ignored. By a process of elimination, the only explanation left was the attention Mayo and his assistants were paying to the workers. Over the years, managers have used the Hawthorne Effect successfully for quick gains in productivity by implementing self-study committees, announcing surprise audits, establishing task forces of various kinds, and in general, keeping the workers tied up with busy-work that has the appearance of ongoing research.
(2.) In the relay assembly room study, a group of employees were taken off the regular assembly line and placed in a special room. The researchers did this in an effort to isolate the employees who were being studied from the rest of the assembly line. The researchers wanted to see if this change in the work environment impacted productivity. The employees selected for assignment to the relay assembly room were treated differently from regular employees. For example, they were given extra break during the course of the shift and were allowed to leave thirty minutes before their shift would have normally been over with pay. In addition, the workers were given free lunches and assigned to work a five-day week, instead of the normal six day week required at that time. The researchers expected to see an eventual drop in productivity, but were surprised to see steady gains in productivity, and even a decline in absenteeism. This illustrated the hawthorne effect once again.
(3.) In the bank wiring room study, researchers were specifically interested in learning more about the social nature of work groups, so a group of fourteen employees who wired telephone switchboard banks were studied. A researcher continuously observed the behavior of the employees and took notes on his observations. The bank wiring employees were paid according to how many units they wired that met quality standards. However, virtually all of the employees wired approximately 6,600 units per day, which almost never varied from day to day or from week to week. The researchers discovered that most employees were capable of producing more than this number of units, but when they attempted to do so, their fellow workers put informal pressure on them to refrain from doing so. The researchers concluded that informal relationships among workers were more important than money for these workers.
Mayo (1945) stated that the reason workers are more strongly motivated by informal things is that individuals have a deep psychological need to believe that their organization cares about them. Workers want to believe their organization is open, concerned, and willing to listen. When workers complain about something, they don't often have any factual basis for a valid complaint because all they want is some "validation" they are part of the organization. The sociological implications are that the human dimensions of work (group relations) exert a tremendous influence on behavior, overriding the organizational norms and even an individual's self-interests. This discovery of "social capacity" was nothing short of revolutionary for human resource management and ushered in a whole new era of "employee-centered management." The "Cult of Mayoism" became the dominant paradigm of the day, as administrators everywhere sought to re-train supervisors to play the role that Mayo's assistants played. This led to the establishment of "management retreats" where managers engaged in Rogerian therapies, Maslowian therapies, sensitivity training, Parent-Adult-Child training, and any other form of group dynamics to become more employee-centered.
SOME BASIC IDEAS OF MAYOISM
1. Supervisors should not act like supervisors -- they should be friends, counselors to the workers
2. Managers should not try to micro-manage -- there should be no overriding concern for production
3. People should be periodically asked how they feel about their work -- and their supervisors
4. Humanistic supervision plus morale equals productivity -- the Mayo formula
5. Humor and sarcasm are good in the workplace -- it's all part of group dynamics
6. Workers should be consulted before any changes -- and participate in change decisions
7. Employees who leave should be exit-interviewed -- turnover should be kept to a minimum
SOME CRITICISMS OF MAYOISM
Mayoism was criticized on several grounds, most of which revolved around the claim it was "cow psychology" which could be expressed by the phrase "Contented Cows Give More Milk." Mayoism was a bit too idealistic in trying to remove all forms of conflict within an organization, a bit too evangelistic in trying to save the world, and it excused much immaturity and irresponsibility among the workers. Some of the harshest critics were March & Simon (1958) and Charles Lindblom (1959). March & Simon (1958) called Mayoism a "garbage-can model" of decision-making because it was basically irrational and seemed to offer a garbage can full of easy answers. March & Simon themselves were critics of perfect rationality, and gave us such terms as "bounded rationality" and "satisficing" to explain the kinds of things managers have to settle for. Lindblom (1959) also studied the process of limited rationality, and said that Mayoism can't figure out how to sort and value-rank competing employee needs relative to a particular problem. Therefore, it results in an incremental (slow, step-by-step) approach to innovation because a manager must act on compromises.
CHESTER BARNARD
Chester Barnard (1938) was a formidable part of Mayo's human relations movement, even before Mayo became famous. Barnard had long said that managers need to know more about human behavior, and in particular, more about the informal groups of an organization, especially the relationships between workers and outsiders. He stressed short, direct lines of communication, vertical communication that was persuasive and overcame differences. He is probably best known for his concept of "zones of indifference" which is the idea that good leaders should try to take middle-of-the-road, or neutral, positions on issues as much as possible because each person's attitude usually has such a middle-ground area where they will believe or obey without question. Barnard said that while orders given by management to employees are certainly significant, the Hawthorne Studies pointed out that this is not always enough. Workers must also be willing to obey. Thus, a certain amount of cooperation between management and employees is necessary. Authority is not all that is necessary, as the classical schools of management would have it. Barnard reinforced what became a fundamental idea in organizational theory: that all organizations possess a formal organization and an informal organization. Barnard asserted that the informal organization regulates how and even if employees will obey management orders and instructions. Based upon this contention, he taught there are basically only three types of orders that can be given by managers to employees:
• First are orders that are unquestionably acceptable and that are always obeyed because they lie within what Barnard called their zone of indifference, or typically dealt with things that are part of an employee's job description and are routine.
• Second are orders that may or may not be followed, depending upon the employee and the conduct accepted by the employee's informal organization because such orders come close to being unacceptable.
• Third are orders that are completely unacceptable and that will always be disobeyed because these kinds of orders go way beyond an employee's zone of indifference.
MARY PARKER FOLLETT
No less important than Barnard is the "prophetess of management" Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), a Harvard professor in social work who practiced Gestalt psychology and was a popular consultant for business. Follett was somewhat of an enigma, a woman in a male-dominated field with ideas ahead of her time. She is associated with the discovery of various phenomena, such as the "Groupthink Effect" in committee meetings, creativity exercises such as "brainstorming," and most importantly, what later became called MBO (Management By Objectives) and TQM/CQI (Total Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement). She was an advocate of honor and civility in the workplace. She also advocated the idea that power and authority derive from function, not the privilege of office. Such ideas, and her strong belief in grassroots empowerment were quite revolutionary at the time. In Follett's (1941) book published posthumously, it is explained she saw power as a principle of "with" rather then "over" and would recommend the creation of power-sharing arrangements in organizations. Japanese managers discovered her writings in the 1950's and credit her ideas along with those of W. Edwards Deming as revitalizing their industrial base.
W. EDWARDS DEMING
The "guru of quality management" is W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), an American statistician, college professor, and business consultant who is perhaps best known for his work in Japan doing postwar reconstruction. He was only supposed to assist Gen. MacArthur with re-establishing the Japanese census, but in the process of teaching Japanese industrialists statistical process control (SPC), he found himself lecturing from 1950-1960 on concepts of quality. The Japanese started applying his ideas about quality, and then started experiencing heretofore unheard of levels of productivity, turning Japan into an economic powerhouse and creating a whole new international demand for Japanese products (establishment of customer brand loyalty). His book (Deming 1986) is regarded as the classic masterpiece on how to do high-quality, productive, and satisfying work. Deming's 14 points are able to take any organization and make it efficient and capable of enduring almost any problem by introducing a Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle of continuous improvement. A key feature is how workers are to be treated since he believes that taking the fear out of the workplace will make employees have pride in their workmanship and this will in turn increase production. Along these lines, Deming taught that making changes in response to "normal" variation within an organization was unwise, and a proper understanding of variation includes the mathematical certainty that variation will normally occur within six standard deviations of the mean. Thus Six Sigma -- the symbol for standard deviation -- became the symbol of so-called "Black Belts" with organizational transformation expertise. Deming's 14 points are:
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service
2. Adopt a new philosophy for a new economic age
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality
4. Minimize total cost
5. Improve constantly and forever
6. Institute training on the job
7. Institute leadership
8. Drive out fear
9. Break down barriers between departments
10. Eliminate slogans
11. Eliminate quotas
12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement
14. Involve everyone in the organization to work toward transformation
THEORY X AND THEORY Y
Doug McGregor (1960) founded Theory X and Theory Y management theory which was inspired by Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Theory X, which McGregor called traditional management is based on the idea employees are lazy and need to be motivated by crass, material rewards. Theory Y, which McGregor favored, is based on the idea that employees are creative and need to have their potential unleashed. McGregor held a positive view about the goodness of human nature, and advanced the argument that introducing humanistic concerns into organizations would lead to more effective management. He believed, in other words, that employee needs and organizational needs could be successfully merged. Managers should not use threats or coercion in order to gain employee compliance. Any practice of Theory X management would cause psychological damage to workers. Management should instead develop a work environment where an employee can achieve his or her own goals by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives. Thus, under Theory Y, the role of managers is to organize the workplace and then to delegate as much autonomy and responsibility to employees as possible. Managers should also try to decentralize authority, allowing workers to participate in management decisions. And, most important of all, employees should be evaluated only on the basis of objectives set by each employee. McGregor concluded that any employee misbehavior had to be the result of a bad management style (Theory X).
THEORY Z
McGregor's theory did not escape criticism because several administrative theorists took him to task for abandoning principles like hierarchy and division of labor. On the other hand, McGregor's theory seems to be the kind of theory which has some staying power. In 1981, William Ouchi came up with a variant called "Theory Z" which combined American and Japanese management styles to emphasize collective decisionmaking, long-term employment prospects, low-key evaluations, informal controls, moderately specialized career paths, and a holistic concern for the employee, including their family.
CHRIS ARGYRIS
Chris Argyris (1957) was a social science researcher who advocated a type of participant-observation research based on Hawthorne Effect-like principles, i.e., involving your research subjects in designing the way your survey questions are worded and how concepts should be operationally defined and measured. He founded a management theory called "Immaturity-Maturity Theory" which is based on an organic model of organizations as living, happy beings, and requiring managers to be babysitters at times and reality therapists at other times. He is more commonly known for his more modern work in the area of "learning organizations" where he has pioneered the notions of "single-loop" learning (actions lead to consequences) and "double-loop" learning (consequences lead back to decisions about which actions to take). In any event, his presence in the human relations movement is formidable. He has long advocated the development and practice of a management style along the lines of McGregor's Theory Y, but goes further, and has asserted that organizations ought to be engaging in intervention efforts such as Organizational Development (OD). A typical OD scenario involves a consultant coming into the organization, assessing the problems and tensions that exist, and recommending various measures and techniques to bring change about. Argyris argued that employment of these techniques would reduce tension and conflict among employees and management, which in turn would result in increased productivity.
WARREN BENNIS
Warren Bennis (1960) is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of leadership studies, and has long been devoted to bringing about less hierarchical, more democratic, and more adaptive organizations. According to Bennis, democracy is the organizational design most appropriate for assuring survival in a complex, rapidly changing environment, and that sooner or later, we will see the demise of bureaucratic organizations and the rise of democratic organizations. Society is becoming more complex and so are the technological problems that organizations face, and besides, a growing professionalism among workers means that democracy is inevitable since professionals would never want to continue working in bureaucracies. The characteristics of "democratic management" are as follows:
• Free, full, open communication regardless of rank, status, or power
• Consensus management of conflict
• Influence on the basis of personal knowledge and technical competence
• An atmosphere of permissiveness toward emotional expression
• acceptance of inevitable conflicts between the organization and some individuals
ROBERT GREENLEAF
Robert Greenleaf (1977) founded the servant leadership movement, which is an ethical perspective on leadership that identifies key moral behaviors that leaders must continuously demonstrate in order for any organization being led to make progress. Some of those key moral behaviors include: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. A servant-leader grows as a person. A servant-leader is a servant first. To become a servant-leader, one must have the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first; then a consciousness arises about one's aspirations to lead.
OTHER SELECTED HUMAN RELATIONS THEORISTS
Keith Davis (during the 1950s and 1960s) was a human relations specialist (aka "Mr. Human Relations") who tried to apply Mayoist principles to law enforcement agencies by preaching about such things as job enlargement and job enrichment. His work (Davis 1967) prompted the field of criminal justice education to take a close look at all the ethical dilemmas and puzzling circumstances CJ employees face every day. His work also had the effect of glamorizing and generating public interest in policing as a career.
Fred Herzberg (1923-2000) founded "Motivation-Hygiene Theory" which is based on 5 types of organizational "satisfiers" and 5 types of organizational "dissatisfiers" with hygiene factors being the dissatisfiers and motivators being the satisfiers. People are assumed, in their attribution style, to be either hygiene-seekers or motivation-seekers, in which case they are driven by changes in job context or job content, respectively. It is better to be a motivation-seeker since hygiene-seekers let the organization down when their talents are most needed. The theory is a little bit more extensive than can be portrayed here, but perhaps the following chart helps:
Hygiene Seekers Motivation Seekers
Primarily dissatisfied by:
1. company policy and administration
2. supervision
3. salary
4. interpersonal relations
5. working conditions
________________________________________
A. motivated by job context - the environment of the job
B. will overreact to improvements in hygiene factors (short-term "shot-in-the-arm" boost) but will also overreact when hygiene factors not improved.
C. usually a talented but cynical individual who mocks the company philosophy and top management
D. realizes little satisfaction from achievements, and shows little interest in the kind of work done Primarily satisfied by:
1. achievement
2. recognition
3. the work itself
4. responsibility
5. advancement
________________________________________
A. motivated by job content - the nature of the task
B. doesn't overreact to changes in hygiene factors, and also has short durations of satisfaction, but milder periods of dissatisfaction
C. usually an overachiever who has positive feelings toward work and life in general
D. profits professionally from accomplishments, and takes details of tasks seriously
Rensis Likert (1903-1981), (pronounced 'Lick-urt'), is famous for his 7-point continuum research scales, so-called "Likert scales" in social science research, such as /------strongly agree----agree----disagree-----strongly disagree-----/, and also for a number of studies into leadership, called the "University of Michigan studies." In general, he advocated more employee-oriented leadership and supportive management. Of some historical significance is the debate between the University of Michigan studies versus the Ohio State University studies. The field that is addressed by this debate is called behavioral leadership theory, and the debate goes as follows:
The Michigan versus Ohio School Debates
Likert and his team at Michigan identified two distinct styles of leadership which they referred to as "job-centered" and "employee-centered." A job-centered leader believes that employees are just a means to an end and that the best way to deal with them is by close supervision, coercion, and use of legitimate/position power. An employee-centered leader believes it is necessary to be supportive of workers, give them opportunities for advancement, and lead as part of a team. After extensive research, the Michigan studies did NOT find that one style was better than the other. The Ohio State team identified two similar distinct styles of leadership and called them "initiating structure" and "consideration." A leader who focused on initiating structure was the kind who believed in getting the job done, clearly telling employees what was expected of them, and using job descriptions and organizational charts extensively. A leader who focused on consideration believed in interacting with their employees with friendship, mutual trust, warmth, and rapport. After extensive research, the Ohio studies found that leaders should be high on BOTH initiating structure and consideration in order to be effective, but later research produced mixed results, including the finding that supervisors who used more initiating structure were rated higher by their supervisors while lower by their employees. The debate over who measured things better and who's research to trust has never been resolved to date.
THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Interest in how to make organizations and leaders more human relations-oriented never seems to fade away. A larger movement, called Organizational Humanism, came into being during the 1960s and 70s. Whereas the earlier human relations theorists only wanted employees to stop being ignored and exploited by organizations, organizational humanists wanted to integrate the needs of employees with the needs of organizations. They believed, like McGregor (1960) did, that working in traditional organizations caused psychological damage to people. A key figure in this regard is Robert Golembiewski who wrote several books during the 1970s about applying aspects of Organizational Humanism to public sector organizations and coined terms such as "organizational neurosis" (Golembiewski 1978).
Most of Golembiewski's (1978) research is directed toward the problems of stress and burnout in organizations. Some 20% of working adults worldwide experience on-the-job burnout, and the averages are higher in more industrialized countries (40% in Germany; 60% in Japan). On-the-job burnout generally has three initial warning signs:
• a high degree of depersonalization in which a person keeps others at a distance
• a lack of personal accomplishment and belief that the job is not worth doing
• high emotional exhaustion resulting in an inability to cope with other stressors
Golembiewski (2002) has also found that in public sector bureaucracies, careerists are often kept under control by keeping them underfunded and understaffed. Therefore, public sector management needs to change and adopt a more decentralized style, and the key to accomplishing this is to stop forcing government employees to subsume their personal view of morality for the morality of the organization and its management. According to Golembiewski, if and when the organization becomes an employee's moral authority, atrocities can result.
The new public management (NPM) movement wants to integrate employee ethics and morality with the needs of organizations. The movement began as an academic conference of left-leaning public management faculty at Syracuse University's Minnowbrook Conference Center in 1968. For this reason, the new public management is sometimes referred to as the Minnowbrook perspective. Advocates of that perspective argue that bureaucrats should not only bring their morality to work with them, but they should work toward more socially-conscious policy. They argue that bureaucrats should take an activist position in order to solve the world's problems by being better "thinking" and "sensitive" bureaucrats. They advocate that efficiency should be replaced by something called social equity in how a public sector organization is evaluated. The movement has not gone without its criticism, and in some ways seems to be making progress while in other ways seems to be dying off. It appears that NPM may have settled on the following principles (the four D's) to work on as far as their contributions to public administration in the future:
• debureaucratization
• democratization
• delegation
• decentralization
INTERNET RESOURCES
Accel Team Notes on Chris Argyris and Others
Gallery of Famous Management People
Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
Hawthorne, Pygmalion, and Placebo Effects
Hawthorne Experiments and Findings
Human Relations Approaches to Motivation
Mary Parker Follett: Visionary Genius
Onepine Info on Elton Mayo and Others
W. Edwards Deming Institute
Wikipedia Entry on Six Sigma
Wikipedia Entry on NPM
PRINTED RESOURCES
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Davis, K. (1967). Human relations at work. NY: McGraw Hill.
Deming, W. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fox, E. (1968). "Mary Parker Follett: The enduring contribution." Public Administration Review 28(6): 520-529.
Golembiewski, R. (1978). Organization development in public administration. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Golembiewski, R. (2002). Ironies in organizational development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Graham, P. (Ed.) (1995). Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of management. Knoxville, IL: Beard Books.
Greenleaf, R. (1977). Servant leadership. NY: Paulist Press.
Lindblom, C. (1959) "The science of muddling through" Public Administration Review 19: 79-88.
March, J. & Simon, H. (1958) Organizations. NY: Wiley.
Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. New York: MacMillan.
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O'Connor, E. (1999). "The politics of management thought: A case study of Harvard business school and the human relations school." Academy of Management Review 24(1): 117-131.
Ouchi, W. (1981). Theory Z. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
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