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: Primarily satisfied by:
1. company policy and administration 1. achievement
2. supervision 2. recognition
3. salary 3. the work itself
4. interpersonal relations 4. responsibility
5. working conditions 5. advancement
A. motivated by job context - the A. motivated by job content - the
environment of the job nature of the task
B. will overreact to improvements in B. doesn't overreact to changes in
hygiene factors (short-term "shot-in- hygiene factors, and also has short
the-arm" boost) but will also overreact durations of satisfaction, but milder
when hygiene factors not improved. periods of dissatisfaction
C. usually a talented but cynical C. usually an overachiever who has
individual who mocks the company positive feelings toward work and life
philosophy and top management in general
D. realizes little satisfaction from D. profits professionally from
achievements, and shows little interest accomplishments, and takes details of
in the kind of work done 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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