Elton Mayo and the Deification of Human Relations

Abstract

Orthodoxy holds the emergence of the Human Relations ‘school’ in interwar America as a response to the alleged inhumanity and simplistic innovation the Scientific Management tradition was striving to develop within the workplace. This paper challenges this orthodoxy and argues that the Human Relations school was in fact a right-wing and decidedly undemocratic innovation that was developed in response to the demand from organized labour that workers be ceded an active and significant part in management decision making. Invoking actor-network theory and specifically Callon and Latour’s sociology of ‘translation’ to organize our historical data, our primary objective is to explain how Mayo and the Human Relations school were able to translate the prevailing context and in so doing create a forum in which powerful actors came to agree that the Human Relations school was an innovation worth building and defending. Our central argument is that Human Relations school presented conservative business leaders such as John D. Rockefeller Jr with an innovation designed to enable them to both monopolize authority in the workplace and the wider community and justify this monopoly on the grounds that the minds of workers and citizens lacked the rationality required to participate in a significant manner in management decision making.

Rethinking the Hawthorne Studies: The Western Electric research in its social, political and historical context

“…Similarly Bruce and Nyland (2011) develop a network-based explanation of contextual forces influencing the work of Mayo and the Harvard Group, one underpinned by actor-network theory (see Latour, 2005). Their research complements O'Connor's (1999) through challenging the orthodox view that the HRS emerged in the interwar years 'as a response to the alleged inhumanity and simplistic innovation the Scientific Management tradition was striving to develop within the workplace'.…”

Determinants of job satisfaction for salaried and self-employed professionals in Finland

“…In the case of individuals in organizational employment, these include enhanced performance and productivity (Babin and Boles, 1996;Bruce and Nyland, 2011), organizational commitment (Fletcher and Williams 1996;Dirani and Kuchinke, 2011), employee turnover (van Dick et al, 2004) and preference to continue working even when early retirement is available (Mein et al, 2000;Sibbald et al, 2003). For self-employed individuals, job satisfaction is a measure of entrepreneurial success and a proxy for continued investment in the business (Cooper and Artz, 1995), which in turn fosters the longevity of the business and the associated positive externalities such as creation and maintenance of employment.…”

Commitment or Compliance? Institutional Logics of Work Environment Management

“…Elton Mayo's rejection of the homo economicus approach to employees (as seen in Taylor's writings) is another foundational theory of the commitment logic. In Mayo's theories, man was not simply reacting to incentives or sanctions, but reacting because of deeper emotional traumas and instabilities (Bruce & Nyland, 2011;O'Connor, 1999;Schneider, 1999). Furthermore, employees were seen as irrational and in need of empathy, love, and understanding from the managers.…”

“…Furthermore, employees were seen as irrational and in need of empathy, love, and understanding from the managers. The lack of these was the real reason behind industrial unrest (Bruce & Nyland, 2011;O'Connor, 1999). Mayo's prescription for industrial captains of his time was that all administrators should be skilled listeners who could understand the social and emotional needs of their employees (Mayo, 2003).…”