voided. The human relations’ movement drew heavily on academic sustenance, mainly through a series of famous studies known as the Hawthorne experiments. These research projects began in 1924 at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric, company just outside of Chicago. They are linked to Elton Mayo, a Harvard Business School professor. The initial aim of the research was to examine the relationship between working conditions and output. To this day, the Hawthorne studies remain among the most diverse and most controversial pieces of social science research ever conducted. Reduced to its essentials, the human relations’ message was carried by six prepositions: 1. A focus on people, rather than upon mechanics or economics. 2. People exist in an organizational environment rather than an organizational social context. 3. A key activity in human relations is motivating people. 4. Motivation should be directed towards teamwork, which requires both the co-ordination and the co-operation of the individuals involved. 5. Human relations through teamwork, seeks to fulfill both individual and organizational objectives simultaneously. 6. Both individuals and organizations share a desire for efficiency, that is, they try to achieve maximum results with minimum inputs. The growth of this style was promoted by the problem of motivating employees to share in the goals of the organization. The objective was to maintain both hierarchy and specialization while forming the equivalent of the “family” in the workplace. This “family” concept gave further justification to treating competition between departments as taboo within the same company. Human relations represented just the first of many attempts to bring social science into the service of management. Despite numerous disappointments the applications of this theory continue to this day because of the hope that it offers. The hope of increased efficiency, increased s...
