Human Relations Movement

Genesis and Growth

Two early figures, related through the Hawthorne Studies and Harvard Business School, were Fritz J. Roethlisberger and G. Elton Mayo. Roethlisberger was a Harvard Business School professor for 40 years; Mayo was a Harvard professor with training in psychopathology. The human relations movement emerged through their writings, in opposition to scientific management. The various members of the movement, without excessive formal identification, promulgated an attitude toward organizations that emphasized persons, groups, and relationships.

The human relations movement began with impetus from the findings of the Hawthorne Studies that both group norms and worker attitudes are important and account for variance that is left unaccounted for by scientific management and personnel selection. The movement began during the period spanning the irrational zest of the late 1920s and the start of the Great Depression. The shift was documented in the titles of two books by Morris Viteles. Specifically, the revision of Industrial Psychology (1932) illustrated the evolution of the field when it appeared as Motivation and Morale in Industry (1953). Even as industrial psychologists continued to develop personnel testing techniques, documented by Harold Burtt in 1926 and 1929 and then by Morris Viteles in the magisterial Industrial Psychology, the roots of organizational psychology were being cultivated in the study of attitudes and groups. Another individual who made the transition to a focus on job attitudes and mental health of the worker as well as industrial conflict, from an early focus on testing aspects of industrial psychology, was Arthur Kornhauser. Several individuals went undercover to write popular accounts of how workers thought and behaved. Satisfaction became an important outcome for the human relations movement. Researchers developed job satisfaction surveys following unobtrusive investigations during the 1920s (for example, Whiting Williams, Mainsprings of Men), and the Hawthorne researches provided guidance on personnel interviewing and counseling. Context and environment were important to workers, and thus to management, and eventually to I/O psychologists.

Two other individuals were important in advancing models of cooperation, paired with productive conflict, as a preferred organization for business firms. Mary Parker Follett, trained in political science, presented analyses of power relationships within [Page 328]organizations that have been rediscovered by the I/O field. Chester Barnard, a CEO of New Jersey Bell Telephone who was also influenced by Harvard Business School faculty, wrote about management in Functions of the Executive (1938). He discussed the directives of supervisors and the varying acceptance by subordinates. Chester Barnard developed concepts of strategic planning and the acceptance theory of authority. Strategic planning is the formulation of major plans or strategies, which guide the organization in pursuit of major objectives. Barnard believed that the prime functions of executives were to establish effective communication systems, hire and retain effective personnel, and motivate personnel. These functions vary from standard treatments in their inclusion of communication systems as an important facet of the executive position.

...