SHB2034 – Management Guru & Quality

Chapter 3: Human Relations

TABLE OF CONTENTS
OBJECTIVES.........................................................................................................2
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................2
3.1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................3
3.2 GEORGE ELTON MAYO .................................................................................4
3.3 RENSIS LIKERT .............................................................................................5
3.4 DOUGLAS MCGREGOR ................................................................................7
3.5 ROBERT OWEN..............................................................................................9
3.6 DAVID C. MCCLELLAND .............................................................................10
3.7 ABRAHAM H. MASLOW ..............................................................................11
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS..................................................................................14
OBJECTIVES
At the end of this topic, you will be able to:
• Enable learners to understand the lives, philosophies, ideas and contributions of Human
Relations Gurus and Thinkers.
• Enable learners to assess and evaluate the importance and impact of those ideas in
organizations and society.
• Enable learners to relate the ideas to other management gurus from other disciplines of
knowledge.
• Enable learners to apply the best and the most relevant concepts formulated by
management gurus and thinkers in behaviors and practices in daily lives.

ABSTRACT
Human Relations is a classical management approach that attempted to understand and explain
how human psychological and social processes interact with the formal aspects of the work
situation to influence performance.
3.1 INTRODUCTION
The human relations perspective recognized employees as individuals with concrete human
needs, as parts of work groups, an as members of a larger society. The human relations
approach to management made relationships between employees and supervisors the most
salient aspect of management. The perspective explains how management knowledge of the
psychological and social processes of human behavior could result in improvements in
productivity and work satisfaction. Managers have to view their subordinates as assets to be
developed, not as nameless robots expected to follow orders blindly.

Two key aspects of human relations approach are employee motivation and leadership style.
Abraham Maslow, a psychologist who developed a theory of motivation based on hierarchy of
needs. Besides Maslow, there are some other management gurus that contribute the theory of
human relations, which include Mayo, Likert, McGregor, Owen, and McClelland.
3.2 GEORGE ELTON MAYO
Elton Mayo sought to apply the insights of psychiatry and the social sciences to the organization
of work and to management practice.

In 1928, Mayo was invited by the Western Electric Company to inspect some experiments being
undertaken at the company's; Hawthorne Works, on the outskirts of Chicago. Mayo's name has
become synonymous with the Hawthorne experiments, both because of his influence on the
experiments and because the Hawthorne experiments dominated and defined his career.

George Elton Mayo

Elton Mayo was born in Adelaide, Australia. He lectured on logic, ethics, and psychology in
Australia before emigrating to the U.S.A. (1922), where he taught at Harvard Business School
(1926 - 47). He is best remembered for his experimental studies at Western Electric's Hawthorne
plant (reported in The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (1933)), which determined
productivity to be dependent on workers' morale.

Hawthorne Experiments
The experiment began by introducing various changes, each of which was continued for a test
period of four to twelve weeks. What happened was that six individuals became a team and the
team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to co-operation in the experiment. The
consequence was that they felt themselves to be participating freely and without afterthought and
were happy in the knowledge that they were working without coercion from above or limitation
from below.

They were themselves satisfied at the consequence for they felt that they were working under
less pressure than ever before. In fact regular medical checks showed no signs of cumulative
fatigue and absence from work declined by 80 per cent.The experimental group had considerable
freedom of movement. They were not pushed around or bossed by anyone. Under these
conditions they developed an increased sense of responsibility and instead of discipline from
higher authority being imposed, it came from within the group itself.To his amazement, Elton
Mayo discovered a general upward trend in production, completely independent of any of the
changes he made.

His findings didn't mesh with the current theory of the worker as motivated solely by self-interest.
It didn't make sense that productivity would continue to rise gradually when he cut out breaks and
returned the women to longer working hours.

Mayo began to look around and realized that the women, exercising a freedom they didn't have
on the factory floor, had formed a social atmosphere that also included the observer who tracked
their productivity. The talked, they joked, they began to meet socially outside of work. Mayo had
discovered a fundamental concept that seems obvious today. Workplaces are social
environments and within them, people are motivated by much more than economic self-interest.
He concluded that all aspects of that industrial environment carried social value.

When the women were singled out from the rest of the factory workers, it raised their self-esteem.
When they were allowed to have a friendly relationship with their supervisor, they felt happier at
work. When he discussed changes in advance with them, they felt like part of the team.

He had secured their cooperation and loyalty; it explained why productivity rose even when he
took away their rest breaks.
3.3 RENSIS LIKERT
Rensis Likert has conducted much research on human behavior within organizations. He asserts
that to achieve maximum profitability, good labor relations and high productivity, every
organization must make optimum use of their human assets.

The form of the organization, which will make greatest use of the human capacity, Likert
contends, is a highly effective work group linked together in an overlapping pattern by other
similarly effective groups.

Organizations at present have widely varying types of management styles and Likert has
identified four main system; exploitive, benevolent, consultative and participative. To convert
organization, four main features of effective management must be put into practice; motivation to
work, employees have their own needs, committed to achieve the organization objectives, and
supportive relationships.

Effective Work Group

The work groups which form the nuclei of the participative group system, are characterized by the
following features:
• Members are skilled in leadership and membership roles for easy interaction.
• The group has existed long enough to develop a well-established relaxed working
relationship.
• The members of the group are loyal to it and to each other since they have a high degree
of mutual trust.
• The values and goals of the group are an expression of the values and needs of its
members.
• The members perform a function and try to keep the goals of the different groups to
which they belong in harmony with each other.

Likert Four System

1. The exploitive - authoritative system, where decisions are imposed on subordinates,
where motivation is characterized by threats, where high levels of management have
great responsibilities but lower levels have virtually none, where there is very little
communication and no joint teamwork.
2. The benevolent - authoritative system, where leadership is by a condescending form of
master-servant trust, where motivation is mainly by rewards, where managerial personnel
feel responsibility but lower levels do not, where there is little communication and
relatively little teamwork.
3. The consultative system, where leadership is by superiors who have substantial but not
complete trust in their subordinates, where motivation is by rewards and some
involvement, where a high proportion of personnel, especially those at the higher levels
feel responsibility for achieving organization goals, where there is some communication
(both vertical and horizontal) and a moderate amount of teamwork.
4. The participative - group system, which is the optimum solution, where leadership is by
superiors who have; complete confidence in their subordinates, where motivation is by
economic rewards based on goals which have been set in participation, where personnel
at all levels feel real responsibility for the organizational goals, where there is much
communication, and a substantial amount of cooperative teamwork.

This fourth system is the one, which is the ideal for the profit oriented and human-concerned
organization, and according to Likert all organizations should adopt this system. Clearly, the
changes involved may be painful and long-winded, but it is necessary if one is to achieve the
maximum rewards for the organization.
Four Main Features of Effective Management
Four main features of effective management must be put into practice:
1. The motivation to work must be fostered by modern principles and techniques, and not by
the old system of rewards and threats.
2. Employees must be seen as people who have their own needs, desires and values and
their self-worth must be maintained or enhanced.
3. An organization of tightly knit and highly effective work groups must be built up which are
committed to achieving the objectives of the organization.
4. Supportive relationships must exist within each work group. These are characterized not
by actual support, but by mutual respect.
3.4 DOUGLAS MCGREGOR
Douglas McGregor was an American social psychologist who became influential as a
management guru after World War 11. He is best known for the idea of two sets of assumptions
about human nature, Theory X and Theory Y.

Douglas McGregor
He attended Wayne State University (B.A., L.L.D.) and Harvard (M.A., Ph.D.). In his youth he
worked in his grandfather's institute for transient laborers in Detroit, where he gained insight into
the problems faced by labor. As district manager for a retail gasoline-merchandising firm, he
learned the concerns of management.

He was the first full time psychologist on the faculty of MIT, and helped to found it's Industrial
Relations Section. Throughout his career he consulted for union and management alike and
served on the panel of arbitrators for the American Arbitration Association. McGregor resigned the
presidency of Antioch to rejoin the MIT faculty in its new School of Industrial Management in
1954. Today Antioch McGregor bears his name in honor of his contributions to management
theory.

Theory X
Theory X is based on assumptions of 'control':
• The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.
Therefore people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to
get them to put forth-adequate effort.
• Prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, wants
security above all.

Theory Y
Theory Y is based on assumptions of 'support':
• The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
• External controls and threats of punishments are not the sole means for bringing about
effort toward a company's goals (of motivation) since man will exercise self-direction and
self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.
• The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but also to
seek responsibility.
• The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity
in the solution of organizational problems is widely, nor narrowly, distributed in the
population.
• The intellectual potential of most people is only partially utilized in most organizations.
 Are You a Theory X or a Theory Y Manager?
Instructions: circle the level of agreement or disagreement that you personally feel toward each of
the following 10 statements.
SA = Agree A = U =D = DS = Strongly
Strongly Agree Uncertain Disagree Disagree
1. People need to know that the
SA A U D SD
boss is in charge.
2. Employees will rise to the
occasion when an extra effort is SA A U D SD
needed.
3. Employees need direction and
SA A U D SD
control or they will not work hard.
4. People naturally want to work. SA A U D SD
5. A manager should be a
SA A U D SD
decisive, no- nonsense leader.
6. Employees should not be
involved in making decisions that SA A U D SD
concern them.
7. A manager has to be tough-
SA A U D SD
minded and hard-nosed.
8. A manager should build a
SA A U D SD
climate of trust in the work unit.
9. If a unit is to be productive,
SA A U D SD
employees need to be pushed.
10. Employees need the freedom
SA A U D SD
to innovate.
Scoring and Interpretation
Items 1,3,5,7,9 1 pt 2 pts 3 pts 4 pts 5 pts
Items 2,4,6,8,10 5 pts 4 pts 3 pts 2 pts 1 pt
To determine your score, add up your total points for all 10 items. High scores
suggest managerial attitudes in line with Theory Y. Low scores indicate that fit
with Theory X.
Source: Adapted from R.E. Quinn, S.R. Faerman, M.P. Thompson, and M.R.
McGrath, Becoming a Master Manager, 2nd ed., New York: John Wiley * Sons,
pp. 30-31.
3.5 ROBERT OWEN
Robert Owen is an early management leader. Owen's New Lanark experiment became famous in
England and abroad, and his ideas spread. He also proposed the formation of self-sufficient
cooperative agricultural-industrial communities. Believing in the peaceful reordering of society,
Owen ended his association with trade unionism and spent the last 25 years of life writing and
lecturing on his beliefs on education, marriage, and religion.

Robert Owen
Owen was born in 1771. He is a British social reformer and socialist, pioneer in the cooperative
movement. The son of a saddler, he had little formal education but was a zealous reader. At the
age of 10, he began working in the textile business and by 1794 had become a successful cotton
manufacturer in Manchester. In 1800 he moved to New Lanark, Scotland, where he had bought,
with others, the mills of David Dale (whose daughter he married).

New Lanark Experiment

He reconstructed the New Lanark community into a motel industrial town with good housing and
sanitation, nonprofit stores, schools, and excellent working conditions. Thus the mill profits
increased.

Cooperative Agricultural Industrial Communities

One such community, called New Harmony, was established (1825) in Indiana but failed after
numerous disagreements among its members. Professing a gradually lost much of his former
upper-class support but in the trade union movement and advocated the merging of unions with
cooperative societies. Soon, however, the government took repressive action, and many workers
responded by proclaiming the need for class struggle.

Throughout his life Owen based his social programs on the idea that individual character is
molded by environment and can be improved in a society based upon cooperation. Among his
extensive writing is where he outlined his vision of the ideal community - a system run on a
cooperative basis involving both factories and agriculture.
3.6 DAVID C. MCCLELLAND
McClelland is best known for his research on achievement motivation, however, his research
interests ranged from personality to consciousness. Along with John Atkinson, he developed the
scoring system for the Thematic Apperception Test that was used in achievement motivation
research. Later, he became interested in the relationship between achievement motivation and
economic development. Before his death, he conducted research on physiological influences on
achievement motivation.

David C. McClelland
David McClelland was born May 20, 1917 in Mt. Vernon, New York. He received B.A. degree in
1938 from Wesleyan University and M.A. in 1939 from the University of Missouri. He received
Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Yale University in 1941. He taught at the Connecticut
College for Women in New London, Connecticut and Wesleyan University prior accepting a
position at Harvard University in 1956. After 30 years at Harvard, he moved to Boston University
in 1987, where he was a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology until his death in
March 1998 at the age of 80.

McClelland received numerous awards for his research, including the American Psychological
Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution in 1987. His publications include The
Achieving Society (1961), The Roots of Consciousness (1964), Power: The Inner Experience
(1975), and The Achievement Motive (1953, with Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell).

Physiological Influences on Achievement Motivation

According to David C. McClelland's research, achievement-motivated people have certain
characteristics in common, including:
• The capacity to set high ('stretching') personal but obtainable goals
• The concern for personal achievement rather than the rewards of success
• The desire for job-relevant feedback (how well am I doing?) rather than for attitudinal
feedback (how well do you like me?)
3.7 ABRAHAM H. MASLOW
Maslow was a formative influence on motivation theory. Through clinical research, he developed
an idea whereby human needs could be classified in terms of a hierarchy of five steps:
physiological needs, safety needs, social or love needs, ego or self esteem and self-fulfillment or
'self-actualization' needs.

Maslow's ideas took motivation theory beyond the simpler models or scientific management and
behaviorist practitioners. He developed a more dynamic model of changing needs and wants, one
that gave new emphasis to the role of unconscious motives. In the past, management reward
systems have attempted to satisfy an individual's lower level needs for safety and physiological
security, for protection against deprivation and the threat to a worker or his family. However,
management reward systems now, or should be, endeavoring to satisfy the individual's higher
level needs for esteem and self-fulfillment.

Abraham Harold Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BA in
1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934, all in psychology from the University of Wisconsin.
Since 1943, when the motivation theory was published, until his death in 1970, Maslow
dominated the field of motivation, such as those of McGregor (1960), Herzberg (1966), and
Alderfer (1972). His theory forms the starting point for most subsequent reviews of motivation.

Motivation Theory
One of the interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked with monkeys early in his career
was that some needs take precedence over others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty,
you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first. After all, you can do without food for weeks, but
you can only do without water for a couple of days. Thirst is a "stronger" need than hunger.
Likewise, if you are very thirsty, but someone has put a chokehold on you and you can't breath,
the stronger need is to breathe.

Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of needs. Beyond the details of air,
water, food, and sex, he laid out five broader layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety
and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize
the self.
Hierarchy

Maslow Hierarchy Needs

The Physiological Needs

The physiological needs include oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals
and vitamins. Also include the need to maintain a pH balance (getting too acidic or base will kill
you) and temperature (98.6 or near to it).

In addition, human being needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes (CO2, sweat,
urine, and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex. These are in fact individual needs, and that a
lack of, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific hunger for things which have in the past
provided that vitamin C such as orange juice.

The Safety and Security Needs

Once physiological needs have been achieved, the second need is to fine safe circumstances,
stability and protection. Human being might develop a need for structure, for order, some limits.
He becomes concerned, not with needs like hunger and thirst, but with fears and anxieties.

This set of needs manifest himself in the form of having a home in a safe neighborhood, a little
job security, a good retirement plan and a bit of insurance, etc.

The Love and Belonging Needs

When physiological needs and safety needs are taken care of, a third needs starts to show up.
Human being begins to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, and affectionate
relationships in general, even a sense of community.

Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties. In
normal life, people have desired to marry, have a family, be a part of a community, or a brother in
the fraternity. It is also a part of what people look for in a career.
The Esteem Needs
Human being will begin to look for a little self-esteem after other needs consummated. Maslow
noted two versions of esteem needs:
• Lower version - the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory,
recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance.
• Higher version - the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence,
competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.

Self-actualization Needs
Finally, human being will look at self-actualization needs. Maslow has used a variety of terms to
refer to this level. He has called it growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being
needs (or B-needs, in contrast to D-needs), and self-actualization.

These needs do not involve balance or homeostasis. Once engaged, they continue to be felt. In
fact, they are likely to become stronger as we "feed" them. They involve the continuous desire to
fulfill potentials, to "be all that you can be." They are a matter of becoming the most complete, the
fullest, "you" -- hence the term, self-actualization.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

• http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/hua04001.html
• http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_06_mcclelland.html
• http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/hawthorne_02.html
• http://www.business.com/