HUMAN RELATIONS THEORY
In the 1930s and 1940s, another theory of people management appeared—that of
the human relations school. This was an outgrowth of studies made at the Hawthorne
plant of Western Electric Company. Researchers testing the effects on productivity
of changes in working conditions came up with a baffling series of results that could
not be explained in the old scientific management terms. During a prolonged series
of experiments with rest periods, for example, the productivity of the small test group
rose steadily whether the rest time was moved up or down or was eliminated altogether.
Furthermore, workers in the test group were out sick far less often than the
large group of regular workers, and the test group worked without supervision. It
became obvious that the rise in productivity was the result of something new, not
the economic factor of a paycheck or the scientific factors of working conditions or
close supervision.
Elton Mayo, the Harvard professor who conducted the experiments, concluded
that a social factor, the sense of belonging to a work group, was responsible. Other
people had other theories to explain the increased productivity: the interested attention
of the researchers, the absence of authoritarian supervision, participation in the
planning, and analysis of the experiments. People are still theorizing about what
human relations theory can do for you. We explore this in later articles.
PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT
Participative management was the real meaning of the Hawthorne experiments, but
everyone agrees that the experiments shifted the focus of personnel management to
the people being managed. Now enter the human relations theorists, who stressed
the importance of concern for workers as individuals and as members of the work
group. ‘‘Make your employees happy and you will have good workers,’’ they said.
‘‘Listen to your people, call them by name, remember their birthdays, help them with
their problems.’’ This was the era of the company picnic, the company newspaper,
the company bowling team, the company Boy Scout troop. Human relations practitioners
flourished especially in the 1940s, during World War II and after, and many
of their theories are still at work, maintaining a healthy focus on the importance of
the individual.
But happiness, it turns out, does not necessarily make people productive. You
can have happy workers who are not producing a thing: There is more to productivity
than that. Yet we do need nearly everything the human relations theorists emphasized.
Supervisors do need to know their workers, to treat them as individuals, to communicate
and listen, to provide a pleasant working environment, and to encourage a
sense of belonging. But we need still more. It isn’t happiness that will make your
workers produce; it is your own ability to lead your people. Some of the human
relations techniques, such as listening and communicating and treating people as
individuals, can make you a better leader, and this is the biggest thing that human
relations theory can do for you. We explore this in later articles.
Building on the new interest in the worker, a trend toward participative management
developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In a participative system, workers par
ticipate in the decisions that concern them. They do not necessarily make the
decisions; this is not democratic management by majority vote. The manager still
leads and usually makes the final decision, but he or she discusses plans and procedures
and policies with the work groups who must carry them out, and considers their input
in making final decisions. In taking part in such discussions, workers come to share
the concerns and objectives of management and are more likely to feel committed
to the action and to being responsible for the resultsParticipative management as a total system is probably not suited to the typical
foodservice or lodging enterprise. Nevertheless, certain of its elements can work very
well. Discussing the work with your people, getting their ideas, and exchanging information
can establish a work climate and group processes in which everybody shares
responsibility to get results. You might call it management by communication.
HUMANISTIC MANAGEMENT
What is likely to work best in the hotel and foodservice industries is selective borrowing
from all three systems of management: scientific, human relations, and participative.
We need to apply many of the principles of scientific management: We
need standardized recipes, we need to train workers in the best ways to perform tasks,
and we need systems for controlling quality, quantity, and cost. But one thing we do
not need from scientific management is its view of the worker as no more than a
production tool. Here we can adapt many features of the human relations approach.
If we treat workers as individuals with their own needs and desires and motivations,
we can do a much better job of leading them and we are far more likely to increase
productivity overall. From participative management we can reap the advantages of
open communication and commitment to common goals, so that we are all working
together. The successful manager will blend all three systems, deliberately or instinctively,
according to the needs of the situation, the workers, and his or her personal
style of leadership. We call this humanistic management.
Like Frederick Taylor and all the theorists since, today’s supervisor is concerned
with productivity: getting people to do their jobs in the best way, getting the work
done on time and done well. This is an age-old problem: When Pope John XXIII
was asked how many people worked for him, he answered, ‘‘About half of them.’’ It
is sad but human that many people will do as little work as possible unless they see
some reason to do better. Often they see no reason.
This is where leadership comes in: the supervisor interacting with the workers.
Look at it as a new form of ROI, not return on investment but return on individuals.
As a supervisor you will succeed only to the degree that each person under you
produces; you are judged on the performance, the productivity, and the efficiency of
others. The only means for your success is a return on each person who works for
you. As a leader you can give them reasons to do better. Use your I’s: imagination,
ideas, initiative, improvement, interaction, innovation, and—why not?—inspiration.
It is the personal interaction between supervisor and worker that will turn the trick.