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Human Relations Movement

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Human relations movement refers to the researchers of organizational

development who study the behaviour of people in groups, in

particular workplace groups and other related concepts in fields such

as industrial and organizational psychology. It originated in the 1930s'

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Hawthorne studies, which examined the effects of social relations,

motivation and employee satisfaction on factory productivity. The

movement viewed workers in terms of their psychology and fit with

companies, rather than as interchangeable parts, and it resulted in the

creation of the discipline of human resource management.

Elton Mayo's work is considered by various academics to be the

counterpoint of Taylorism and scientific management. Taylorism,

founded by F. W. Taylor, sought to apply science to the management

of employees in the workplace in order to gain economic efficiency

through labour productivity. Elton Mayo's work has been widely

attributed to the discovery of the 'social person', allowing for workers

to be seen as individuals rather than merely robots designed to work

for unethical and unrealistic productivity expectations. However, this

theory has been contested, as Mayo's purported role in the human

relations movement has been questioned. Nonetheless, although

Taylorism attempted to justify scientific management as a holistic

philosophy, rather than a set of principles, the human relations

movement worked parallel to the notion of scientific management. Its

aim was to address the social welfare needs of workers and therefore

elicit their co-operation as a workforce.

The widely perceived view of human relations is said to be one that

completely contradicts the traditional views of Taylorism. Whilst

scientific management tries to apply science to the workforce, the

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accepted definition of human relations suggests that management

should treat workers as individuals, with individual needs. In doing

so, employees are supposed to gain an identity, stability within their

job and job satisfaction, which in turn make them more willing to co-

operate and contribute their efforts towards accomplishing

organisational goals. The human relations movement supported the

primacy of organizations to be attributed to natural human groupings,

communication and leadership. However, the conventional depiction

of the human relations 'school' of management, rising out of the ashes

of scientific management is argued to be a rhetorical distortion of

events.

Firstly, it has been argued that Elton Mayo's actual role in the human

relations movement is controversial and although he is attributed to be

the founder of this movement, some academics believe that the

concept of human relations was used well before the Hawthorne

investigations, which sparked the human relations movement. Bruce

and Nyland (2011) suggest that many academics preceded Mayo in

identifying a concept similar to that of the human relations movement

even going as far to suggest that the output and information collected

by the Hawthorne investigations was identified well before Mayo by

Taylor. In addition, Wren and Greenwood (1998) argue that Taylor

made important contributions to what inspires human motivation,