Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
David Selvanathan
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Mayo and Roethlisberger came from the Taylor tradition, and were studying fatique to optimize the length and spacing of rest periods for maximum productivity. The early work followed the scientific management approach, but surprisingly they found that production rose in both control and experimental rooms no matter what they did to the lighting. Later they found that people simply worked harder because they were part of the experiment and they wanted to do the best they could for the researchers and the company. Scotts summarizes this as "change is interesting, attention is gratifying" p. 57. Other Hawthorne studies (relay-assembly group, mica-splitting, bank wiring) all showed that workers are not simply motivated by economic self-interest but have complex motives and values. "They are driven by feelings and sentiments as much as be facts and interests... and also act as members of social groups (where loyalties are often stronger than individual self-interests)." Scott p. 57. The formal systems were subverted by evolving informal systems of norms and relationships, showing that socialpsychological effects were often stronger than economic effects.
However, the Hawthorne studies have been criticized extensively (e.g., Carey 1967)
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Leadership
Human Relations Perspective:
From a human relations perspective, leadership is a mechanism for influencing the behavior of individuals. Studies showed that participants performed better under democratic than authoritarian or lassez-faire leaders. Another showed two basic dimensions of leadership -- consideration (trust, friendship, and respect between leader and subordinate) and initiating structure (organizing capability of leader to get the work out). Later studies showed that leadership characteristics vary with the situation and the specific motivation needs of individual participants. Most of these studies ignored the formal authority vested in the positions of the leaders (Scott p. 58-59).
Bales (1958) found that there two main types of leadership -- socio-emotional leadership that supports group maintenance, and task leadership toward the group activities.
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Job Redesign
The Human Relations Group warned against the dangers of excessive formalization and specialization in causing alienation and low morale among workers. They advocated job enrichment and job rotation programs to reduce alienation and increase committment and satisfaction of workers especially doing routine work (Herzberg, 1966).
Worker Participation
Kurt Lewin was one of the first to show that participation in decision-making can improve commitment and satisfication (Lewin, 1948). Much of this work was elaborated in the work at Tavistock and other european sites.
In fact, the relations might even be the opposite. Charles Perrow has a highly critical review in his Complex Organizations book (1986, p. 79-144). However, "sociological work on organizations well into the 1950's was shaped primarily by the human relations model"
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