Management Guru 5

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 boss is in charge.

A

U

D

SD

2. Employees will rise to the occasion when an extra effort is SA needed.

A

U

D

SD

3. Employees need direction and SA control or they will not work hard.

A

U

D

SD

4. People naturally want to work.

SA

A

U

D

SD

SA

A

U

D

SD

6. Employees should not be involved in making decisions that SA concern them.

A

U

D

SD

7. A manager has to be toughSA minded and hard-nosed.

A

U

D

SD

8. A manager should build a SA climate of trust in the work unit.

A

U

D

SD

9. If a unit is to be productive, SA employees need to be pushed.

A

U

D

SD

10. Employees need the freedom SA to innovate.

A

U

D

SD

2 pts 4 pts

3 pts 3 pts

4 pts 2 pts

5 pts 1 pt

5. A manager should be decisive, no- nonsense leader.

a

Scoring and Interpretation Items 1,3,5,7,9 Items 2,4,6,8,10

1 pt 5 pts

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/