Week Four - Human Resources Approaches and Human Relations

The human relations and human resources approaches to organizational communication stemmed from the realization that machine metaphors were not using employees to their full potential, or making them happy.  Workers were not rewarded or allowed to contribute their ideas and knowledge to the organization.  This discovery was made popular from the Hawthorne studies, which then introduced us to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory, McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, and Likert’s System IV (Miller 2009).

The Hawthorne studies were conducted to test how the productivity of factory workers changes in different work environments (such as different lighting, temperature, and times).  Results found that the environmental factors did not change the levels of productivity, but social satisfaction from human association did.  This led to uncovering the importance of the emotion and satisfaction of workers in productivity, and the importance of informal and group communication in organizational functioning (Miller 2009).  This further showed how feeling/knowing you’re being watched improves productivity (Gale 2004).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory was then used to learn how to motivate workers.  In his pyramid (pictured below), human needs are categorized into five levels (the most important being at the base of the pyramid and then working up) in which, one cannot achieve a higher level until one has achieved the levels below it. 

Following this trend, McGregor developed theories X and Y to demonstrate two polar opposites of managerial thinking.  In theory X, workers are believed to be lazy, irresponsible, unintelligent, gullible and self-centered; and are therefore to be controlled using “hard” and classical approaches (McGregor 2000, p. 7).  In theory Y, workers are labeled as intelligent thinkers, self-controlled, ambitious, committed, responsible, and innovative; and are to be encouraged and motivated using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

In human resources, the focus is both on employee satisfaction and concern for production.  This leads us to Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid (pictured below) in which the optimal management style is team management (which shows a high concern for people and production).

This was further developed by Rensis Likert in his management systems (pictured below) in which system one is called the exploitive authoritative organization, system two is called the benevolent authoritative organization, system three is called the consultative organization, and system four is called a participative organization (Miller 2009).

Difficulties with employee participation were demonstrated through the case study of Marshall’s Processing Plant (Miller 2009) in which employee’s didn’t like attending multiple meetings and having extra work, felt like they were doing the manager’s job, or did not feel that they would truly be listened to. 

Despite these complications, the above theories (which moved us away from classical approaches) help us understand how and why communication works today, and helps us prepare for working as a communication professional in the future.

References

Gale, EAM 2004, ‘The Hawthorne studies – A fable for our times?’, QJM: Monthly Journal of the Association of Physicians, vol. 97, no. 7, pp. 439-449.

McGregor, D 2000 ‘The human side of enterprise’, Reflections, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 6-15.

Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: approaches and processes, 6th ed, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.