Counseling in an Organization: A Sequel to the Hawthorne Researches.

Abstract

Counseling practice couples professional operations based upon subtle but critical changes in cognition and decision process, with the impact of interpersonal, small group, and social system attachments. Distinct changes in social competence are attainable in persons presenting minor to major levels of symptoms, with minimal use of other forms of treatment and without environmental alteration. Dickson, a major architect of the counseling program at the Hawthorne Plant, of Western Electric Company, and Roethlisberger, a business administration consultant, review experience with a counseling function in a large industrial enterprise. Counseling in an Organization was published in 1966 but is used more by students of administration than of medicine. Because of the growing professional interest in cognitive process and its aberrations in illness and disability states, a 20-year experience with a cognitively oriented counseling treatment may be intriguing to psychiatrists. The counseling function at