Managers, Men and Morale

Abstract

PERHAPS the most outstanding event in the industrial story of Britain in the 1940‘s is the advancement in the technique of co-operation between master and man-or, between managers and employees, to put it into its modern wording. Admittedly that story has not everywhere been characterized by undisturbed harmony ; but as to the extent of the progress achieved, and its soundness in fact, there can be little room for doubt. In the main, the achievement has been in the realm of formal relations between organised parties, that is, procedures for negotiation and continual consultation between representatives : employers' federations and trade unions on an industry basis, or managers and shop stewards at the individual factory level. Yet there has been an advance, too, in the more informal pattern of consultation that is inherent in the everyday contact of manager and supervisor with the men and women under their jurisdiction—an advance measured chiefly in widespread recognition of this factor as an element in executive responsibility. This fact of employee relationships is, many authorities are coming to agree, of greater significance in the conduct of industry than the formalized pattern characterized by a meeting of ‘sides' across a table, more often glaring than smiling, and more often interested in their own respective good rather than in the pursuit of a common task. Managers, Men and Morale Wilfred B. D. Brown Winifred Raphael. Pp. vii+163. (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1948.) 10s. 6d. net.