The Human Relations Myth Unveiled

Abstract

This chapter examines the origins of the human relations myth, the effect it has had on the evolution of work teams, and the distortions and misconceptions about selfmanagement that have resulted. While the human relations ideology has had an enormous effect on the management theory and practice for the last seventy years, most popularized accounts fail to show how the famous Hawthorne studies were really a quest for improving managerial control over workers. In this chapter, the famous relay test room experiments are deconstructed, revealing how these early experiments increased managerial control under the façade of humane supervision. Human relations approaches to work teams often inhibit a real transformation to democratic self-management. Many current misconceptions and distortions of selfmanagement, rooted in fallacies and myths propagated by the human relations movement, are also discussed.KeywordsHuman RelationTest RoomBureaucratic OrganizationWestern ElectricDemocratic LeadershipThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.