Week 4 Assignment: Human Relations or Human Resources?

Follett, Mayo, and Barnard:

Follett, Mayo, and Barnard all had their way of examining the employee-manager relationship; this was the foundation of the human relations approach. Mary Parker Follett was a social worker who lived in Boston and ran vocational guidance centers. These centers assisted in development of new ideas regarding leadership, communication, social processes, and community. Follett believed in a visionary leader who could only be successful and produce excellence in the workplace with the cooperation among people working together in groups. Elton Mayo was a professor at Harvard who critiqued the idea of scientific management. Mayo and Follett both did not share Taylor’s idea of maximizing wages in an organization. Mayo believed in the importance of interpersonal relations suggesting that society comprises groups, not isolated individuals; individuals follow the norms of any given group and don’t act alone for self-interests; and that individual decisions are influenced by emotions. Lastly, Chester Barnard was a man who was influenced by Follett and the importance of cooperation in organizations. He suggested that the individuals should be persuaded to accept a common purpose, which is the key to cooperation. He also believed that the management purely played the role of communication and persuasion. For the first time, management was seen as interpersonal rather than economic.

Some limitations of the human relations approach include false openness, abuse of trust and/or honesty, equation of employee happiness with efficiency or productivity. (Chapter 3, table 3.1)

Up in the Air:

First of all, I must say, this was a great movie; I am glad I watched it for the first time as part of this class. Anyhow, after watching the movie and gather information regarding the difference between human relations and human resources, I have to be honest: This is a tough one! It is not easy to say what kind of approach is applied by Craig (Manager) in this movie. However, I would lean more towards the Human Relations approach. I say this because, per table 3.1 in the book (Organizational Communication, page 81), it has mentions of words like “development of psychology”, and the theme “Improved human relations leads to improved efficiency and productivity” also satisfies my opinion. According to the book, “The human relations approach starts with the assumption that all people ‘want to feel united, tied, bound to something, some cause, bigger than they, commanding them yet worthy of them, summoning them to significance in living’ (Bendix, 1956, p 296)”. (Chapter 3, page 78). Going from this quote, I would say that Craig assumes that his team understands the big picture and are united to go and fire some people on behalf of other companies. However, I do not believe that is really the case. Specially when Natalie suggests the idea of firing people “remotely” and not have the need to sit in person, it doesn’t go well with some, specifically with Ryan. He immediately argues the notion and the discussion does not end well in Craig’s office. So in my opinion, Craig has been applying, for better or for worse, the human relations approach to management. Also, any company which hires another company such as CTC in the movie, simply does not have the “guts” to face it’s own employees and give them the truth. Sometimes the employees who have given their heart and soul and their trust and sincerity to the company, simply don’t expect to be “let go” suddenly without any proper explanation. Any employee of any company deserves to hear the truth come from his/her manager regarding the situation of the company or department which is letting go of it’s employees. This also suggests that the organization does not have open communication with its employees about the day to day operations as well as the company’s status. For some reason, this reminds me of what with the employees of Enron where the executives hid documents and news from their employees, before it collapsed many years ago. (http://www.npr.org/news/specials/enron/history.html)

Seinfeld Soup Nazi Clip:

I believe the reason for posting this clip this week is because, first, you could easily George and Elaine as two employees of an organization who are backbiting about their peers and/or managers; second, George is hesitant to face the manager (in this case it is the restaurant chef) because he is nervous of being denied and is not getting success after his try; after the human relations and human resources approach, the role of the chef at the restaurant is something I want to leave up for discussion. Not really sure what approach he is using towards his customers?