Human Relations Movement

In the first twenty-five years of 20th century owners and managers assumed that people came to work primarily because of economic needs which led to the development of classical management supported by Taylor and then to the scientific management of Fayol. However, by the 1930s, it has become a certainty, on the basis of research, that people have other needs primarily related not to financial fulfillment but to personal involvement. Since then, there were a lot of theorists that tried to explain what was that triggered and sustained human behaviour. As a result, the research of these “behavioural scientists” (kreitner 1999) became to what today is called the human relations movement. This study will be demonstrating the need for human relations movement and also if it has completely replaced classical and scientific management. (131)
Before the human relations movement, companies were looking for a way to grow their profit by increasing the productivity and efficiency of the workers. The first and most important model user of the scientific method was F.W.Taylor. As an experienced worker, Taylor focused on the design of the manual tasks (David Buchanan, 1997) by rationalizing and standardizing production techniques. Taylor, in the words of Aitken, ‘was the first to synthesize and systemize the best that was known about the management of men’. (80)
This researcher’s primary interest was the individual worker that was motivated by financial incentives. Although the planning, organizing and leading the worker’s tasks increased productivity and profit, when it came to methodology of people Taylor showed no concern. It is true that financial incentives kept workers motivated for a while but the closely controlled conditions of work which promoted a militaristic and mechanistic organization (Buchanan) led to a low employee morale. (70)
Apart from Taylor, H. Fayol also analyzed the complexity of organizations .This theorist viewed organizations as akin to living