The Human Relations School of ’Scientific’ Management

This is an interesting characterization that I came across today (16.11.2012) in

V. Lynn Meek, Organizational Culture: Origins and Weaknesses
Organization Studies 1988 9: 453
http://oss.sagepub.com/content/9/4/453


The human relations school of ’scientific’ management  was the first body of theorists to explore informal social relations in organizations and to take the concept of organizational culture seriously (see Perrow 1979 for a review of the history of the human relations school and see
Mayo 1933; Gardner 1945; Warner and Low 1947; Richardson and Walker
1948). ,The human relations theorists of this school have approached organizational
culture mainly from a behaviourist oriented psychological framework.

The language used by them is based on a medical/biological metaphor:  healthy and unhealthy organizational culture or climate and talk about organizational hygiene. They regarded culture as something which an organization has and which can be manipulated to serve the ends of management.

In summarizing past research efforts of this human relations school, Gregory (1983: 361) argues that the school’s ’promanagement position resulted in biased research that studied the
behaviour of lower ranking personnel and supported unquestioningly the rational manager model’.