Human relations can be simply understood as the interactions among people, especially between employers and their workers, to help both groups achieve their own objectives. As for the management aspect, the objectives will be the growth, survival and profit of the organization. However, at the same time, the workers will be concerned with goals such as good working areas and meaningful jobs which bring them an opportunity to contact other teammates.
Elton Mayo, who is “the father of human relations” (Lussier 2010), introduced the Hawthorne Studies that changed the dominant view about employees being no different from any machine in the 19th century.
UNDERSTANDING OF THEORY:
The initial experiment was known as the Illumination Study, which aimed at investigating the relationship between workplace lighting and employees’ productivity. According to Wren & Bedeian (2009), in the beginning, the researchers selected two groups of workers. In the first group known as the test group, the level of lighting was varied. The second one was the control group that had no alteration in light. During the study, the researchers found that the output of workers increased in both groups. Additionally, the productivity of the test group made researchers even more surprised because whether the lighting level was high or low as ordinary moonlight, the output generally increased. One of the employees who were in the experiment was asked to inform about the study. He said that the environment “wasn’t that bad” (Bolton, A. 1994, cited in Wren and Bedeian 2009). It got a little darker but he could still see what he was doing. The experiment concluded that there is no relationship existing between workers’ output and illumination.
Some more studies were performed and the final conclusion researchers revealed is that “people can understand more clearly that the workplace is not just a place to earn money, but a complex social system which affects their satisfaction and productivity. Employees now recognize that they have a right to be treated well and they deserve to have it”.