Human relations management theory focuses on informal organization and participative management Human relations management theory encompasses a rich and diverse tradition of models, techniques, research findings, and ideas that often trace their roots back to the Hawthorne Experiments conducted during the late 1920s. Researchers implementing experiments at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric (in Cicero, IL) placed two groups of employees doing the same work into separate rooms. One group was treated as the control, and the second was exposed to various experimental stimuli such as increased lighting, decreased lighting, rest pauses, and so on. The researchers, F.J. Roethlisberger of Harvard and W.J. Dickson of Western Electric management, expected the experiments to lead to different levels of performance for the experimental group. |
