Humans are our greatest asset

By Mahesh Jayasinghe

The evolution of management theory goes back to the historical era where different viewpoints were raised on treating people as assets of the company. The Classical and Neo Classical schools of taught, focused more on processes than on people. Hence the importance of the aspect of people of an organisation was not addressed until the human resources approach or the behavioural science approach to management.    

In my previous articles, I discussed the Classical and Neo Classical approaches to management. Three important management principles were discussed. The Scientific Management, 14 principles of management and bureaucracy. Although the origins of these principles go back to the 19th century, this is the 21st century and most of our organisations are still governed by them with minor modifications.

One of the major criticisms of the classical school was not giving the due prominence to the employees, which laid the foundation to the human relations approach.

The Hawthorne experiment: Elton Mayo (1924—1932)

Mayo initially wanted to study the impact of organisation environment, on the productivity of the employees in an organisation. The lighting conditions in the working environment were increased and it measured the impact on productivity.

Similarly the lighting conditions were decreased and it measured the impact on productivity. No significant differences were visible. He found out that other environmental conditions such as supervision, extra attention given by the management have an impact on employee productivity.

This experiment was a significant milestone in management thinking because it emphasised the importance of people involvement in organisation (working groups, leadership, motivation, communication and other social factors). Therefore the management manipulated these social factors to engage people in organisations towards achieving managerial aims and objectives.  

Are you using the same control strategy in your organisation to motivate your employees? One of the main criticisms of the human relation approach was that they focused on ‘People without the organisation’ (assumed that employees were solely motivated by fulfilling their social needs).

The resources available for an organisation is limited hence need to focus on economical utilisation towards achieving its objectives, hence need to strike a balance between cost and benefits on spending on people.

This gave rise to neo human relations approach to management in early 1950s and 1960s , where more emphasis were given towards relationships between management and employees, working groups , providing organisation structure and leadership. Two important writers were Abraham Maslow (1908- 1970) and Douglas McGregor (1906-1954).

Hierarchy of Needs: Abraham Maslow (1908—1970)

The below diagram shows the needs of a human being arranged in a pyramid, along with the motivation of satisfying it. While this theory gives an important guide line to the management, it does not specify time scales to indicate when it is satisfied.

Therefore organisations could not fulfil this need of employees, while many employees might satisfy their needs from somewhere else.

Similarly based on the level at which an employee engage in an organisation (junior level, middle level, senior level), it is very difficult to assess the value of each level, in order to fulfil the needs; while a  combination of needs can be fulfilled by one action. The theory also does not specify if a need satisfied will lead to satisfaction of employee and hence improve the productivity.          

(The writer is a PhD research student, Management Consultant, Executive Coach, Corporate trainer, lecturer and a Company Director, forward your comments to [email protected].)