3.4 Human Resources Theories

In the previous section, you were introduced to the research of Elton Mayo and Kurt Lewin under the banner of human relations theories. In this section, we’re going to further our understanding of theory in organizations by examining those theoretical perspectives that fall into the human resources camp. The notion of human resources as a general category for a variety of management related theories was originally proposed by Raymond Miles. First and foremost, Miles’ human resource theories posits that all workers are reservoirs of untapped resources. Miles believed that each and every worker comes into an organization with a variety of resources that management can tap into if they try. “These resources include not only physical skills and energy, but also creative ability and the capacity for responsible, self-directed, self-controlled behavior” (Miles, 1965, p. 150).

Under this perspective then, managers should not be focused on controlling employees or getting them to “buy-in” to decisions, which are the hallmarks of scientific management and human relations. Instead, the primary task of management should be the creation of a working environment that fosters employee creativity and risk taking in an effort to maximize and tap into the resources employees bring to the job. As such, communication in this perspective must be constant and bi-directional and participation in decision-making must include both management and workers. Miles explains that his human resources model “recognized the untapped potential of most organizational members and advocated participation as a means of achieving direct improvement in individual and organizational performance” (Miles & Ritchie, 1971, p. 48). To help us understand human resources, we are going to describe how human resources differ from human relations and discuss some key people in human resources.

Human Relations vs. Human Resources Theories

To understand the notions of human relations and human resources is to understand Raymond Miles (1965) original ideas on both concepts. Miles, as explained above, articulated a very clear theoretical perspective that was high on communication, high on tapping into employee resources, and high on employee input in decision making. These ideas were not his, but he did create a clear categorization scheme where he delineated between two groups of researchers whom he labeled human relations and human resources. While Miles believes these two groups exist, he also admits that these groups exist primarily in how managers interpret and apply various pioneers of the field of management, so the researchers who fall into the human relations camp often discuss concepts that seem to fall within Miles’ own human resources framework. Table 3.2 provides a list of the major differences that Miles believed existed between human relations and human resources.

Source: This table is based on Mile’s models of participate leadership.

Key People in Human Resources Theories

As we see in Table 3.2, there some key differences between human relations and human resources theories. These differences can be broken down into two basic categories: motivation and decision making. The rest of this section is going to both of these areas and the key people who researched these phenomena.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Many other theorists tried to explain the importance of the human resources approach. One of these individuals was Abraham Maslow. He is widely known for his creation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In order to get employees to work, he tried to understand what motivates people. He came up with five needs that need to be satisfied at one stage before moving on to another stage. Malsow felt that needs vary from person and person and that individuals want their need fulfilled. One must determine what is the motivational factor (Figure 3.1).

Physiological Needs. The first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is psychological, which means that physical needs such as food and water need to be met before moving to the next level. If workers do not make enough money to buy food and water, then it will be hard for them to continue working.

Safety Needs. The second level is called safety. Workers need to be in a safe environment and know that their bodies and belongings will be protected. If workers don’t feel secure, then they will find it hard to work efficiently. Think of the many occupations that are highly unsafe. According to an article on the CNN Money website, the top ten most dangerous jobs in the United States are as follows:

1. Fisherman
2. Logger
3. Airplane Pilot
4. Farmer and Rancher
5. Mining Machine Operator
6. Roofer
7. Sanitation Worker
8. Truck Driver/Deliveryman
9. Industrial Machine Repair
10. Police Officer

According to Maslow’s basic theoretical premise, these individuals will have a harder time worrying about needs at the higher levels unless they can overcome the inherent lack of safety within these jobs.

Love, Affection, and Belongingness Needs. The third layer is called love, affection, and belongingness needs. Maslow believed that if an individual met the basic physiological and safety needs, then that individual would start attempting to achieve love, affection, and belongingness needs next, “He [or she] will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his [or her] group, and he [or she] will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal” (Maslow, 1943, p. 381). Maslow believed that organizations would have better worker retention and satisfaction if they kept their employees in a cohesive environment. Furthermore, if a worker feels isolated or ostracized from their environment, then he or she would feel less motivated to work, which will lead to a decrease in overall productivity.

Esteem Needs. The fourth layer is called esteem, and is represented by two different sets of needs according to Maslow. First, individuals are motivated by the “desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom” (Maslow, 1943, p. 381). Maslow (1943) goes on to discuss a second subset of esteem needs, “we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation” (p. 381-382). While Maslow originally separated these two lists from each other, they clearly have more in common than not. If employees do not feel that their input is valued at the organization, they will seek out other places of employment that will value their input, because humans have an intrinsic need to be appreciated for their efforts.

Self-Actualization Needs. The fifth layer is called self-actualization, and it is the hardest to attain. Self-actualization “refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for [a person] to become actualized in what he [or she] is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” Maslow (1943) goes on to explain, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he [or she] is to be ultimately happy. What a man [or woman] can be, he [or she] must be. This need we may call self-actualization [emphasis in original]” (p. 382). Maslow felt that if individuals can have their needs met in order of the layers, then they would be both motivated and seek opportunities to excel.

All in all, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us understand how to motivate workers to strive for more in the organization. Hence, communication is very important, because we need to understand what our employees need in order to motivate them to work more proficiently and productively.

Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Another researcher to enter into the fray of human motivation was Frederick Herzberg. Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, over the course of Herzberg’s career he switched focused and became one of the first researchers in the growing field of industrial psychology. The original notion of Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory was that traditional perspectives on motivation, like Maslow’s, only looked at one side of the coin—how to motivate people. Herzberg and his original colleagues theorized that what ultimately motivated individuals to work were not necessarily the same factors that led to demotivation at work. In Herzberg’s worldview, motivation on the job should lead to satisfied workers, but he theorized that satisfaction and dissatisfaction were not opposite ends of one continuum. Instead, he predicted that the factors that lead to positive job attitudes (and thus motivation) were different from the factors that lead to negative job attitudes (and thus demotivation). For the purposes of his theory, he called the factors that led to positive job attitudes motivators and those factors that led to negative job attitudes hygiene factors. In Table 3.3 the basic motivators and hygiene factors are listed. Notice that the motivators are all centered around ideas that are somewhat similar to the esteem needs and self-actualization needs of Abraham Maslow. On the other hand, the hygiene factors all examine the context of work.

Upon looking at Table 3.3, you may notice that Salary is centered between both motivators and hygiene factors. In The Managerial Choice, Herzberg (1976) reversed his previous thinking that salary was purely a hygiene factor, “Although primarily a hygiene factor, it [salary] it also often takes on some of the properties of a motivator, with dynamics similar to those of recognition for achievement” (p. 71).

Decision Making

Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

As we discussed earlier, the classical perspective felt that leadership should control and order subordinates. Then, in the human relations approach, we learned that superiors need to cultivate and support their employees. Douglas McGregor, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s and 1960s, felt that there are two different perspectives, which he termed as Theory X, which is similar to the scientific management approach, where workers are expected to only work and Theory Y. These theories were based on assumptions that managers have about their workers.

McGregor defined a Theory X manager who believes that most people do not like work. Workers are not smart or creative. People do not care about the organization, and will adequately work when there are promises for rewards and potential punishments. Moreover, Theory X manager believes that people want to have direction in order to evade responsibility. On the other hand, Theory Y managers feel that people want to do what is best for the organization and can direct themselves under the right conditions. Table 3.4 illustrates the differences between Theory X and Theory Y.

Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making Theory

The last major theorist we are going to explore related to the human resources side of management theory is Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making (PDM) Theory. Likert originally explored the idea of how organizational leaders make decisions in his book The Human Organization. Likert’s ideas were based in the notion that supervisors with strong worker productivity tended to focus on the human aspects of subordinate problems while creating teams that emphasized high achievement. In other words, these supervisors were employee centered and believed that effective management required treating employees as humans and not just worker bees. Likert further noted that these highly productive leaders also tended to involve subordinates in the decision making process. Out of this basic understanding of productive versus unproductive management, Likert created a series of four distinct management styles.

System 1: Exploitive Authoritative. System 1, exploitative authoritative management, starts with the basic issue of trust. Under this system of management, the manager simply does not trust subordinates and has no confidence in subordinate decision making capabilities. Because of this lack of trust, all decisions are simply decided upon by people at the upper echelons of the hierarchy and then imposed on the workers. Communication under these leaders is typically unidirectional (from management to workers), and employees are motivated to comply with management dictates out of fear.

System 2: Benevolent Authoritative. System 2, benevolent authoritative management, starts with the basic notion that decision making should be situated with those in managerial positions. Because managers believe that decision making should be theirs and theirs alone, managers believe that workers will simply comply with managerial dictates because of the manager’s legitimate right to make decisions. This type of management almost takes on a master-servant style relationship. As for communication, subordinates are not free to discuss decisions or any job-related matters with their superiors. Ultimately, employ motivation to comply with managerial dictates is done through a system of rewards.

System 3: Consultative. System 3, consultative management, starts with a lot more trust in employee decision making capabilities. However, the manager may either not have complete confidence in employee decision making or may have the ultimate responsibility for decisions made, so he or she does not allow workers to just make and implement decisions autonomously. Typically, the manager seeks input from workers and then uses this input to make the ultimate decision. Under consultative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is fair, and employees tend to be more motivated and satisfied than the previous two styles of management. However, consultative management can be very effective if, and only if, the input process is conducted legitimately. One of the biggest mistakes some managers make is to use pseudo-consultative practices where they pretend to seek out input from subordinates even though the actual decision has already been made. Pseudoconsultative decision making is just a different flavor of benevolent authoritative management.

System 4: Participative. System 4, participative management, is built on the goal of ensuring that decision making and organizational goal attainment is widespread throughout the organizational hierarchy. In these organizations, organizational leaders have complete confidence in worker ability to make and implement decisions, so workers are constantly encouraged to be very active in the decision making process. Under participative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is good, and employees tend to be motivated and satisfied.

These four different systems characterize many of the classical theories discussed in this chapter. For instance, System 1 is similar to the scientific management approach t and System 4 has characteristics from the human relations approach. Likert believed that an organization’s performance is based on the systems or structures in place for the workers. Thus, Likert believed that organizations could incorporate some aspects from the scientific management approach, human relations, and human resource approach in order to maximize organizational outcomes.

References:

Christie, L. (2011, August 26). America’s most dangerous jobs: The 10 most dangerous jobs in America. In CNNMoney [website].

Herzberg, F. (1976). The managerial choice: To be efficient and to be human. Homewood, IL: Dow-Jones-Irwin.

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. S. (1959). The motivation to work. New York, NY: Wiley.

Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and value. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96.

McGregor, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill

Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157.

Miles, R. E., & Ritchie, J. B. (1971). Participative management: Quality vs. quantity. California Management Review, 13(4), 48–56.