![]() ![]() Workplaces are better lit and ventilated and are generally safer than in the past. For the most part, sweatshops are a thing of the past. And surely modest progress has occurred nearly everywhere. A handful of large (and certainly many medium-sized and smaller) companies appear to have made their work forces into competitive assets. I do not wish to exaggerate the gloomy aspects of this picture. It is making us uncompetitive with the Japanese and some other Asians, the West Germans, the Swiss, and many others. ![]() The poor management of the work force in this country is damaging the nation and our standard of living. And the results of the 1970s suggest that we may not even be holding our own. Human resources management seems to be mostly good intentions and whistling in the dark or averting unionization. Not in enthusiastic employee acceptance of new technology, machinery, or equipment in factories, of stripped-down offices, or of efficiency gains in the ever-expanding service industries. Not in the absence of hostility or class warfare. ![]() Not in the image of managers as a benign, trusted group in our society. Not in public confidence, support, and credibility in our business system or big corporations. Not in the absence of government intervention, such as OSHA and EEO regulations. Not in the strategic position of many U.S. Not in widespread amicable labor relations. Recent figures show a decline in employee productivity for the United States. In some desperation, managers have steadily invested in supervisory training, organizational behavior, interpersonal behavior, T-groups, sensitivity training, employee attitude surveys, job enrichment, flexible benefits, and expanded fringe benefits-bigger pensions, subsidized insurance, more holidays, shorter work days, four-day weeks, and canned communications packages-and now companies are attempting to revive the “work ethic” with human resources departments. Since Hawthorne, successive waves of people-problem solutions and programs have washed and tumbled industry. Two hundred documented attempts are going on to improve the quality of work life (QWL), and three nationally known institutions have charters to improve productivity and QWL. Fortune writes of personnel directors as the “new corporate heroes.” Library shelves overflow with people management books, and a hundred new ones appear every year. Now, eager consultants and zealous staff experts nurture it. Since World War II, calling it “human relations,” “personnel management,” “labor relations,” and now “management of human resources,” business has spent millions to make employees productive, loyal, and motivated.įirst, academics, with minds opened by the Hawthorne experiments, led the movement to effectively manage people. The same can be said of the massive efforts to improve the management of people in U.S. They eyed the same fellow, looked him up and down, and then one said quietly to the other, “Big hat, no cattle.” As I walked by one such hat-wearer, I noticed two middle-aged, sunburned men in faded blue jeans standing nearby. In the Dallas airport the other day I saw many tall, well-dressed, and impressive-looking men wearing large, immaculate Stetson cowboy hats. ![]()
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