“Human Relations Theory base principle that men have social needs desires rewarding relationships in the workplace and answers more to the peer pressure then to the superiors’ authority and admini

“Human Relations Theory base principle that men have social needs desires rewarding relationships in the workplace and answers more to the peer pressure then to the superiors’ authority and administrative control forms its main contribution for management. (Knoow, 2016)” Elton Mayo was the first to apply the human relations approach to his theory. His theory was people want more out of the job then just money. People want to feel good about the outcome of their labors. The original “fathers” of organizational development theory were more focused on production. How much work can we get out of a person? Mayo’s findings were that people do not want to be just a number but be able to be happy of their work.

Chester Barnard is the next theories to come about in the 1930s. Barnard makes a good case that leaders should follow. The leadership of your company is only given authority by the workers. In the fire service, there are a lot of Chiefs that think they can run a department how they want. There would never be a fire department without members. The older theories did not have this nurturing side to it. Keeping up production was their way of moving the company forward.

The next guy was Douglas McGregor and he created the X and Y theory. “If you believe that your team members dislike their work and have little motivation, then, according to McGregor, you'll likely use an authoritarian style of management. This approach is very "hands-on" and usually involves micromanaging people's work to ensure that it gets done properly. McGregor called this Theory X. On the other hand, if you believe that your people take pride in their work and see it as a challenge, then you'll more likely adopt a participative management style. Managers who use this approach trust their people to take ownership of their work and do it effectively by themselves. McGregor called this Theory Y. (Mindtools, 2019)”

Abraham Marlow is probably the most famous because he came up with the pyramid of worker’s needs. The pyramid shows a “hierarchy of needs of a worker”. The worker’s needs are food, job security, sense of belonging, recognition, and self-actualization. That self-fulfillment by being at a place of employment that cares about the worker, can make people want to stay. All these theories are great and combine them together to make a happy employee. There must be employees to keep the production up and to keep production up, the employer must figure out how to help their employees. In my opinion, the best theory is Barnards because it starts to get leaders to understand how to treat their employees with compassion. There needs to be good leaders to lead people to do great things.

http://knoow.net/en/economics-business/management/human-relations-theory/ (Knoow, 2016)

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_74.htm (Mindtools, 2019)