Sociological Theory and the Human Relations School

There are three common and influential approaches to the work of the human relations school extant in the literature. These three approaches, though superficially plausible, actually give rise to serious misconceptions about the nature of the work of this school, as well as to faulty interpretations...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology of Work and Occupations 1976-11, Vol.3 (4), p.379-410
Main Author: Ackroyd, Stephen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Human relations
Human/Humans/Humanity
Methodology
Occupation
Relations/Relational
Social relations/Social relationships
Social theory/Social theories
Sociology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There are three common and influential approaches to the work of the human relations school extant in the literature. These three approaches, though superficially plausible, actually give rise to serious misconceptions about the nature of the work of this school, as well as to faulty interpretations of its development and demise. After identifying and criticising these inadequate approaches, this paper proceeds to offer a new account of the work of this group of writers based on a more adequate methodology for assessing ideas. This approach sees ideas as being applied to a developing "problem context," itself changing in response to the process of research. Finally, it is argued that the results of this reassessment have implications not only for our understanding of the work of the human relations school, but also for the practice of industrial sociology today.
ISSN:0093-9285
0730-8884
DOI:10.1177/009392857634001