Though it is widely accepted that the human relations school is an improvement over the classical school of management, still there are certain criticisms which are leveled against this school of thought also. Some of them are:
1. Both the classical and human relationists are accused of being pre-occupied with increasing the material wealth and productivity of the organization through increasing efficiency. After all human relationists also did not say that the ultimate objective of an organization is to ensure employee happiness. This way human relations school of thought appears to be ‘same win in old bottle’.
2. Too much emphasis has been placed on the human factors. Experience shows that sometimes too much concern for the welfare of employees makes them exploitative and unproductive e. g. the workers of public sector in India frequently go on strike and their productivity is quite less. A fine balance between the structure and the human relations aspects needs to be found out.
3. This model has also been termed as closed model as it does not take into account the role of external environment in shaping the personnel policies of management.
4. Mayo and his team seem to have neglected the role of trade union in modern industrial society. They wished to substitute the human oriented manager for the unions. Marxist writers have termed the scholars of human relations school as “cow sociologists” who conceived a utopian idea of conflict and tension free society. They have also termed Mayo as pro-capitalist as his approach favored the managers and ultimately benefited the business enterprise.
5. In its enthusiasm to underscore the importance of the informal structures in promoting harmony, Mayo completely neglected the importance of formal structures, technology etc. Thus multifaceted view organization is not represented.
6. These scholars have distinguished too much between the formal and Informal organizations and have not attempted to synthesize them properly.
7. Noted management thinker Peter F. Drucker has criticized Mayo for ignoring the economic dimension of the organization and focusing too much on the inter-personal interactions.
8. Only small groups were studied as part of the Hawthorne studies and not the entire organization e. g. Carey says that Mayo selected groups of five six “co-operative girls” and generalized the conclusions drawn from such small groups. He is also of the view that the Hawthorne studies lack scientific base and only supports the old view of giving monetary incentives, discipline and leadership etc.
9. According to some human relations school does nothing new. The discipline of the boss has been replaced by the discipline of the group i. e. an evil has been replaced by a bigger evil.
10. This approach portrays that conflicts are always bad. In fact conflicts can be resolved in a manner that benefits all i. e. the manager, the workers and the organization itself.
Conclusion
Mayo’s human relations approach marked a major turning point in the history of administrative thought and practice. According to B. M. Gross, this approach tried to understand the problems of workers from an angle quite different from that of the scientific management era. It had a great influence on the business administration first and then later in public sector management also e. g. on bureaucracy. The most important achievement of Mayo has been to find the roots of the work satisfaction to non-economic criteria like social and psychological factors. This disproves the Taylor’s emphasis on monetary incentives and concept of self interested worker.
As a result of the findings of the Hawthorne experiments, first time the workers were recognized as social entities and the sentiments & psychological state of the workers were recognized as important inputs in organizational performance. Human beings were first time given that much importance and were recognized as key actors in achieving the efficiency and high productivity. So human beings were give a ‘dignified and respectful’ place in the organization. Mayo recognized the importance of proper communication between all the levels of organization. Consultation with the informal groups has been given great importance tor ascertaining the acceptability of the decisions of management.
Scientific Management based on the views of F. W. Taylor and human relations school based on the views of Elton Mayo are the responses with different theoretical assumptions to the problems faced by the industries in the era of industrialization in west “Individual ethic” which portrays individual as guided by the self interest’ was the basis for the former while “social ethic” which gives importance to the “human collaboration and social solidarity” was the basis for the latter. In the pre and early 20th century America the conditions were conducive for individual ethic while in the changing 20th century America, management started relying more on social ethic to increase the organizational performance.
Human Relations School even today is a dominant paradigm in the field of organization theory.