Human Relations Movement and Scientific Management

This essay will discuss the application of two schools of management thought which are Human Relations Movement and Scientific Management to improve effectiveness at a clothes store in Hong Kong. In particular, the profitably and work efficiency will be considered. This essay is in 3 sections. The first section will provide a briefly description of the clothes store. The second section will talk about the management thought of Human Relations Movement and discuss how well it will be fit in this business to improve the effectiveness. Lastly, the third section will discuss how to improve the business effectiveness relative to the management thought of Scientific Management.

The clothes store which I am going to talk about is a small store located at a shopping mall in Hong Kong. The main customer of the clothes store is young people. This is one of the three stores that the boss own, so the boss does not work in the store. He employs three full time staffs in this store. One of them is the leader whose main job is financial. The leader also helps and teaches the other two staffs to sell the clothes. The boss visits this store once a week to know the performance of the staffs. There are clear rules and satisfied wages for the staffs. This is a fine business and it can make profit in most of the time. However, there’s still some aspects in management should be improved in this clothes store.

“Psychology is important, because it is a science that focuses upon individual employee motivation and learning” (Stanley, 2004 p.12). For a small clothes store like this, the mood of the seller is important to the sales of the clothes. A motive and nice seller can always make the customer happy to make a purchase. Therefore, the human relations school of thought is useful in this business. The concept Human Relations Movement is “a movement in management thinking and practice that emphasized satisfaction of employees’ basic needs as the key to increased worker productivity” (Samson & Daft, 2003 p.56). To improve the effectiveness in this business, the manager should consider this theory in at least two ways.

One of the most important factors in the human relations school of thought is the communication between the managers and the employees. “Successful organizations are highly concerned about each employee; therefore, managers are aware of the forces that stimulate creativity and maximize productive efforts” (Stanley, 2004 p.12). In this case of the clothes store, the boss is only care about the performance of the staffs. On the other hand, the only person that the boss connects with is the leader of the staff, and the topic of the conversation is about the logical and economic aspects of the business. It is clear that the concerted effort made by the boss is not enough. The full time staffs fell tired and bored everyday and are of course not motive to the job. Improvement on the communication is, therefore, very essential in this business. Firstly, the boss should keep a good relationship to the staffs. One of the basic ideas of Mayoism is “Supervisors should not act like supervisors – they should be friends, counselors to the workers”.

The boss should know every staff’s name and always talk to each of them. Create more chance to connect with them, for example, have dinner or lunch together. The staffs would happy to work for the boss if they treat the boss as a friend rather than the supervisors. Moreover, the boss should know more about the staffs in the communication. “Managers that care about employees will make the necessary human relations adjustments in order to understand and respect each employee” (Stanley, 2004 p.12). The boss can ask the staffs what they think about their job and how are they doing periodically. To be care about the staffs’ themselves is more useful than only care about their performance, because the mood of them is directly affect their performance ,and it would make the staff think the boss understand and respect them. Thus, with a good communication to the employees, the boss can get more information about his business and staffs to make the organization more efficiency, and the staffs would work harder to make more profit in this business.

To organise a team work is also an effective method for this business to improve its effectiveness. One of the Human Relations Assumptions states that “Team work is essential for cooperation and sound technical decisions”. The boss can treat each staffs as a team member, share some information of the business to them, and consider the staffs’ idea about how to improve it. He can also make a competition among his three clothes stores. For example, set a target of sales everyday, and ask the leader to check the sales of the other two clothes store online in order to compare with them. The success of business will depend upon the cooperation of the employees. In this case, to set a target and make a competition can encourage the staffs in each clothes store work well together towards the same goal. Moreover, the team work can improve the relationships among the staffs. The leader will be more initiative to teach and counsel the other staffs. The staffs will try their best to work well together in order to success the same goal. Therefore, the work efficiency of the business will be better and more profit can be gain because of the good result of team work.

In addition to the Human Relations Movement, the management thought of Scientific Management is effective in this clothes store. Scientific management is “A subfield of the classical management perspective that emphasized scientifically determined changes in management practices as the solution to improving labour productivity” (Samson & Daft, 2003 p. 51) .It could be taken part into the business to improve its effectiveness in two ways.

One of them is to provide wage incentives to the staffs in the clothes store. “Management of initiative and incentive refers to a system whereby managers would have to provide workers with special incentives to obtain their best effort, or initiative. The reason being, workers believed “it to be directly against their interests to give their employers their best initiative”(Taylor, 1911, p.33)”.

(http://courses.bus.ualberta.ca/orga417-reshef/taylor.htm.). The employees work for the money, so the higher wage can be a major factor for the employees to increase their productivity. In this case, the staffs will work harder if they know the increase in the number of the clothes sales would cause a higher wage. What the boss has done is to provide commission of sales to the staffs based on their performance every year. However, the boss can do more on thisaccording to the idea of the competition among the threes clothes stores mentioned before, the boss can provide the staffs in the store with the biggest number of sales a special money award monthly. This kind of short term money award will make the staffs be continuously and strongly willing to win the competition so do their best to sell clothes, the number of sales will therefore increase. As a result, the profit of the business will rise. It means the special incentives from the manager can cause the initiatives of the employee to increase output.

The ability of the worker is another important aspect of the thought of Scientific Management. The suitable incentive that mentioned above can have another effect that encouraging workers to grow in ability. For a small business like this, it is not possible to set a standard method for training the staffs because it will cost too much. But the staffs do need skills, for example, the leader of the staffs need to update accounting skills, all the staffs should know how to service consumers nicely and a certain standard of English for the international consumers especially in Hong Kong. What the boss can do is to encourage them to take some course about that by the suitable incentive in order to let the staffs know improving themselves is important.

Moreover, the manager should make a good division of work with appropriate abilities of the workers for each job. In this case, the boss selects the staff with good accounting skills to be the leader of the staffs. It is not very satisfied because he/she may not good at leading. It is more important to have a leader with ability for management, so the boss should be suggested to select a leader carefully. The staff that is better in matching clothes can be suggested to contact to the consumer more, because they can give good advice to consumers to make them happy. The other staff can be trained how to take good care of the clothes, for example, to fold the clothes, so he/she can do it nicer and quicker. Therefore, using the abilities of the staffs mostly and appropriately can make the work in the clothes store more effective.

In conclusion, this essay has cousinly shown the application of two schools of management thought which are Human Relations Movement and Scientific Management can be fit in the business of the clothes store in Hong Kong to improve its effectiveness. Under the human relations school of thought, this essay stated that making the staffs happy at work and have a good relationship between each other can increase the profitably and work efficiency. Related to the thought of Human Relations Movement, this essay suggested that the boss in the clothes should make special incentives to the staffs and use the abilities of the staffs appropriately.

References

Samson, D. & Daft, R. L. (2003) Management. Australia: Thomson p.56 and p.51

Stanley, TL.(2004). Understanding management’s progress. SuperVision. Burlington: Nov 2004.Vol.65, Iss. 11; pg. 12, 4 pages

The Human Relations Movement. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 29 2005:http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/417/417lect05.htm

The Human Relations Movement. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 29 2005:http://llanes.panam.edul6384/humanrelations

Yonatan Reshef (2003). Frederick Winslow Taylor(1856 – 1915)Principles of Scientific Management .Retrieved from the World Wide Web on March 29 2005:http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/417/417lect05.htm