CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF HUMAN RELATIONS
The concept of human relations is used today in organizations to
denote a systematic body of knowledge devoted to explaining the
behaviour of man in relations to task performance in organization.
Onasanya (1990) defines human relations as the relationship between one
person and another and a group of people within a community whether at
work or social gathering. He went further to state that good human
relations between executives and other staff will leads to an
understanding which can generate cooperation and hence attainment of
organizational productivity. The executive and subordinate staff will
have to maintain sound relationship with people at different levels.
According to Hicks and Byers (1972), human relations is an
integration of people into work situation in a way that motivates them
to work together productively, cooperatively and with economic,
psychological and social satisfaction. They went further to say that
many factors influence a person’s behaviour and attitude such as age,
sex, appearance, health, emotion, environment, education, religion,
nationality and culture. They also influence reaction of others to the
individual and moreso, frustration makes people to be disagreeable.
Amune (1988) defines human relations as the interaction of people
into a work collectively, productivity and bring about social
satisfaction. He went further on to define human relations as the study
of human problem arising from organizational and inter-personal
relation in industry especially with reference to the employer-employee
relationship and the interaction between personal traits, group
membership and productive efficiency.
Human relations in the view of Harding (1983) is an existing
aspect of workers meeting new people of all kind, such meeting will
broaden their own horizon and hopefully other people derive pleasure
from meeting them. Jones et’ al (2005) assert that Human relations
movement advocates the idea that supervisors are behaviourally trained
to manage subordinates in ways that elicit their cooperation and
increase their productivity.
The key element in human relations is its basic objective of
making organizational members feel useful and important part of the
system over all effort. This process is viewed as the means of building a
cooperative and participative workforce.
- DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RELATIONS
The advent of human relations movement began in the 1920 and
1930s with the observation of the short sightedness and incomptences of
the classical approach to management that left out the human resource
factor (Andrew, 1988). The human relations theorists led by Elton Mayo
observed that scientific management principles were neither necessarily
the most efficient nor did they work as intended, for it failed to
understand that workers were also social beings with certain
psychological needs. They believed that in addition to using the most
appropriately designed methods to achieve productivity, organizations
must consider the human aspect of work. In other words, when the
workers needs are not considered even with the best tools,
organizational goals may not be achieved.
Interpersonal relations particularly the feeling and attitudes
within working groups were considered to be important. They
hypothesized that people looked for the satisfaction of their social
needs at work. Furthermore, the power and influence of groups,
individual members was such that organizations could develop system and
styles to try and satisfy people’s social needs in their workgroup.
The basis of the human relations movement was the integration of
various disciplines i.e. industrial psychology and sociology, applied
anthropology and social psychology and was concerned with the human
problems which management encountered (Appleby, 1980). Gullerman (1966)
defines human relations as a way in which people or employee who
comprises the organization think about each other and deal with each
other. Hence, with the development of human relations it became
apparent therefore, that the workers could no longer be viewed solely
as a factor of production, rather as human beings with wants, desire,
attitudes and feelings, all of which were occurring during the same
period also contributing to the growth of the human relations movement.