Sociological Theory and the Human Relations School

Abstract

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.