Listen

Over the past few decades, business schools have embraced game theorists, economists, and others who deal in abstraction, all but stopping the solving of real-world, real-time problems. This text argues for a return to the medical model in business: listen, observe, and test. These three steps are the roots of human relations and organizational behavior; managers must fully assess a business and diagnose its problems before solving them. This model helped managers, consultants, and management scholars diagnose and solve problems faced by small and large organizations for decades, and it can continue to help companies today with myriad issues-including competition, leadership, diversity, and organizational structures-by offering a framework for addressing these problems rather than abstract theories. Chapter 2 explores the Hawthorne study in detail, an extensive project in the 1920s and 1930s led by Mayo and Roethlisberger concerning the Hawthorne Plant, which manufactured telephone equipment outside Chicago. This study was the key test for the medical model, showing that the medical model was a better diagnostic tool and debunking various theories about organizations and people working within them. For years after the Hawthorne study, researchers and practitioners continued to ponder it, and human relations eventually became a vital paradigm in business research. The lasting impact of the Hawthorne study is discussed at the end of the chapter.

• Business and society
• Organizational transformation
• Organizational behavior
• Business history
• Business education
• Organizational development