ABSTRACT. Morality and business ethics are topics
facing increased attention in modern management, yet
they tend to be looked at only in relation to external
relationships. However one of the most important
contributions to management practice and theory
(human relations) was built upon a sociological theory
that was totally concerned with morality. That
sociological theory was borrowed by Mayo (the
‘father’ of human relations) without reading the
original theory; consequently he missed the real point
that the theory made, i.e. a common morality
embracing everyone was necessary to maintain order
and social cohesion. Such a morality was only possible
when we realised our social dimension through
continuous contact with each other. Moral man had
to be social man; occupational groups were a way of
attempting to achieve this. Yet morality is a dimen-
sion of group dynamics and management training
rarely mentioned, partly through ignorance, partly
through a fear of what discussions of morality might
lead on to, and partly through a structural blindness
to non-operational problems.

Mayo and human relations

Human Relations, usually regarded as the brain-
child of Elton Mayo, is now often seen as ‘old-
hat’ in the field of modern management; of
historical interest or at best as a kind of building
bloc from which later developments such as
neo-human relations emerged. Often overtly
rejected as outmoded and simplistic it is fre-
quently dismissed as a relevant philosophy in
itself. This may well be true of the original as
conceived by Elton Mayo, but that would also be
to miss what could be an important contribution
if human relations is expanded to take full
account of its intellectual antecedents.

It is suggested that there is an argument for

reexamining human relations not only in itself
but also via a review of the original concepts on
which it is founded, particularly the idea of
‘social man’. This was originally a moral concept.
Using the idea of social man as a moral concept
provides an useful link with the modern concern
with ethics in management, and can also tie in
with other concerns such as industrial democ-
racy and worker participation.

The concept of social man as a moral phe-

nomenon had its origins in the sociology of
Durkheim, who made a much larger contribu-
tion to management thinking than is often appre-
ciated. (Of particular note, both Likert’s, 1961,
idea of overlapping group structures and Burns
and Stalker’s, 1966, mechanical and organic
structures have their origins in Durkheim’s soci-
ology, particularly ‘The Division of Labour in
Society’ (1933), and specifically refer to types of
moral authority.) The contribution of Durkheim
to Mayo’s work is extensive, and acknowledged
by Mayo, the problem, it is claimed is that he

Durkheim, Mayo, Morality
and Management

James C. Dingley

Journal of Business Ethics 16: 1117–1129, 1997.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Dr. James C.Dingley has been lecturing at the University

for 14 years, have a B.Sc. Sociology, M.A. Sociology
of Organizations and Ph.D. in Sociology. Special
interest is in Durkheim, moral regulation and conflict,
particular reference to organizational and ethnic conflict.
Publications recently include a paper to be presented this
February at the National Conference on Ethics in
America, a chapter in a book, organized by Stirling
University, to be published this year and in June 1994
a paper Sociology of Durkheim, Morality and
Professional Ethics, Stockholm, International Con-
ference on Ethics in the Public Service.

either never understood Durkheim properly or
misapplied his sociology, thus nullifying the
potential of much of the human relations phi-
losophy.

Mayo, Durkheim and the Hawthorne studies

There is some dispute as to just what Mayo’s role
in the Hawthorne Studies was; Rose (1988) tends
to minimise and discuss his involvement in them
as rather peripheral, whilst Smith (1987) argues
that whilst his formal role may have been limited
he did play a major role in the discussions and
interpretations of the research as it developed and
its results.

However nebulous his precise contribution

there is little doubt that he was an excellent
publicist of the studies, and his advocacy of the
concepts of ‘social man’ and ‘social needs’ were
so strongly associated with these studies that
Smith (1987) regards Mayo’s interpretation of
Hawthorne as the starting point of modern
Industrial Sociology. Yet the ideas of ‘social’ man,
needs and organization at work were problems
that were already well established in the litera-
ture of Sociology (Rose, 1988, Chapter 12;
Thompson and McHugh, 1990, Chapter 1), but
this conflicts with the popular impression of
Mayo ‘discovering’ social man in the Hawthorne
Studies.

What Mayo did was to put together and apply

existing Sociological theories and apply them in
relation to research, often carried out by others,
with which he was familiar. This, in itself, is not
a criticism of him, for most academics advance
in a similar fashion (there are few really original
ideas), but it should alert us to a possible
weakness, that is – had he fully understood the
ideas that he was trying to apply? This is always
a pertinent question, but more so with Mayo for
as a non-Sociologist trying to apply Sociological
theories he may well have missed points that
trained sociologists would have picked up:

Mayo had virtually no knowledge of sociology
until 1926 when the biochemist Lawrence J.
Henderson introduced him to Pareto’s theories.
(Rose, 1975, p. 115)

By this time Mayo was 46 (he was born in 1880
in Australia). The role of Mayo in management
development is usually associated with his, or the
Hawthorne Studies, discovery of ‘social man’ and
the need to allow for this in the work place.
‘Social man’ is the key concept – asserting that
man is not just the utilitarian economic animal
of classical economics and scientific management
but that he has other, social, needs and that this
has led to a concern with the social relationships
at work as an influence on man’s productive
activity. This became the start of the human rela-
tions school of management training. However:

‘Social man’ had actually been discovered – or
perhaps, fabricated – by the great nineteenth-
century sociologists, Pareto and Durkheim. He was
rediscovered in modern industry thanks largely to
the bio-chemist Henderson and the anthropologist
Lloyd Warner. (Rose, 1975, p. 113)

The ‘social man’ of human relations was a
product of sociology – not of the Hawthorne
Studies/Elton Mayo – that was grafted on later.
Also, the human relations school and later
neo-human relations was very much dominated
by psychology, Mayo (in as much as he was
formally anything) was from a psychology back-
ground and many of the major names in the
movement were also primarily psychologists,
such as Roethlisberger, Homans, Maslow,
Herzberg, McGregor, Likert, Argyris. Con-
sequently they have all tended to emphasize
psychological dimensions of behaviour, particu-
larly built around ideas of individual ‘needs’.

Man’s primary motivating force can be seen as his
‘need’ to interact with, and be accepted by, his
fellows. This orientation which is fundamental to
the explanations of worker behaviour developed by
the Hawthorne researchers, has by no means been
discarded by all contemporary psychologists of
organisations. (Silverman, 1970, p. 78)

‘Organisational Psychology’ can be seen as the
‘neo-human relations’ school. Its most immediate
intellectual ancestor is the Harvard group of Mayo,
Roethlisberger and Dickson. (Ibid., p. 73)

In brief, what appears to have happened, over a

1118

James C. Dingley

period of time, is that one discipline, (organisa-
tional) psychology has borrowed a concept
(‘social man’) from another discipline (sociology)
without due reference to its origins. the result
of this has been to neglect an important aspect
of the original concept of ‘social man’, that is the
‘social’ by concentrating only on the ‘man’, the
internal ‘needs’, even if they refer to ‘needs’ to
socialise. This, in turn, has often led to a concern
with group dynamics and networks of social
relationships, the mechanics of social interaction
and a tendency to ignore the problem of what it
is to actually be ‘social’.

The concern with needs also helps to give a

suitable impression of being scientific and neutral,
as well as appearing humane and caring, as these
can be conceived as being beyond political or
value judgements, or moral evaluation, they
simply are. Thus social man becomes a value free
concept suitable for scientific investigation, a
science of management.

Social man

The term ‘social man’ is one developed by
theorists that expresses:

. . . the assumption that the major human need is
for social solidarity which can be satisfied through
group association. . . . Such associations are seen
to create social routines which substitute for logical
and individual self-interest. Mayo preferred the
term ‘non-logical’ to irrational, but the essential
message is clear: workers act according to senti-
ments and emotions. (Thompson and McHugh,
1990, p. 79)

The above quote perfectly dovetails the work of
Durkheim and Pareto. Both were concerned
with the problem of order in their newly
emerging industrial societies (respectively, late
nineteenth century France and Italy), and it was
the blending of the ideas of these two that was
the key to Mayo’s philosophy.

Pareto identified the problem in the ‘irrational’

or ‘non-logical’ nature of man which, unless
checked, would lead to chaos and disorder in
society – in Mayo this is a reference to the ‘non-
logical’ emotions and sentiments of workers.

Here Pareto identified a role for ruling elites in
society, an elite that could provide logical direc-
tion and order on society by dint of their
superior logic and skills, as relevant to contem-
porary social needs – managers, the new elite of
industrial society, thus has a political role (see
Bottomore, 1964). The scientific analysis of
newly objectified needs gave managers a ‘scien-
tific’ elite role.

But it is when one reads the work of

Durkheim that one most clearly sees the origins
of much of Mayo’s thought – particularly through
the concepts of ‘social solidarity’ and ‘group
association’. Pollard, in summarising the essence
of Mayo’s thought writes:

Mayo starts by repeating his thesis of the disrup-
tion of society . . . he comes rapidly to the con-
clusion that society must . . . meet and solve two
problems. These are providing for economic needs
and maintaining spontaneous co-operation.
Modern industrial society, he says, is geared
entirely to the first objective and not at all towards
maintaining co-operation. (Pollard, 1974, pp.
184–185)

Mayo most clearly develops his central themes
of disorganisation and chaos in industrial society,
and the use of groups as a social control mech-
anism to promote social solidarity, in two
chapters (‘The Reaction of Industry Upon the
Social Order’, and ‘Theories of Government and
the Social Order’) of his first book relating to the
Hawthorne Studies (‘The Human Problems of an
Industrial Civilisation’, 1933). These ideas he
develops in his subsequent book (‘The Social
Problems of an Industrial Civilisation’, 1949)
with special reference to the first two chapters
(‘The seamy Side of Progress’ and ‘The Rabble
Hypothesis’).

Throughout these chapters there is liberal

reference to Durkheim and an open acknowl-
edgement of and use of Durkheim’s concepts.
The problems of industrial society he basically
identifies in Durkheim’s terms; the solutions to
these problems he identifies in the ideas and
techniques of modern psychology and psychiatry,
although to Durkheim these were only part of
the solution. But the kernel of his analysis is his
Durkheimian interpretation of the ills of modern

Morality and Management

1119

society via his knowledge of the Hawthorne, and
other industrial studies.

Writing of Durkheim, Mayo states:

. . . His main purpose even in the year 1897 was
to show that an industrial civilisation, in propor-
tion that it undergoes rapid development, tends to
suffer from an ill which he terms anomic-anomia.
(Mayo, 1933, p. 129)

Durkheim contends that individuals increasingly
are lapsing into restless movement, planless self-
development – a method of living which defeats
itself because achievement has no longer any
criterion of value; . . . (Ibid., p. 130)

The belief of the individual in his social function
and solidarity with the group – has capacity for
collaboration in work – these are disappearing,
destroyed in part by rapid scientific and technical
advance. With this belief his sense of security and
of well-being also vanishes and he begins to
manifest those exaggerated demands of life which
Durkheim has described . . . (Ibid., p. 166)

Two whole chapters are taken up with a
Durkheimian analysis of industrial society; the
Hawthorne Studies then are used to provide
specific instances of the manifestation of these
social problems in the workplace. In his next
book, Mayo further follows up his previous argu-
ments:

. . . Emile Durkheim, founder of the French school
of sociology. In his study of suicide published in
1897, he showed that, in those parts of France
where technical industry had developed rapidly, a
dangerous social disunity had appeared that dimin-
ished the likelihood of all individual or group col-
laboration. (Mayo, 1949, p. 5)

. . . The real importance of these studies is the clear
demonstration that collaboration in an industrial
society cannot be left to chance – neither in a
political nor in an industrial unit can such neglect
lead to anything but disruption and catastrophe.
(Ibid., pp. 8–9)

. . . And it may sell be that many individuals do
not sufficiently continue association anywhere with
anyone to develop, as formerly, a social skill. It was
in situations such as this that Durkheim discov-

ered personal dissatisfaction, planlessness, and even
despair . . . (Ibid., pp. 13–14)

The debt to Durkheim

The debt that Mayo owes to Durkheim is clear
to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the
two writers. However it appears that his grasp
of Durkheim is poor.

Post-Hawthorne Studies and his introduction

to sociology, Mayo wrote three books that con-
stituted his philosophy (Human Problems of an
Industrial Civilisation, 1933; The Social
Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, 1945; and
The Political Problems of an Industrial
Civilisation, 1947) all based on Durkheim’s ideas
(Durkheim was French and lived from
1858–1917). However, the first English transla-
tion of Durkheim was in 1915 (‘The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life: A Study in Religious
Sociology), and apart from two pamphlets on the
War, the next translation was in 1933 (‘The
Division of Labour in Society’) followed in 1938
(‘The rules of Sociological Method’) and 1951
(‘Suicide: A Study in Sociology’). Other transla-
tions followed, but by this time Mayo had com-
pleted his own writings (for a list of English
translations of Durkheim, see Lukes, 1973).

Thus, the only English translation that Mayo

could have had before him was the 1915 one. It
must remain very doubtful whether he could
have seen the 1933 translation in time for his
own 1933 publication, but it would have been
available for his 1945 and 1947 publications; and
the 1951 translation was certainly not available
to him at all. But what is strange in all this is that
the only one of Durkheim’s works that he alludes
to (and openly gives as his reference) is ‘Suicide:
A Study in Sociology’, not translated until 1951:

Let me comment again that neither . . . nor
Durkheim’s volume on suicide have been translated
into English. (Mayo, 1949, p. 8)

Mayo, who was not a sociologist, appears familiar
with just one work of Durkheim’s (whose pub-
lications ran into hundreds), in a foreign language
and via other people. Yet he builds his analysis
of industrial societies’ needs on this and borrows

1120

James C. Dingley

prodigiously the ideas of Durkheim (‘solitaire/
solidarity’, ‘collaboration’, ‘spontaneous co-
operation’, ‘anomic’, ‘social groups’, ‘work
groups’, are all found first in Durkheim); conse-
quently it is not surprising that he missed the
true message that Durkheim was trying to
convey, and manages to reduce his ideas down
to some form of social engineering.

Morality: the message of Durkheim

Durkheim, throughout his academic life, had one
perpetual guiding theme – the old Hobbesian
problem of order in society and especially in
industrial society. How to create an integrated
and cohesive society that didn’t fragment into
conflicting parts:

In Durkheim’s thinking, the nature of social
cohesion was the initial problem of sociology.
(Alpert, 1961, p. 179)

The problem of social cohesion was a question
of creating a sense of solidarity amongst members
of a society – social solidarity (the whole of his
book ‘Division of Labour in Society’ is a treatise
on the nature of social solidarity). Co-operation,
harmony, unity and common purpose are a
product of our feeling a sense of solidarity with
those around us, that we are one and part of the
same group, unit or society; with known rules
and functions, our place and purpose understood
as are our relations with others. We feel a sense
of social solidarity that constrains and directs our
behaviour so that we maintain the solidarity of
the group.

So much Mayo understands:

. . . Durkheim, in his study of suicide . . . showed
that, in those parts of France where technical
industry had developed rapidly, a dangerous social
disunity had appeared that had diminished the
likelihood of all individual or group collaboration
. . . (Mayo, 1949, p. 6)

. . . Durkheim develops this in some detail: no
longer is the individual SOLIDAIRE with a geo-
graphical locality and with the people in it . . .
(Ibid.)

After this first disruption . . . yet another is cus-
tomary . . . (Ibid.)

The growth of excessive individualism and
isolation causes a ‘social disruption’ that under-
mines the social solidarity that is necessary for a
properly functioning industrial society.

That much of Durkheim Mayo understands

(or thinks he does). However:

But social solidarity is a completely moral phe-
nomenon . . . (Durkheim, 1964, p. 64)

What Durkheim was pre-eminently concerned
with was morality:

This book is pre-eminently an attempt to treat the
facts of the moral life according to the method of
the positive sciences. (Durkheim, 1964, p. 32)

What Durkheim was attempting to do was estab-
lish a science of morality, for it was morality that
provided social solidarity. And nowhere in Mayo
will you find a reference to morality, even though
he openly acknowledges his debt to Durkheim.

Durkheim clearly, and early states his position:

Human passions stop only before a moral power
they respect. If all authority of this kind is wanting,
the law of the strongest prevails, and latent or
active, the state of war is necessarily chronic.
(Durkheim, 1964, p. 3)

The whole of ‘The Division of Labour in
Society’ is thus taken up with an investigation
of the basis of morality, what it is and where it
comes from and how it operates. He argues that
to be moral is to be social, and vice-versa; you
cannot be moral by yourself, but only in relation
to others, and this can only be achieved via
contact with others. This contact with others
should lead us to an appreciation and awareness
of our interdependence with others and of our
dependence on others, with forces beyond us
(also, he argues, the origins of religion) and thus
constrains us to behave in a moral way. Moral
codes will vary with the conditions of the actors
concerned, thus, he argued, the morality of the
old pre-industrial societies was not adequate to
the conditions of industrial society. The problem,
therefore was the development of a morality per-

Morality and Management

1121

tinent to the needs of industrial society (built as
it was on ‘division of labour’ that tended to
fragment previously existing social relationships
and solidarity), this cannot be artificially forced
but needs to develop from the nature of the social
relationships (of which economics is an impor-
tant facet) involved.

The morality, as evolved, will constrain indi-

vidual behaviour in a voluntary and internal (to
the individual) manner, according to a commonly
held set of beliefs (a ‘conscience collective’).
Social solidarity will be achieved through a
commonly held moral code that will constrain
our anarchistic and selfish tendencies and enable
a spontaneous co-operation to develop among us
to our mutual advantage.

For such cohesion and co-operation we must

first have a moral regulation but that in turn was
dependent upon realising man’s social nature by
bringing us together closer socially; and an
important vehicle for doing this was the group,
(and he devotes a whole chapter to the role of
occupational groups in the 1902 edition of the
Division of Labour).

But the initial point and purpose was morality:

only will you have that order and cohesion
necessary for an efficient industrial society if you
have a properly developed morality that is capable
of constraining individuals and binding them
together. That morality can only exist in a social
context – morality is a product of society, the
only force superior to man. Durkheim developed
an early ‘systems’ model to explain how when
men came together they created a ‘social’ entity,
the sum of the relationships was greater than the
individual parts and it took on a being of its own
that existed apart from but through its members.
The ideals and values of these relationships came
to be expressed symbolically in religion (that is
nothing more than the realisation of that
external, to the individual, force of the ‘social’)
and codified in morals. For Durkheim the social,
morals and religion were a Trinity, the three in
one.

What industrial society faces is a moral

problem. What human relations should be about,
therefore, is morality – a morality at work, that
is reflective of an industrial society based on a
division of labour.

Perhaps this neglect of morality may help to

explain the ambiguous track-record of a lot of
human relations management, for the reading of
most textbooks on management and organisa-
tions effectively manages to present human
relations and neo-human relations as no more
than a set of techniques for social engineering at
work – but, then, that’s all Mayo presented it as.

The vast majority of managers, despite a

modern interest in ethics, probably still see their
role and function as existing in some moral
vacuum, devoid of other content, to which
human relations is just another aide. Work is still
effectively defined as an economic activity, the
‘real world’ composed of economic forces that
are defined as morally neutral. In the ‘real world’
economics is thought of as ‘laws’ and ‘market
forces’ that are objective and above human will.
Economics is seen as non-evaluative and apart
from morals, it is viewed as scientific and not as
a moral activity; thus a leading proponent of
human relations (Douglas McGregor) can claim:

Scientific knowledge is indifferent with respect to
its uses. In this sense (and only in this sense) science
is independent of values. (McGregor, 1960, p. 12)

Thus science is independent, so economics and
needs are too. In this way ethics becomes objec-
tified out as an external and independent factor
to be imposed as an artificial constraint, not an
internal and spontaneous self-limitation, because
economics is not about morality.

As Lux (1990) points out this is a major

misinterpretation, by the market economists, of
what Adam Smith (the father of modern eco-
nomics) actually meant to say. In the ‘Wealth of
nations’ (1993), first published 1776, Smith, a
moral philosopher, was actually trying to advance
a moral argument, equality of opportunity for the
humble trader with the big corporations. It
would probably never have occurred to Smith
that that branch of human behaviour referred to
as economics could be seriously studied outside
of the bounds of morality. it was to a moral
economy that Smith was looking, a common
enough concept prior to the industrial revolu-
tion, moral because it was an human and social
activity.

1122

James C. Dingley

The latter point was exactly the same one that

Durkheim was also trying to make at the end of
the nineteenth century in an attack on classical
economics and utilitarian philosophy, particularly
that of Spencer. Whilst the classical utilitarian
school saw society and social relationships as a
product of enlightened (economic) self-interest,
a series of individually negotiated contracts,
Durkheim claimed the opposite. For Durkheim
a social/moral order had to exist to allow us to
enter into contracts, a force (moral) to constrain
us to keep the contracts, for contracts only had
force if there was some higher order compelling
compliance. Also, he asks, what about all those
areas where no contracts exist, all the changing
and fluctuating circumstances affecting the con-
tracts? Does every exchange have to have its own
contract? No, says Durkheim, if that were the
case we could never move or be so bogged down
by contracts and busy renegotiating contracts that
we wouldn’t be able to do anything else. (Perhaps
this helps to explain the burgeoning ‘red tape’
and ‘bureaucracy’ of modern society.)

The contract only has meaning and force

because it exists within and is legitimated by a
moral order, and most of the time there is no
need for a contract as the moral order functions
as an adequate guide to our behaviour and rec-
iprocal obligations. Yet classical economics claims
to be above morality, merely a self-regulating and
functioning free market.

The classical model, Durkheim found, was

totally inadequate as an explanation of human
behaviour and social relationships, and incapable
of providing a model from which to establish an
useful social order. Interestingly, Etzioni is cur-
rently making the same point in his critiques of
modern economics and decision making:

Moral values are a major contextualizing factor.
They define, often loosely, what is within the range
and what is beyond the pale. (Etzioni, 1988a, p.
76)

The majority of choices people make, including
economic ones, are completely or largely based on
normative-affective considerations not merely with
regard to selection of goals but also of means . . .
(Etzioni, 1988b, p. 126)

Etzioni’s point, with which Lux would agree, is
that the bulk of our behaviour, economic or
otherwise, is largely determined for us by our
moral social context (his normative/affective),
that simply rules out many alternatives as unac-
ceptable and thus limits us to a narrow range of
choices. Whilst we may apply an element of
rational/economic principle in assessing those
choices remaining, we are still constrained by
moral influences as to what are acceptable within
our rational calculations. (For instance – ‘I may
be able to make more money producing weapons
for my country’s enemies – but I don’t’; or ‘I
should be honest in my economic relationships,
even though I can make more money by not
being so’.)

The rational economic man of classical eco-

nomics and utilitarian philosophy doesn’t exist
and doesn’t explain the bulk of our behaviour.
Etzioni agrees with Durkheim. Now this poses
a crucial problem: for the economic/political
system that managers have to manage is based
(even legitimated) on a set of philosophical prin-
ciples and assumptions that are antipathetical to
those upon which the very concept of social man
is built, a pre-existing moral/social order. Human
relations thus attempts to marry two conflicting
views of human behaviour – the ‘rational
economic man’ with ‘social/moral man’ – by
trying to manage a system built on economic
self-interest by moralizing. This is a strange
contradiction that human relations managers may
not have seen themselves committing but were
in effect doing.

A system that espouses no other regulation

than the market is hardly likely to be able to lay
claim to a ‘moral regulation that is the kernel of
social man’. But, how came this strange contra-
diction to pass?

Origins of the misinterpretation

First, Mayo’s reading of Durkheim appears to be
limited to one work. In all Mayo’s references to
Durkheim he refers only to ‘Le Suicide’, of
which there was no English translation when he
was writing, he gives no sign of having any
knowledge of Durkheim’s other works. This is a

Morality and Management

1123

crucial flaw for the really important work, here,
was ‘The Division of Labour in Society’:

The notions developed in ‘The Division of Labour’
constitute the foundations of Durkheim’s sociology,
and the bulk of Durkheim’s subsequent writings
represent elaborations of the themes originally set
out in that work. This is most obviously true of
Durkheim’s two major publications prior to the
turn of the century: ‘The Rules of Sociological
Method’ (1895) and ‘Suicide’ (1897). (Giddens,
1971, p. 82)

In ‘Le Suicide’ Durkheim was merely following
up and attempting to prove a point that he had
made in ‘Division of Labour’ (that of the nature
and role of ‘anomie’ – a state of ‘normlessness’
where individual behaviour becomes meaning-
less and so does one’s existence). It was in
‘Division of Labour’ that Durkheim addressed
properly the problems of an industrial civilisation
and how to cope with them, and it should be
noted that all of the quotes from him in this text
are from that source. But even so a full and
proper reading of ‘Le Suicide’ would alert a
careful reader to the need to go back to ‘The
Division of Labour’, particularly for the problems
Mayo claims to address, and by 1945 and 1947
an English translation was available.

Secondly, Mayo appears to have had to read

the original in French. That he could read
French is attested to by Trahair (1984), but how
well is a mute point:

In 1910 Elton continued studies in French and
Philosophy. The French course was difficult, for
again no lectures were available, and this time
students were expected to answer all examination
questions in French. He achieved a low pass.
(Trahair, 1984, p. 59)

Thus a poor grasp of French and a limited under-
standing of sociology may have combined in
restricting his grasp of Durkheim.

A third factor to be taken into account is

suggested by what Smith refers to as Mayo’s,
‘. . . indifference to detailed academic reportage’.
(Smith, 1987, p. 113)

This indifference may well have led to a

further weakness in his studies causing him to

miss important distinctions, such as moral –
morale, or ethics lying in the psychological facts
when Durkheim clearly saw them lying in the
social facts but recognised psychology as an
important means to uncover them. Mayo came
to Durkheim already committed to the idea that:

the facts for ethics (i.e. what we ought to know)
are found in psychology. (Quoted in, Trahair, 1984,
p. 54)

An indifference to ‘detailed academic reportage’
would also fit in with a further point that Rose
(1988) makes, that Mayo was concerned to
address an audience of industrialists consumed
with the problems of ‘practical application’ and
not with finer academic points.

There is also a deeper level of explanation for

the failure to grasp the true meaning of
Durkheim’s ‘social man’ ideas: that they led
Durkheim to a critique of capitalism and an
advocacy of socialism (a socialism influenced by
the Syndicalist models of his time). Durkheim’s
‘social man’ grew out of a critique of classical
economics and utilitarianism and the industrial
system it produced, whereas Mayo was working
in it and for it.

Durkheim saw the system of classical eco-

nomics, as a cause of conflict and disorder;
unbridled, individual pursuit of self-interest led
to chaos hence the need for moral regulation (but
a new ‘organic type of moral regulation that was
consistent with the needs of industrial society,
that grew from its internal nature and facilitated
a spontaneous co-operation based on a common
consciousness). The point of this morality was
to curb and restrict individual decisions within
the ambit of the common good. Such a goal
would hardly have sat well with the pursuit of
economic self-interest at a theoretical level; nor
would it have been welcome news to the owners
of capital, and their managers, to be told that
their ‘freedom’ to operate in their self-interest
should be curtailed or limited. Or, more perti-
nently today, that there is a moral conflict
between directors awarding themselves 50% pay
increases whilst insisting on 2 or 3% pay norms
for their employees.

What is justifiable in crude market terms is not

1124

James C. Dingley

in moral terms because it undermines any
community of common interest or good, a ‘con-
science collective’ from which a moral regulation
could emerge to countre the anarchy/anomie of
industrial society. To countre anomie was not
only Durkheim’s point but Mayo’s too.

That Mayo should have so misunderstood the

point of his main reference is a serious critique
of him and his theory. The cause of this mistake
is instructive:

Mayo had no taste for the heavyweight treatise.
. . . What we have in the main is an assemblage
of research findings, insights and speculations
linked, not very firmly, to propositions about the
individual and his socio-emotional needs in
individual society. . . . Mayo, usually takes his own
assumptions for granted. (Smith, 1974, p. 286)

That, from a defender of Mayo, probably sum-
marises the root cause of the problems for Mayo.
However, as Rose points out, Mayo was also
addressing a management audience and thus had
little desire to be disabused of his ignorance, as
Durkheim’s moral concerns led him to a critique
of the economic relationships that management
sought to uphold and maintain. This in itself
should pose a serious warning to ‘practice led’
management studies that denigrate theory and
academic rigour in favour of ‘action centred’ or
‘practical’ research.

As Eldridge (1973) points out in reviewing the

contribution of Durkheim, moral ends are not
economic ends (only in classical economics), yet
moral regulations and integration necessitate
concepts of social justice as a prerequisite, and
that was what led Durkheim into his studies of
socialism (hardly what capitalist managers want
to hear). Durkheim appreciated the conflict
between moral regulations and unbridled
economic self-interest and iniquitous property
relationships. That until a moral order and reg-
ulation existed on the wider societal level it was
not likely to exist on a smaller ‘micro’ level,
between individual workers, groups of workers
and managers.

Owners and managers, too, must be con-

strained and subject to the same moral regula-
tions, otherwise redundancies and wage-restraint

are not seen as ‘fair’ when coming from high
earning executives who do not share the same
restraint. This ‘silence’ on morality and the
human relations tradition is mirrored in a wider
silence concerning morality in management
generally; it is a topic rarely, if ever, addressed,
except when highly specific ‘operational’ issues
arise that can be placed under the heading of
‘business ethics’. An example of this is the
question of ‘insider trading’: the problem is
addressed as a technical problem of how to
operate the system of financing efficiently (insider
trading being deemed to distort the system), but
what is not addressed is the system of financing
itself or its relationship to the economy as a
whole or to wider society in general, or the aims
of financiers.

For Durkheim there had to be a systematic

relationship between the economic system as a
whole and the specific ethics of individual acts.
Otherwise ethics simply became another external
factor to be manipulated or massaged, on the
same level as legal, technical or other external
constraints, something a good lawyer or public
relations consultant could ‘get around’.

The evasion of management

Management (especially education and training)
is treated very much in a ‘given’ context, the set
of relationships that it represents are treated as
‘given’ and not assumed to be up for discussion,
merely the technical operation of its existing
relationships are open for discussion. This is
legitimated via two major references; to the neo-
classical utilitarian/market choice model (Etzioni,
1988) and the purposive rational/action model
of self-regulating systems (Habermas, 1971).

The neo-classical references may be sum-

marised as:

. . . utilitarian rationalist and individualist
paradigm. It sees individuals as seeking to maximise
their utility, rationally choosing the best means to
serve their goals. . . . The coming together of these
individuals in the competitive market place . . . is
said to generate maximum efficiency and well
being. (Etzioni, 1988, p. 1)

Morality and Management

1125

All questions of choice, decisions or why are
simply put down to the market, acting as a
collective, rational ‘will’ of the people. The
‘market’ becomes reified as the justification, the
‘legitimizer’ for all further activity claimed to
stem from it. No further questions need to be
asked about the morality of what we are doing
of what our goals and objectives are, the market
removes the need for such questions, the only
questions that need to be asked are the ‘how’
ones of which techniques to apply to given goals.
This is grounded in the same philosophy that
allowed Hegel to claim the ‘end of history’ in
the establishment of the form of the modern
bourgeois state, the only problem was how to run
the state. Questions of what the state was or who
it should benefit and how were ignored; it was
given as a rational functioning model that was
above morality. In economics it becomes the end
of morality as the market replaces it.

Thus as Habermas (1971) points out we arrive

at a model of a purposive, rational-action model
of a self-regulating system, the second legit-
imizing model. The market becomes a system,
self-regulating via its own rational decision
making mechanisms; the system requires action
to maintain it and the action is deemed purpo-
sive in that it responds to the needs of the
market/system; ‘choice’ is replaced by ‘must’,
‘morality’ by ‘needs’, ‘ends’ by ‘method’.

A case in point would be Maslow’s ‘hierarchy

of needs’ theory of motivation. Man is deemed
to be a wanting animal, he has ‘needs’ that have
to be met to make him active and productive;
the needs are assumed – how much easier and
unproblematic for managers, to talk about
meeting needs than saying ‘what does this man
really want?’ ‘Perhaps he doesn’t believe in the
job he’s doing’, or ‘he thinks his bosses are a
bunch of crooks’. No, the man is just another
cog in the machine to be fine-tuned, the idea
that the machine may be wrong or faulty is
simply not open to question.

As initial explanations of technical operation

fail to resolve problems, our empirical tradition
(Ravetz, 1973) takes us further down the same
road, rather than questioning the road we run on,
by going into greater detail in smaller and smaller
parts and producing vast quantities of data and

technical knowledge of even finer points. This,
essentially vacuous process actually becomes a
barrier to our own understanding by bogging us
down in meaningless empirical data, and also acts
as a shield to blind inquisitive outsiders with a
morass of detail (about nothing), whilst also
acting as a disguise to justify what are really
(political) decisions of choice. At the same time
such an accumulation of data also fits in with
the dominant empirical model of what science
is, facts not theories, and thus is further legit-
imized as truth, because it is scientific, a lot of
facts (see Ravetz, 1973; Mills, 1970; Habermas,
1971).

As Habermas points out, avoidance of these

questions is usually justified by a reference to a
need to act, what he terms ‘enlightened action’,
where the immediate needs of the system
requiring the application of technical knowledge
deny the time or opportunity to think about
what we are doing. Thus, ‘how’ becomes
divorced from ‘what for’. Yet the point of
Etzioni’s recent work has been to establish the
inadequacy of the model that we are attempting
to make work; the market does not work as the
model supposes; we are not individual rational
beings seeking to maximise our utility/pleasure;
we are moral and social beings who frequently
do not respond to the assumed stimuli of the
classical model. Lux (1990) has gone some way
to explain this point in his reference to ‘Adam
Smith’s Mistake’; Durkheim, in addressing
Spencer’s utilitarianism was also addressing the
same mistake, but clearly Mayo failed to pick this
up.

Thus the failure of human relations in man-

agement to address the real nature and problems
of social man stems partly from an ignorance of
the original concept (in the Sociology of
Durkheim) and partly from a ‘structural’ problem
in our universities and educational system that
emphasizes means over ends. Discussion of
morality involves posing questions that are dis-
turbing to the ‘purposive rational action system’,
disturbing, first, because we are often structurally
ill-prepared for such questions; second, we often
don’t want to address such questions because they
expose what is ultimately a political and not a
value-free rational, decision-making process.

1126

James C. Dingley

Conclusion

There is, in management, a certain fear of
addressing moral/political issues. Certainly man-
agement have major vested interests and have
seen themselves as locked in a ‘political’ battle
with the forces of Marxism where critiques of
management have been associated with an
ideological enemy. This has inevitably led to a
defensiveness and sterility of attitudes. Perhaps
with the fall of the ideological enemy in Eastern
Europe, the time might be ripe for a re-assess-
ment, if for no other reason than that the fall of
the old enemy gives a certain legitimacy to the
surviving order in the West. The questions posed
may be hard and the answers may require some
adjustments in existing relationships, but that no
longer implies some victory for an ideological
enemy; in fact, truly open debate and criticism,
which is surely what a free market involves, may
just as easily strengthen the existing system by
pointing out defects.

Second, an increasing number of commenta-

tors are pointing to the rather dubious track
record of a lot of management theories and
assumptions (see Hirszowicz, Chapter 4, 1981;
Fein, 1974) when applied in practice. As far back
as 1974 a management consultant like Fein was
writing:

. . . the concepts of McGregor and Herzberg
regarding workers used to find fulfillment through
their work hold only for those workers who
choose to find fulfillment through their work.
(Fein, 1974, p. 77)

A similar point had already been made in Britain
by Goldthorpe et al. in their ‘Affluent Worker’
studies. In both cases the emphasis was on
‘choice’ not ‘needs’.

If the basic assumptions and theories are

wrong, we are wasting a lot of our time and
energy no matter how sophisticated and complex
our action analysis. No matter how well we do
them, if we are doing the wrong things it is still
a waste of time.

Morality was the key to social man, yet the

discussion of morality has been steadily avoided
in management literature and practice for the
reasons reviewed above. Discussion of morality

will pose serious questions for management, but
they need not necessarily be seen as an attack
on management and, if properly addressed, could
even assist management by helping to establish
more permanent and better relationships at work;
even if it is at the expense of recognizing the
inadequacies of existing models of behaviour and
developing new ones, and forgoing certain vested
interests. The gains could still outweigh the
losses.

Two points of particular relevance are sug-

gested here, first: the action orientated nature of
management, with its emphasis on applied
knowledge, has a certain inadequacy. A greater
input of ‘purer’ academic and theoretical debate
in management could be of immense long term
benefit by looking at the assumptions on which
we act. In this way it is possible to avoid the sort
of mistakes that have been highlighted with
reference to Mayo. Universities should be ful-
filling this role but often don’t in a ‘market’
driven environment where they feel the need to
respond to the demands of their ‘consumers’.
This is particularly a problem for Business and
Management departments who are often closely
tied to their ‘consumers’, and especially if
funding is increasingly tied to direct contribu-
tions from ‘consumers’.

Second, a re-evaluation of Mayo and human

relations, that it still could have much to con-
tribute if properly modified to take account of
the moral dimension. Mayo appeared oblivious
to the moral concept at the heart of ‘social man’,
however his understanding of the importance of
social man and groups as an influence on human
behaviour was fully in accordance with
Durkheim’s ideas. Equally Likert’s ideas of over-
lapping group structures are fully in line with
Durkheim, what is lacking is the idea of a moral
community rather than just a piece of social
manipulation. Social man was a means to moral
man, Mayo understood the technique but not the
end.

Morality had to include all on an equal basis

(high powered executives and shop floor workers)
to create a moral community in which all could
agree and share, thus creating a ‘conscience col-
lective’, ‘conscience’ in the French being trans-
latable as both consciousness and conscience in

Morality and Management

1127

English. We can only become conscious of others
and consequently develop a conscience about
them if we are in contact and socialize with
them, this was the origin of morality – you can’t
be moral by yourself, only toward others. High
powered executives will only develop a con-
science about their workforce if they are in
regular contact with them, and at first hand
become aware of their problems and needs on a
personal level. Seen to do this executives then lay
the basis from which to act in a more moral way
in a spontaneous, not calculated, manner toward
their workforce, thus creating the platform for a
reciprocal sense of obligation from their workers.

This was what Durkheim had in mind in the

‘Division of Labour’ and looked to the old model
of guild organization to illustrate. We all had
to be socialized into a realization of the moral
obligations involved in economic activity –
encompassing everyone. Here modern models of
worker participation and industrial democracy
provide useful adjuncts to the earlier ideas of
Mayo or Likert, but they must be made mean-
ingful at the level of morals and obligation rather
than as a mere technical exercise. Only then will
there be a collective conscience strong enough
to bind and constrain the potentially chaotic
affects of unrestrained selfishness and economic
self-interest. And this would involve ethical
concepts such as ‘fairness’ having a spontaneous
priority over economic calculation.

Properly updated to encompass the moral

factor there could still be much to commend in
human relations.

References

Alpert, J.: 1961, Durkheim and His Sociology (New

York). First published 1939.

Aron, R.: 1970, Main Currents in Sociological Thought

(Pelican, London).

Bottomore, T. B.: 1964, Elites and Society (Pelican,

Harmondsworth).

Brown, D. and M. E. Broon: 1978, A Sociology of

Industrialisation (Macmillan, London).

Burns, T. and G. Stalker, 1961, The Management of

Innovation (Tavistock).

Burrell, G. and G. Morgan: 1979, Sociological Paradigms

and Organisational Analysis (Heinemann, London).

Durkheim, E.: 1953, Sociology and Philosophy (Cohen

and West, London).

Durkheim, E.: 1964, The Division of Labour in Society

(Macmillan, New York). First translation 1933.

Durkheim, E.: 1970, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (Free

Press of Glencoe, Glencoe). First translation 1951.

Durkheim, E.: 1976, Elementary Forms of Religious Life:

A Study in Religious Sociology (Allen and Unwin,
London). First translation 1915.

Durkheim, E.: 1982, The Rules of Sociological Method

(Macmillan, London). First translation 1938.

Eldridge, J. E. T.: 1973, Sociology and Industrial Life

(Nelson).

Etzioni, A.: 1986, ‘Socio-Economics: A Proposal for

a New Inter-Disciplinary Field’, Journal of Social
Behaviour and Personality 1(4), 475–482.

Etzioni, A.: 1986, ‘Rationality is Anti-Entropic’,

Journal of Economic Psychology 7(1), 17–36.

Etzioni, A.: 1987, ‘Toward a Kantian Socio-

Economics’, Review of Socio-Economics 45(1), 37–
47.

Etzioni, A.: 1988a, The Moral Dimension; Toward a

New Economics (The Free Press, New York).

Etzioni, A.: 1988b, ‘Normative-Affective Factors:

Toward a New Decision-Making Model’, Journal
of Economic Psychology 9(2), 125–150.

Etzioni, A.: 1989, ‘Toward Deonitological Social

Sciences’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 19,
143–156.

Etzioni, A.: 1991, ‘Too Many Rights, Two Few

Responsibilities’, Society 28(2), 41–48.

Fein, M.: 1974, ‘Job Enrichment: A Re-Evaluation’,

Sloan Management Review (Winter), 69–88.

Giddens, A.: 1978, Durkheim (Fontana, Glasgow).
Goldthorpe and Lockwood et al.: 1968, The Affluent

Worker, Vols. I, II and III (Cambridge University
Press).

Grint, K.: 1991, Sociology of Work (Polity).
Habermas, J. 1971, Knowledge and Human Interests

(Hutchinson).

Hirszowicz, M.: 1981, Industrial Sociology (Martin

Robertson, London).

Likert, R.: 1961, New Patterns of Management

(McGraw-Hill, New York).

Lukes, S.: 1973, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work

(Peregrine/Penguin, Harmondsworth).

Lux, K.: 1990, Adam Smith’s Mistake (Shambhala).
Mayo, E.: 1933, The Human Problems of an Industrial

Civilisation (Macmillan, New York).

Mayo, E., 1947, The Political Problems of an Industrial

Civilisation (Harvard University Press, Boston).

Mayo, E.: 1949, The Social Problems of an Industrial

Civilisation (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London).

1128

James C. Dingley

McGregor, D.: 1990, The Human Side of Entreprise

(McGraw-Hill, New York).

Mills, C. W.: 1970, The Sociological Imagination

(Pelican, London).

Morgan, G.: 1990, Organisations in Society (Macmillan,

London).

Odiorne, G.: 1975, Management and the Activity Trap

(Heinemann, London).

Pollard, H.: 1974, Developments in Management Thought

(Heinemann, London).

Ravetz, J. R.: 1973, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social

Problems (Penguin, London).

Rose, M.: 1988, Industrial Behaviour (Penguin,

Harmondsworth), also 1975.

Silverman, D.: 1970, The Theory of Organisations

(heinemann, London).

Smith, A.: 1993, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes

of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford University Press,
Oxford). First published 1776.

Smith, J. H.: 1974, ‘Elton Mayo Revisited’, British

Journal of Industrial Relations 12(2), 282–291.

Smith, J. H.: 1987a, ‘Elton Mayo and the English

Dream’, Sociological Review 35(3), 602–621.

Smith, J. H.: 1987b, ‘Elton Mayo and the Hidden

Hawthorne’, Work Employment and Society 1(1),
107–120.

Thompson, P. and D. McHugh: 1990, Work

Organisations (Macmillan, London).

Trahair, R.: 1984, The Humanist Temper (New

Brunswick).

Underwood, J.: 1989, ‘Competent Managers – What

For?’, in MEAD, Special Issue (Lancaster) 20(3).

School of Management,

University of Ulster,

Jordanstown,

Co Antrim,

N. Ireland, U.K.

Morality and Management

1129