635058

research-article2016
HUM0010.1177/0018726716635058Human RelationsEditorial

human relations

human relations
1­–4
Human Relations: The first © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0018726716635058
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Human Relations is one of the oldest social science journals. It was established in 1947,
ahead of journals such as the British Journal of Sociology (1950), and long before other
leading management journals such as those published by the Academy of Management
(the Journal, 1958, and the Review, 1976) and journals of work, organization and
employment (e.g. Organization Studies, 1980 and Work, Employment and Society,
1987). As we approach the 70th anniversary of the journal’s foundation, I have been
looking back at its development. I intend to offer a series of reflections. These will be of
a very broad and personal kind: it would be impossible to conduct a substantive review
of everything published, still less place that work in the wider context of the field.
The journal’s editorial policy was stated very briefly in the first issue. The journal
would address ‘community problems’ and ‘interpersonal and inter-group tensions’, and
would include studies developing theory relevant to these topics. It thus considered
‘human relations’ in a broad sense, essentially trying to understand the functioning of
human groups and ways of improving that functioning. The strapline, ‘towards the inte-
gration of the social sciences’, appeared on the front page; this was to continue for many
years. As is well-known, this approach reflected the establishment in 1946 of the
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, which was founded on the aim of drawing on the
breadth of the emerging field of social science to address social issues. Underlying both
journal and institute were two strands of work in particular, those of psychoanalysis
associated with scholars such as Melanie Klein and those of group dynamics and person-
ality theory associated in particular with Wilfred Bion and Kurt Lewin.1 Much of the
work of the Institute was collated in three volumes, The Social Engagement of Social
Science, edited by Eric Trist, Fred Emery and Hugh Murray. These were published in
1997 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and their text is also available under the
‘Our History’ section of the Institute’s website (http://www.tavinstitute.org/who-we-are/
our-history/). Given the existence of this resource, I offer selective comment and not
detailed analysis.
The early years of the journal strongly reflected the context of its foundation. A cate-
gorization of all the articles published in 1947, 1950 and 1955 shows a predominance of
studies of groups and teams, social attitudes, personality traits and social integration.
There was no specific delimitation to the field of work and organization, and indeed a
substantial majority of articles was on non-work topics. By modern standards, other
notable features were the absence (with two exceptions) of abstracts of articles, the very
2 Human Relations 

small number of references (with 24 articles having 10 references or fewer, and only five
articles having 25 or more), and a relatively casual approach to the discussion of research
methods (with only about half of the articles having any such discussion).
In terms of the methods actually employed, a notable feature is the use of the experi-
mental method, usually in a lab setting or some other non-field situation. The journal
now bars studies based solely on this method, but a rough categorization of the articles
in these three years suggests that it was the most popular single method, used by 12 arti-
cles. A further four report field experiments or action research. There were about 11
overview or conceptual essays, and 10 articles that might loosely be categorized as case
studies. In contrast to the modern emphasis on the quantitative analysis of survey data,
only five articles reported surveys of individuals, and several of those were notable in not
reporting the specifics of the population from which a sample was drawn, response rates
or questionnaire design.
The mix of attention to practical problems with efforts to develop, often from first
principles, some kind of analytical framework was not peculiar to the journal. Also
established in 1947 was the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, which set out its
focus as labour–management relations and its roles as investigation, analysis and
rational discussion. Its first article was an account of labour education, with no refer-
ences and no methods section. There was thus a shared post-war focus on the kinds of
issues that had arisen before and during the war, together with the belief that applied
social science could help in their resolution.
The content of Human Relations has a strong period flavour. For example, issue 1 of
1949 contained an article by Adam Curle on an anthropological view of work incentives. It
offered a clearly Durkheimian and Hawthorne-style analysis of the loss of integration in
modern as opposed to traditional societies, and it argued for the restoration or reconstruc-
tion of social integration. Such an approach was open to substantial criticism for the neglect
of power and inequality and for a naive view of social engineering, as the many critiques
of Hawthorne that began to appear from the mid-1950s demonstrated. Nonetheless, there
was an essential humanity here, for Curle argued for the need to empower workers them-
selves if integration was to be achieved. This theme also stood out in many other articles
from the period, perhaps most evidently Trist and Bamforth’s (1951) celebrated account of
the longwall method of coal mining. This article argued that this new technology disrupted
social relationships and that integration of the social and technical aspects was needed; it
gave particular attention to the active role of workers in creating social order. A further
classic socio-technical study was that by AK Rice (1953) on social organization in a ‘weav-
ing shed’ in India. The chequered history of management-led ‘empowerment’ schemes
over the following 60 years might well have benefited from attention to the fundamental
points made in such studies.
The early years of the journal saw several other influential articles. Three groups of
scholars stand out, as indicated by the continuing interest in their work. First, Kurt Lewin
published two articles in 1947, including the first article in the journal, on ‘frontiers in
group dynamics’. The influence of these articles on later studies of organizational change
is very well-known, albeit often in distorted ways. As a 2016 article in the journal
(Stephen Cummings et al., ‘Unfreezing change as three steps’) demonstrates, Lewin did
not propose the three-step model attributed to him; the 1947 article was a much broader
discussion of stability and change in group relationships. It is also worth noting here that
Lewin based his articles on the results of experimental research. Second, and equally
Editorial 3

well-known, is the work of Coch and French (1948; 1[4]) on overcoming resistance to
change. This shaped many debates on what later became known as the management of
change. Third, Festinger (1954) published an article synthesizing work to date and offer-
ing new research questions on the issue of how social comparisons are made and how far
social influences lead individuals to change their perceptions of themselves. This was
also based on experimental studies, anticipating what much later emerged as behavioural
economics.
It is also notable that several scholars who became leaders in the social sciences pub-
lished their early work in the journal. Examples include in one issue (1954) Elizabeth
Bott, Peter Blau and Tom Burns. Other well-known scholars include SN Eisenstadt
(1954) and Leo Festinger (1954) and JA Barnes (1954).
The period saw the publication of the first of a series of studies based on the Glacier
Project. These studies were based on an intense analysis of the Glacier Metals Company.
They included influential studies of accidents and labour turnover as forms of ‘with-
drawal’ (e.g. Hill, 1951, and Hill and Trist, 1953). The basis was explained in the first
article by Elliott Jaques (1950). The objective was to study the ‘psychological and social
forces’ affecting ‘group life, morale and productivity in a single industrial community’.
The approach was to study and report on topics agreed by all concerned, embracing agree-
ment with the firm’s Works Council. This first article included an extraordinarily detailed
account of bargaining over a new wage payment system; the richness of the detail, includ-
ing discussion of the unfolding of events over several years, still repays study.
In its first 10 years, then, the journal established an approach to its field and began to
publish influential applications of that approach. If there was one thing tying it together,
it may have been the hope that experimental methods would throw light on and help to
resolve major social issues. That said, the journal was very disparate in its content.
Articles also drew eclectically from a range of theoretical traditions, or developed their
own ideas without very clear grounding in specific theories; and the social science under-
pinnings of articles were not always very explicit, which might be expected given the
very limited development of social science at the time. In relation to the core focus of the
journal, studies of group relations were produced but how far these led to an integrated
understanding was as yet far from clear.

Note
1 See, for example, Backhouse and Fontaine (2010).

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Paul Edwards
Professor Paul Edwards, FBA
Editor-in-Chief, Human Relations
paul.edwards@humanrelationsjournal.org