Personnel Counseling: The Hawthorne Case

Abstract

The counseling program at the Hawthorne Works is analyzed in terms of its objective consequences for management's control of workers and in terms of the particiapan's definition of its function. Despite some resistance to the program on all levels and certain limits to its use as an intelligence service of management, the counseling organization assists the carrying-out of managerial control: it acts as a good-will agent and drains off resentment and bitterness that might otherwise gain expression through militant unionism. Counseling is foudn to be directed to supervisor, workers, and union reprentatives alike.