TRADE AND HUMANITY

Attitude of industry towards human beings had come a long way from the initial view of classical economics that treated labour as a factor of production along with land, machine and materials. With more and more insight available about the human nature this factor of production, the labour, became a resource, rather the all-important one. What was philosophised by Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management theory based on economic — rational premise gave way to Theory Y of McGregor that suggested that man is basically good. But with the recent Factories (Amendment) Bill 2016 raising over time hours for factory workers the wheel seems to turn back.

Productivity has always been an issue with industry and in these competitive times it has become more so. Statistics suggest that of the 100 top revenue generating organisations of the world over 50 per cent are Business Corporations and not nation-states. World’s three richest people are richer than the GDP of more than the 30 poorest nations. We are approaching a state where one percent will own wealth equal to 99 percent of the people. Where do we go from here? And what about the Philosophy of Human Resource Management (HRM) that is touted so much these days. Needless to say that most organisations are paying just lip service.

The expression HRM is popular to the extent of being hackneyed and human resource managers proclaim to be the people centric to the hilt claiming their organisation as one that is of the people, by the people, for the people. But there is a need to examine how true these claims are? The fact is that the attitude towards human beings engaged in industries and business organisations has not changed much except for the jargons that mostly serve cosmetic purpose. Even today there are organisations and managers who still consider that employees belong to a lower order meant only for satisfying their physiological needs. So Taylor’s ghost still looms large on these organisations and his philosophy of man’s economic rationality rules the roost. In these organisations there can be found an oblique insensitivity toward personal dignity of employees who are supposed to be mere tools of production, more mechanical than human. They view the workplace from their own tinted glass that is coloured with only profitability and productivity. Human beings are not machines, and only a good pay and neatly designed work environment may not necessarily make them productive. We’ve gone wrong in our assumptions about human nature, which is unstable and volatile? The assumptions behind the theories of productivity, though, hold good and give results, but only if other things are equal. But other things are not equal as has been discovered time and again. The worker is not an isolated machine and results do not depend only on internal state of health, good or bad conditions of the physical environment and economic interests. The worker is a human being, a member of a team, family and society at large.

Do the employers of these industrial organisations really accept the underlying philosophy of “human resources’’ which encompasses ‘total knowledge, skills, creative abilities, talent and aptitude of the worker as well as the values and attitudes and beliefs of the individuals existing thereof’. Perhaps not.

Though there are few enlightened managements but these are notable exceptions. For the rest people philosophy does not make good business sense.