ABSTRACT

W HATEVER the nature of the top-level governnlent of industry, capitalist, nationalized or co-operative, the general trend determined by the logic of technical progress is toward largescale operation, the large firm or unit of government and control through a hierarchy of line, functional or staff officials remote from labour at the working base of the pyramid. Labour, the middle management, and even the top level in these huge management pyramids are, however, human. Labour has been considered as a 'human factor' almost ad nauseam. We are familiar with the distinction between the financial or pecuniary incentive of the wage and the non-pecuniary incentives such as love of work, desire for recognition and other impulses, dispositions or attitudes dignified, in the quite recent past, with the name of instincts. The relative strength of these incentives in forwarding efficiency, and of the transpecuniary incentive of what the wage will buy have been sufficiently canvassed.l To what in 1924 I called the cash-nexus, the hobby-nexus and the fame-nexus2 must, however, be added, as I suggested in 1933,3 the crucial personal relationships of the worker to his employer and his fellow workers and neighbours generally. Elton Mayo and his associates are responsible for the acceptance of the importance of what may be called the group or gang-nexus.