Higher Education and Business Standards — John Shaqi
Higher Education and Business StandardsHotchkiss, Willard E. (Willard Eugene)
Philosophy
Higher Education and Business Standards
Hotchkiss, Willard E. (Willard Eugene)
Business education; Business ethics
It is worth our while to consider how these reactions may affect
practical administration. No reflection is needed to see that in
proportion as business men fail to take account of forces outside the
business, in that proportion they are likely to miscalculate the
results of business policies. Striking examples of such miscalculation
are found in the experience of Mr. George M. Pullman back in the
nineties, and of Mr. Patterson, of the National Cash Register Company,
a decade later. Each of these men, with apparent good faith, undertook
to surround his laborers with conditions of physical, mental, and moral
uplift, and each undertook to do it as an act of paternal bounty. Each
of them, as far as we can judge, expected appreciation, gratitude, and
increased efficiency. But they failed to take account of the group
consciousness of their laborers; they did not know what the laborers
were thinking; and because the laborers were thinking something
different from what the employers thought, policies intended to arouse
gratitude aroused instead resentment and a strike.
But there are many things besides too much paternalism that may result
in a strike. Another concern of international dimensions and one whose
officers, I can vouch, are men of high character and public spirit,
also found itself confronted with a strike in 1910. This was a highly
organized business. For years its sales department had tried to seek
out the highest grade of talent, and the result was a selling and
distributing organization that was the model and the envy of
competitors. But questions of employment seem to have gone by default,
the general policy being confined to a sincere but vague good-will
toward employees and acceptance of things as they were.
The issues of the strike were issues with which we are all familiar. On
the workers' side, grievances and no workable machinery for redress;
result: organization, concerted group action, force. On the other side,
there was a personal readiness to hear grievances, coupled with
insistence on the ancient right of the employer to conduct his own
business in his own way, without interference from employees or the
public.
After weeks of deadlock the strain of a distressing situation, losses
from the interruption of business, regard for public opinion and the
opinion of friends, combined with their own desire to do the right
thing, induced the employers, probably against their best judgment, to
recede from their position. An agreement was made providing for
increased wages, standardization of piece-work, a preferential shop,
and appointment by the firm of a person to hear grievances and to
cooperate with a representative of the union in securing redress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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