INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE STUDY IN HUMAN RELATIONS

Human relations training means different things to different people. To some, it focuses on understanding oneself with the goals of identifying ones individuality and moving toward self-actualization. To others, improving relationships with friends, family, loved ones, and co-workers are of major concern. To many, human relations training implies improving relations in organizations to create a more productive and effective work environment. To still others, it is a means of diagnosing and eliminating such forms of oppression as racism, sexism and ageism to make the world a better place to live.

The importance of human relations training has been increasingly recognized over the past few decades. As such training has become more widespread, people have begun to deal with issues that before were rarely addressed in open and systematic ways.

The need for human relations or human services has increased due to an increase in problems in the modern world. What are some of the problems that necessitate an increase in services?

A growing number of people feel alienated and isolated from their neighbors and society. There is stress due to job downsizing, job shortages, mobility of society, the changing American family – serial marriages, both spouses working, lack of connection to others, malnutrition and disease, economic and technological changes, population changes, crisis in health care, a crisis in morals, globalization, etc. All of these require human relations professions who can provide services that allow individuals or communities or organizations an opportunity to help themselves and gain control of their lives or their environment as soon as they are able.

Human Relations work involves social problems at work; problems of the aged and handicapped, problems of minorities and the underprivileged; problems of the underclass (those who do not seem to make it in our society as either middle or upper class). Exposing the problems and discussing realities of these groups in a frank, practical way, will help toward solving the problems.

The need for human relations training is created by problems in living. Human beings whether as individuals, families, groups, societies or business organizations are not always able to meet their own needs. Human services and human relations workers have developed in response to the need of individuals or groups for assistance to live better or more productive lives. Examples of people in need are often publicized in the media: the very young, the elderly, people with limited physical or mental capabilities, and many others. Helping individual clients is an example of the helping interaction; families and groups also receive the attention of human relation workers as does communities and larger geographical areas.

Human Relations workers also have functions in industry such as action research, team building, organizational development, stress management, counseling for alcohol and drug abuse and human resources management. Human relations workers have corresponding functions in the military and schools and in institutional and community based services.

Thus, to be interested in human relations means being interested in and committed to finding solutions to the human problems that face us in modern times. These social and psychological problems are extremely complex, and they require a coordinated and integrated approach if we are to expect some movement in their resolution. This is what human relations are all about--helping ourselves and helping others to solve problems.

This presentation will provide you with the framework of the course and introduce you to the concepts that are central to the Human Relations degree program. Four central areas we will cover in the course of the class are: (a) professional foundations,(b) self knowledge, (c) the body of knowledge contributing to the field and (d) modes of inquiry. I will begin my definitions by breaking down the title of the course “Introduction to Graduate Study in Human Relations” and define the key terms in the title.

Definitions:

Graduate Education - Graduate education deals with developing knowledge, the ability to use knowledge, and the ability to think with creativity and skepticism. A Masters level education aims to develop a student=s ability to participate in scientific inquiry, typically at the level of applying research to practice. Human relations faculty carry dual responsibility for preparing (a) practitioners whose focus is providing the knowledge for the delivery and evaluation of effective human services to individuals groups, and communities and (b) and researchers whose focus is the generation and validation of new forms knowledge related to human relations problems.

Up until graduate school, education concentrates on (1) the acquisition of knowledge i.e. the essential facts and research findings related to a particular field of study and (2) understanding i.e., not just knowing the facts but understanding how they are related to one another theoretically, their causes and consequences. Like undergraduate education, graduate education entails these first two, but graduate education involves a third and fourth elementC(3) the development of a critical insight into research and (4) the learning of research skills that allow for the development of new knowledge that contributes to the literature or "knowledge base" of the field. Graduate Education provides the following skills:

1. Communication competence

2. Critical thinking

3. Contextual competence

4. Aesthetic sensibility

5. Professional identity

6. Professional ethics

7. Adaptive competence

8. Leadership capacity

9. Scholarly concern for improvement

10. Motivation for continued learning

11. Reflective Learning

12. Personal strength and confidence

13. Understanding of human nature

14. Social skills

15. Global perspective

16. Ability to learn independently

17. Leadership skills

18. Creativity

19. Depth

Graduate work requires self-discipline and study for intellectual development in the knowledge areas and in the experiential areas.

There will be several definitions of human relations given throughout the course and it has been somewhat defined in the above opening paragraphs but a succinct definition of human relations is as follows:

Human Relations is the study of why our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors cause interpersonal conflict in personal lives and work related situations.

Human Relations focuses upon: Interpersonal relationships, cooperative efforts, group relations and conflicts.

The study of human relations emphasizes:

human behavior; prevention strategies; conflict resolution; organizational development; service clients; empowerment and competence enhancement; social justice; diversity and inclusion; community development and participation; evaluation; collaboration and partnerships; systems perspectives and action research.

Human Relations skills: HR courses focus on the development of foundational skills: basic communication skills, critical thinking skills and personal qualities such as responsibility, self-esteem, self management and integrity, group dynamics and action research.

A. Foundations of Human Relations Work

As a profession, human relations carries responsibility for providing a service in keeping with societal needs for assistance with social and organizational problems involving individuals, groups, organizations and communities. Professional foundations as a domain of knowledge comes from inquiry into the nature of human relations, the value-orientations of the profession, the nature of practice, historical influences on current practices and delivery modes, and the philosophic underpinnings of professional practice.

What is Interdisciplinary and what disciplines contribute to the study of Human Relations.

What is a discipline?

A. must define term before we can consider interdisciplinarity

B in its simplist form, a discipline is a branch of knowledge or a field of study

C a discipline can be defined as any comparatively self-contained and isolated domain of human experience which possesses its own community of experts

D more technically, a discipline is held together by shared assumptions about the

nature of knowledge and acceptable ways of generating or accumulating knowledge

(epistemology); set of shared assumptions about

1. the nature of the world

2. what constitutes an interesting question for study

3. methods for generating and analyzing information

4. rules that constitute evidence or “proof”

E. three general clusters of disciplines

1. the natural sciences (agriculture, biology, chemistry, physics)

2. the social sciences (anthropology, economics, history, sociology)

3. the humanities (art and art history, literature, music)

4. some disciplines (business, nursing) are inherently interdisciplinary

Discipline - a field of study that is able to be taught. It requires a distinctive body of knowledge philosophy & theories vs practical knowledge

E. what is science?

Science - when knowledge is systematically organized into general law & theories

1. three approaches

a. experimental-mathematical approach (physical sciences, e.g., physics and

chemistry)

b. historical-observational approach (life sciences, e.g., agriculture and biology)

c. qualitative approach (social sciences)

2. exact thinking, comparison of model and reality, and appropriate combinations of

analysis and synthesis are common to experimental and historical approaches. Qualitative/interpretive approaches view people’s stories of their experiences as empirical evidence

4. might help to consider science as an evaluative process by which scientific

theories are generated, tested, and either accepted, revised, or rejected; science

is more than this, however!

What is art?

Art - Using creativity, improvisation, intuitive senses, commonsense understanding, and aesthetics as critical aspects of all practice. Strong reliance on intuition, imagination, personal experience and emotion.

1. Art lacks a satisfactory definition (you know what it is, I know it, but a definition is quite something else); it is easier to describe it as the way something is done --

"the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects,

environments, or experiences that can be shared with others " - rather than what it is

2. more technically, art might be considered

a. the analysis of structures and relationships inherent to a given artistic creation

b. the ability to respond or react to a given artistic creation using a range of tools

including: aesthetic sensitivity, personal experience, understanding of social

context, and recognition of a variety of cultural/historical references

What is history?

1. 5 elements or frameworks

a. causation: an understanding of the relationship between cause and effect

. what was the immediate cause?

. did personalities effect the event?

. was there background agitation that effected the event?

. did new ideas play a role in shaping the event?

. did the physical environment make difference?

. what influence did spiritual/religious forces have?

. did inventions or technology have an impact on the event?

. what role did social factors play?

. what role did economic factors play?

. can the event be explained by the weakening or strengthening of institutions?

. be suspicious of single-cause explanations for large historical events and movements

b. change over time:

. little in society or government remains static, though certainly there can be different rates of change

. history considers, among other things, such changes as a function of time

c. contingency:

. historical explanations take the form of narrative: E, the phenomenon to be explained, arose because D came before, preceded by C, B, and A. If any of these earlier stages had not occurred, or had transpired in a different way, then E would not exist (or would be present in a substantially altered form, E', requiring a different explanation). Thus, E makes sense and can be explained rigorously as the outcome of A through D. But no law of nature enjoined E; any variant E arising from an altered set of antecedents, would have been equally explicable, though massively different in form and effect (Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life,

1989, as quoted here)

d. context:

the circumstances in which an event occurs

. a setting

. the influences and events that helped cause a particular event or situation to happen

e. chronology:

. (the study of) the ordering of events by the time at which they happened, or a list of events so ordered

2. reliability of sources

a. historians also like to consider the reliability of sources used

b. original or primary sources are most highly valued, and may be textual, an

artifact (statue, vase), etc.

What is interdisciplinarity?

A. use of multiple disciplines to answer a question, solve a problem, or address a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or perspective

B. however, interdisciplinarity is more than simply using multiple disciplines to study a problem but involves thought processes that make interconnections between

isolated components and the complete whole

C. the goal is the integration of knowledge from disciplines being brought to bear on the topic – the resulting understanding should be greater than simply the sum of the

various disciplinary parts (synergism)

What is the nature of Human Relations: Is it a Discipline, Profession, Science & Art?

As a result of increasing specialization, knowledge becomes more and more fragmented. The different branches of knowledge have been captured by specialists, and few networks have been built between disciplines to facilitate communication among specialists. Multidisciplinary awareness must be fostered and must include the humanities as well as science and the social sciences.

Tthere are real-world issues that are broader than a single discipline and are therefore best studied from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through an interdisciplinary perspective, a human relations worker can achieve deeper understanding of the world from such a perspective; creative breakthroughs often result from the clashing of two disciplines.

Therefore, human relations is taught from the various disciplines to help you understand how the real world operates, to make the experiences more meaningful, to teach the multidisciplinary nature of causes and solutions to social problems. They help to build bridges between theory and practice. Human relations represents an combination of knowledge and multidisciplinary awareness.

The function of the multidisciplinary education is to learn the concepts and relationships that form the foundations of knowledge for one end; to invite students to think for themselves and to enable them to practice from a holistic perspective. The arts, sciences, the humanities and the social sciences can provide the grounds for an integrated practice. The arts and humanities help us know ourselves as symbol users and meaning makers; they provide a dialogue between the intellectual wealth of the past and the expressive possibilities of the present. The sciences help us know our environment and our history of discovering its possibilities and limitations; they give us tools for keen observation and practical application. The social sciences help us know ourselves as relational people, living in a complex human community; they provide understanding and skills for the maintenance of social life.

The helping professions have spent considerable effort in recent years attempting to develop sound and effective techniques for assisting people with problems. They utilize theories of counseling, psychotherapy, community development and organization, organizational change, social policy, and so forth. In this course you will be taught that Human Relations training prepares workers initially to be practitioners. However, human relation workers are also researchers and theoreticians, and as such, we rely upon explicit theories.

1. Is human relations a discipline?

2. Is human relations a science?

3. Is human relations an Art?

4. Is human relations a profession?

Human Relations is not a discipline, nor a science.

Human Relations as a Profession

A profession has a body of systematic theory, authority, community sanction, an ethical code and a professional culture. Does the field of Human Relations possess these attributes?

The one definition that fits human relations is that it has a fund of knowledge and the skills to apply that knowledge. Human relations calls upon the theories of science and the social sciences and uses humanistic approaches, creativity and art in their application. Human relations graduates practice in a wide range of professions and as such hold professional standings in their field of work.

What distinguishes human relations as a field of study from other disciplines?

It is interdisciplinary in nature

It questions the fundamental categories of all disciplines

It has a public mission of making society more democratic

We take ideas (theory) and apply them (practice)

The joining of theory and practice is called praxis

There is a need for a language of critique, a questioning of presuppositions

Flexibility in crossing boundaries between academic fields for theories and techniques

There is a language of possibilities that goes beyond critique to elaborate a positive language of human empowerment

There is the idea of Empowerment--the ability to think and act critically

HR workers speak to people in a language that dignifies their history and experience

Action oriented research that seeks to facilitate personal and societal change.

Human relation students are taught to be change agents , not bureaucrats, and to not accept the status quo. If a system or organization is not serving well its clients or employees, the system should be changed.

The values of human relations are a matter of epistemology. We believe the real world is knowable to ordinary people and their knowledge can be collectively and meaningfully organized. Thus, we believe people can create their own future. People want opportunities to engage their heads and hearts as well as hands. They want to and are able to join the creative processes of organization rather than that being the sole domain of the elite. Egalitarian participation. Everyone is an equal. The process should empower people to feel more knowledgeable about and in control of their future.

Basic to a professional human relations approach is the belief that all individuals are potential social change agents, each capable of being an active party in solutions to interpersonal and intergroup problems which affect them personally. Thus a major objective of human relations education is to provide resources through which people become better able to identify, describe, and abate individual, group, organizational and governmental problems. (Henderson, 1974).

A second foundational belief lies in the idea of action research, the process encompasses appreciating the best of what is, the analogous to prouds and sorries, exploring ideals of what might be (visioning), agreeing on what should be, and finally experiencing what can be.

Third, open systems theory is the basis of our approach at two levels. It is important to get as much if not the whole ecology of the organization and must be understood within the context of the search for the problem and solutions. The search also is about the organization as a part of a larger system. The relationship of the organization to its external environment, how that environment is changing, what the change might either means to us (reactive) or how we can influence the change (proactive) arethe key ingredients of the search.

Fourth, the Lewinian model of change is fundamental to our approach. The essence of the future search is to unfreeze and move a system in the direction of meaningful, deliberate, agreed-upon, preferred change.

The textbook will cover the Roles, Functions and Responsibilities of Human Relations Workers as:

Therapist

Outreach Worker

Advocate

Change Agent

Consultant

Community Planner

Administrator

Evaluator

The textbooks will also cover the Primary Characteristics of Professional Human Relations Workers

Future lectures will highlight the Philosophical Influences on Human relations and their definitions and descriptions will be given during that lecture. The following influences on human relations will be discussed:

Existentialist/Humanistic Psychology

Modernism/Post-Modernism

Social Constructivism

Systems Theory

The texts and future Lectures will also cover the Theoretical Frameworks which inform, structure and facilitate Human Relations Practice, Those definitions and descriptions will be given during those lectures. Some of the theories to be covered are as follow:

Action Research

Systems Theory

Lewian Model of Change

Psychoanalytic Theory

Behavior Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Humanistic Psychology

Motivational Theory

B. Self-Awareness, Knowledge and Skills

"to be an effective helper it is first necessary to understand major aspects of your own behavior and how you interact with others (Hutchins and Cole, 1992, p.4).

As a human relations worker students must be aware of their strengths and limitations. Exercises should be developed to help determine the strengths, limitations and values of students and allow for further reflection and improvement.

Surviving as a Human Service Practitioner

Effective human relations revolve around the development of seven skills: Self Acceptance, Self Awareness, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Self Disclosure, Trust and Motivation.

C. Operationally the faculty has conceptualized the substantive content of human relations within four strands of study 1) human resources/organizational 2) human services 3) community development and 4) social justice. The four areas are looked at from a historical perspective by asking the following question:

What changes in populations, societal, organizational/industrial needs, socio-political-economic trends have influenced human relations development?

Human Resources/Organizational Development

As work became more industrialized the development of the human relations field redefined the nature of work and the perception of managers and workers as complex human beings. This movement began mid 1800’s, the focus was on improved efficiency, motivation and productivity. Later focus was on the nature of work. Through text and lecture we will cover the following:

Historical influences

Medieval Times - How was work organized?

Industrial Revolution - How was work organized?

Robert Owen

Classical Management Theory

Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management

Elton Mayo

Hawthone Effect

Neo Human Relations

Bureacracy

Human Resources

Motivation Theorists- Maslow, Herzberg, etc.

Current Schools of Thought in Organizational Behavior

Human Relations School – Started to focus on human needs, desires

Assumptions:

Humans are complex—different motivation

Need to motivate employees with more than pure authority. Individuals got more from their participation than a paycheck

Humans are social animals

Need to be accepted and liked by fellow workers is more important than economic incentives provided by the management

From the organizational strand, the human relations movement, as an academic discipline, grew out of scientific management in the 1920’s and 30’s especially via the contribution of Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne studies. The scientific movement sought to adapt worker to task whereas human relations veered toward adjusting task to worker. The human relations movement has advanced through several schools of thought; mainly group dynamics and industrial relations, to organizational humanism, through to individualism and systemic interdependence. The evolving trend is towards the growth of mutual accountable, self managing teams (against hierarchical relationships) working in the flexible organization which sees itself as an integral part of the overall ecosystem.

Human Services

The movement shifted the locus of control of human service from large institutions to increasingly decentralized sometimes neighborhood based, community settings and began in the sixties. The goal was to enhance the quality of life for those who are served. Human Relations or Human Service workers began serving a variety of roles. Some of these roles are:

Counselor to those who need support

Broker to help people use community resources

Mediator between clients and between clients and agencies

Caregiver to children, elders, disabled adults

Administrator for social service agencies

The text and lecture will cover the social conditions that affected the organization of human services and mental health development: the rapid industrialization of the country, the urbanization of its population, problems growing out of immigration and changes in oppressed populations after the Civil War. Topics that will be covered are:

Historical Influences

Medieval - How was helping and mental health services organized and provided?

Elizabethan Poor Laws

Law of Settlement Act

Industrial Revolution

Puritan Work Ethic

Darwinian Theory

Laissez Faire

Major Social Reforms in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries

Five of the Helping Professions

Clergy

Social Work

Psychotherapy

Criminal Justice

Education

Future of social and mental health services

Community Development

Community development and organizing involves mobilizing people to work together to solve shared problems. As part of the mobilization effort, people learn that individual problems have social causes and that collectively fight back is a more reasonable, dignified approach than passive acceptance or personal alienation. Development comes about as people increase their capacity to pressure government and businesses, obtain needed goods and services, and build and sustain democratic organizations. Through organizing and developing people gain the confidence and tools to collectively resolve societal problems.

Through text and lecture we will briefly look at the following:

Historical

Social Conditions that affected community organizations: the rapid industrialization of the country, the urbanization of its population, problems growing out of immigration, changes in oppressed populations after the Civil War and migration of masses of people from the rural areas and from the South to seek jobs, the problems of overcrowding and slums.

World War I

E. three general clusters of disciplines

It has a public mission of making society more democratic

Fiscal Realities

New Technology