Report Says Management To Blame for Absenteeism

Management's failure to achieve "balanced operation" with team spirit among workers on the production line "will have serious effects on our industrial structure if continued in the postwar period," a study issued by the Harvard Business School declared today.

Following an investigation in nearly all the major aircraft plants of Southern California, the report features contributions by Professors Elton Mayo, George F. F. Lombard, John B. Fox, and Jerome F. Scott. While the men concede that the financial loss in labor turnover and absenteeism resulting from neglect of worker morale can be over-looked by firms enjoying wartime prosperity, they assert that the defect may prove fatal to many companies in the highly competitive period expected after hostilities cease.

Workers Not Blamed

"Although it is clearly evident," the study stated, "that the pressure for production and constant changes of schedule which reached a peak in the aircraft industry during the years 1942 and 1943 made impossible the organization of operations which must be the basis of teamwork, the conclusions of our study indicate that management's lack of awareness of the need to consider the requirements of balanced operation made it in a significant way responsible for the absences and turnover for which workers are so widely blamed.

"It is our belief that when top management realizes the importance of the human aspect of industrial organization, it will demand of executives and supervisors an adequacy in problems of human administration that will balance the present insistence on technical capacity. . . The requisites for success in industry are a balanced relation among applied science, the organization of operations, and the organization of teamwork--and in the United States, as elsewhere, the relation among these three is out of balance.

Teamwork Neglected

"Applied science and the appropriate skills have been magnificently developed; the organization of operations has been given much study and attention; but the organization of teamwork has been almost wholly neglected."

Workers themselves have a persistent desire for active association in teamwork with others, the report shows, but if that deep-seated feeling is stified, it will take the form of exaggerated absenteeism and labor turnover. Management by its inattention to the organization of teamwork in the factory is in a significant way responsible for the operations for which it blames the workers.

Industry and Community Benefit

"Something of this was immediately reflected in the first approach to study of the situation in Southern California," the study continues. "Everywhere the need for the best in applied science and technical skill was fully understood, the chief handicap being a shortage of technically competent workmen. And it all points to the advantages of balanced operation--an increased quantity of production, lowered costs of production, and a reduction in extravagant absence records and turnover. This reduction benefits not only individuals but also industry as a whole."