What management approach was popular during the 1920s and influential through the 1950s, focusing on employee respect?

The human relations approach is the correct answer because it arose as a response to the limitations of more mechanistic management theories, such as scientific management, and emphasized the importance of human behavior, interpersonal relationships, and employee motivation in the workplace. During the 1920s and through the 1950s, theorists like Elton Mayo conducted studies that highlighted how social factors and working conditions could affect productivity. This approach recognized that employees are not merely cogs in a machine but have social needs that must be met to enhance their job satisfaction and, consequently, their performance.

The human relations approach also encouraged managers to build a workplace environment based on mutual respect, communication, and teamwork. This shift from a purely quantitative and function-focused perspective to one that values the qualitative aspects of labor marked a significant evolution in management thought, influencing practices in organizations for decades.

The other approaches mentioned lacked this emphasis on interpersonal relationships and employee well-being. For example, scientific management focused primarily on efficiency and optimizing work processes without considering the emotional and social aspects of employees’ experiences. The Hawthorne effect, while relevant to employee attention and morale, is a specific observation rather than a comprehensive management approach. The breakthrough culture is more contemporary and does not specifically relate to the historical context of