Facilitating Progress in Industry

Industries have facilitated progress in the United States for years. The railroad industry established safeguards and standards for transporting explosives in the early twentieth century, then advocated for inclusion of those standards into federal regulations. Although this was done primarily due to railroad safety issues, concern for people who did not work for the railroad was also an issue (Aldrich, 2002).
Since then, companies have come to realize they are not only employers within a community but are also stakeholders within society. Because of this, many industries have followed the railroad industry’s lead in formulating industry standards and often later found themselves lobbying Congress to have them adopted as federal regulations (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
Companies are not only concerned about the “bottom line” but also about the future of their industries and society, as a whole. Often, corporations donate money, goods, or services to benefit their communities in some way, such as the preservation of the arts through significant donations from both business leaders and corporations. As one example of many, Andrew Carnegie believed he was a steward of his money and donated all of it, explaining he was a mere trustee charged with caring for the less fortunate (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
When social scientists initially entered into management positions, many brought new ideas, including research methods. These methods quickly found their ways into business schools when it was understood that managers who understand human behavior tend to have a stronger ability to prevent and mitigate behavioral problems (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
This understanding highlighted the need for employers to consider human relations in every aspect of their businesses. Managers not only had to understand the function of their businesses, but also the cause of human behavior and how to leverage their subordinates’ knowledge and experience to support their business objectives. In order to make a positive impact with employees, a manager must understand people, in general and how to leverage their employees’ expertise, in particular (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
A good human relations tool which managers can use is McGregor’s theories X and Y. These will help managers facilitate their understanding of themselves and their employees. Although no individual manager will fall solely into one of the categories, understanding each theory can help managers adjust their own management philosophy and techniques in order to leverage their employees’ skills, knowledge, and experience while also creating an enjoyable work environment (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
In a management position, I would teach my subordinate managers McGregor’s theories, which would potentially help these managers develop new leadership techniques based on their own biases by providing them with the human relations tools needed to effectively convey directions to employees. Additionally, these managers would better understand that another assigning challenging tasks to employees based on their capabilities is another effective management technique that can increase employee confidence in themselves (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).
Finally, positive progress within any given industry has often been initiated by managers with an understanding that failure to sustain progress in light of new technologies and techniques will result in negative outcomes for the firm. In more recent decades, Operations Research has been used to understand of how to most effectively leverage organizational resources to meet organizational goals. This type of quantitative analysis has proven beneficial throughout industry, particularly in identifying best practices for the most complex of problems (Wren & Bedeian, 2009).